David Brooks v. Krugman And The Hindsight Police

David Brooks enters the "What should we have done in 2003" fray with a thought-provoking piece on the challenges alternative history. 

He indulges in a quick smackdown of Prof. Krugman, who insisted yesterday it was all about the Bush lies:

The first obvious lesson is that we should look at intelligence products with a more skeptical eye. There’s a fable going around now that the intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was all cooked by political pressure, that there was a big political conspiracy to lie us into war.

That doesn’t gibe with the facts. Anybody conversant with the Robb-Silberman report from 2005 knows that this was a case of human fallibility. This exhaustive, bipartisan commission found “a major intelligence failure”: “The failure was not merely that the Intelligence Community’s assessments were wrong. There were also serious shortcomings in the way these assessments were made and communicated to policy makers.”

That was then, but the Times recently noted this from a recent CIA tell-some:

Mr. Morell is gentle about most of the politicians he dealt with — he expresses admiration for both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama, though he accuses former Vice President Dick Cheney of deliberately implying a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq that the C.I.A. had concluded probably did not exist. But when it comes to the events leading up to the Bush administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq, he is critical of his own agency.

Mr. Morell concludes that the Bush White House did not have to twist intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s alleged effort to rekindle the country’s work on weapons of mass destruction.

“The view that hard-liners in the Bush administration forced the intelligence community into its position on W.M.D. is just flat wrong,” he writes. “No one pushed. The analysts were already there and they had been there for years, long before Bush came to office.”

Jamie Weinstein of The Daily Caller has lots more on that.

Mr. Brooks also tries to bring a bit of reason to the discussion, and closes with a scarcely veiled swipe at Obama:

After the 1990s, many of us were leaning in the interventionist direction. We’d seen the fall of the apartheid regime, which made South Africa better. We’d seen the fall of communist regimes, which made the Eastern bloc nations better. Many of us thought that, by taking down Saddam Hussein, we could end another evil empire, and gradually open up human development in Iraq and the Arab world.

Has that happened? In 2004, I would have said yes. In 2006, I would have said no. In 2015, I say yes and no, but mostly no.

...

If the victory in the Cold War taught us to lean forward and be interventionist, the legacy of the 2003 Iraq decision should cause us to pull back from the excesses of that mentality, to have less faith in America’s ability to understand other places and effect change.

These are all data points in a larger education — along with the surge and the recent withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan. I wind up in a place with less interventionist instincts than where George W. Bush was in 2003, but significantly more interventionist instincts than where President Obama is inclined to be today.

Finally, Iraq teaches us to be suspicious of leaders who try to force revolutionary, transformational change. It teaches us to have respect for trimmers, leaders who pay minute attention to context, who try to lead gradual but constant change. It teaches us to honor those who respect the unfathomable complexity of history and who are humble in the face of consequences to their actions that they cannot fully predict or understand.

Hmm. "[R]espect for trimmers, leaders who pay minute attention to context" could actually be getting us ready for Hillarity! But I am not ready.

 

Comments

[matt]

erstens!

[matt]

Krugman is a fascist ass. He called for Greenspan to be banned from an economics conference and Greenspan decided it wasn't worth the agita.

[narciso]

Miller's memoir, relying inpart ona study by robert jervis, suggests that both brooksie and thecomandante are more wrong than right, when one looksat the evidence.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

A pox on all their houses.

The most important reason to win a regional war once you are, for whatever reason, involved in one is to avoid more regional wars from those encouraged to provoke one because they know we are paper tigers.
It's also the reason entering one should be done so selectively and why "rubble makes no trouble" is almost always a strategy to be considered; many regional wars may not be winnable in the sense of leaving behind a stable country. If we have a vital national interest that demands military action it is often best to destroy that enemy and preserve a "don't tread on me" reputation than risk it trying to westernize the unwesternizable, no matter how humanitarian the temptation.

[squaredance]

The Left is just laying the groundwork for rationalizing their total betrayal of the USA in the ME. It is just more "blame Bush", and if you are already sick of this then brace yourself--you are going to see this played out as never before.

The USA is in full global retreat, and this will just get worse. The Elites have no other response to this, and, of course, it is what they want.

I really doubt that the USA ever gets back its former position in the world.

It is amazing that people like Obama, VslJar, the Clintons, Soros, et al. can pull this off, and in such a short span of time too.

I do not think the bulk of Americans even understand this, much less care about.

Not log ago--say even 8 years ago, this would have brought down a government. Not now.

As has been pointed out somewhere else, this playing out almost exactly like Vietnam, only this time they have insured that they will not get another Reagan out of it. This time they will pay no price.

All Americans should feel deep shamed about all this, but the majority does not.

[narciso]

From the previous group the soufan group has identified tariq al harzi a tunisian national as abu sayyaf, now the fact his brother was the first person on interest in benghazi, willnot be as compelling as he was at abu ghraib and camp cropper

[James D.]

We’d seen the fall of the apartheid regime, which made South Africa better

I'm curious what measures Brooks is using to make that claim?

[Extraneus]

Squaredance is exactly right. This is all just ass-covering b.s.

Obama and the left condemned a "sovereign, stable, self-reliant Iraq" to the depredations of primitive head-choppers, crucifiers, and sexual slave-masters. They did this purposely, with malice aforethought, and now they want to wiggle out of any responsibility for it by navel-gazing about 2003.

[jimmyk]

"rubble makes no trouble" is almost always a strategy to be considered; many regional wars may not be winnable in the sense of leaving behind a stable country.

Agreed, but on the latter point, it's a matter of how long we remain there. We still have troops in Japan and Germany, and though the missions have changed, originally they were there for "nation building." One can argue we don't have the same level of interest in Iraq, but given what has happened the last 4 years, I would say our level of interest is sufficient to warrant having stayed there (once we'd eliminated the old regime).

[jimmyk]

I'm curious what measures Brooks is using to make that claim?

His feelings, no doubt.

I wouldn't disagree, on balance, with his assessment, but the media ignore the huge problems there, including the astronomical murder rates.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

Well, it would be pointless asking Barry, if he knew then what he knows now, would he still pull US troops out of Iraq, because he told us if he knew before what he knew after the Surge was successful he still said he'd intentionally pull out to lose the war.

Dems don't have to know anything, then or now, to make their decisions. They pride themselves on it.

[boris]

There are plenty, and Brooks appears to be one, who simply do not want to believe Iraq was salvageable but the dimorats sabotaged GWB and threw away any chance of success just like they did with Nixon and Viet Nam.

What do I believe? My brother as a marine saw combat in VN and in the Army Corps of Engineers did a cleanup tour in N'awlins after Katrina and TWO TOURS in Iraq.

Between his first and second tours there was significant improvement in civilian safety, economic development and stability.

When it comes to foreign affairs current dimorats like leftists and socialists and communists and jihadis are just evil. IMO the others who say "blow it up and walk away" are just wrong.

[narciso]

They seem to have come up with another name for this fellow but little evidence, the previous candidate would have been totes narrative.

[Cecil Turner]

. . . he accuses former Vice President Dick Cheney of deliberately implying a connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq that the C.I.A. had concluded probably did not exist.

What a crock. Morrell's own boys documented plenty of connection (from 9-11 report chapter 2):

• With the Sudanese regime acting as intermediary, Bin Ladin himself met with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer in Khartoum in late 1994 or early 1995 . . .
• There is also evidence that around this time Bin Ladin sent out a number of feelers to the Iraqi regime, offering some cooperation . . .
• In mid-1998, the situation reversed; it was Iraq that reportedly took the initiative . . .
• Similar meetings between Iraqi officials and Bin Ladin or his aides may have occurred in 1999 . . . Iraqi officials offered Bin Ladin a safe haven in Iraq . . .

And keep in mind these are meetings between intelligence officers in a country where our visibility on such is extremely limited. The "no relationship" bs, touted repeatedly by MSM propagandists, doesn't survive casual perusal. But this from Brooks is the real stand out non sequitur :

If the victory in the Cold War taught us to lean forward and be interventionist, the legacy of the 2003 Iraq decision should cause us to pull back from the excesses of that mentality, to have less faith in America’s ability to understand other places and effect change.

Utterly ludicrous. In the first place, it wasn't the Cold War that ended isolationism, it was WWII. And the logic is simple. A two-bit dictator, with a small but efficient army, faced off against the combined might of the western democracies (outnumbered and outgunned in tanks, for example, by France alone). Because of dithering and appeasement, a brush fire that was eminently controllable in 1938 erupted into a world conflagration that took 50+ million lives. We're not trying to "understand" and "effect change"; we're trying to avoid a major war.

And regardless of how they spin it, there's no doubt Iraq under Saddam was flouting the WMD agreements. The same regime that was responsible for tens of thousands of CW deaths was at best suspending operations until sanctions were lifted.

We lost ~5,000 men in Iraq, making it about 1/10th as deadly as Vietnam, and 1/100th as deadly as WWII (for American servicemen only . . . the civilian disparities are much greater). And now we face the possibility (likelihood?) of another WMD exchange in the mideast. If the worst happens, I guarantee what we won't be talking about is how we should have been more understanding and let them find their own national destiny.

[boris]

What he said.

[jimmyk on iPad]

Excellent, Cecil.

[maryrosee]

Spot on Cecil

[Michael (fpa Patriot4Freedom)]

Cecil - Excellent post.

[Mahon]

"Has that happened? In 2004, I would have said yes. In 2006, I would have said no. In 2015, I say yes and no, but mostly no."

Fine, but what would you have said in 2008? Isn't that the heart of the matter? Or do you prefer not to highlight that the fruits of victory were poured into the sands of the desert by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?

[Rex]

It's amazing to me how many people forget why we went into Iraq in the first place. The main reason, although not the only one, was to deny the use of Iraq, due to its geopolitical significance, to terrorists as part of GWB's Global War on Terror.

Period. End of sentence. Stop.

All other reasons were ancillary.

So because of Obama's actions, the use of Iraq by terrorists has increased exponentially.