Iraq: reflections and succeeding downwards

A few things:

(1) Perhaps I've said it before, but Iraq seems almost a perfect demonstration case for the central thesis of Leviathan: a potent sovereign, even a bad one, is preferred over anarchy and war. It's striking to see conservatives, who I'd always understood to be the ones cramming Hobbes down the throats of everyone else, stating baldly that the success of the Iraq war is that Leviathan has been slain. In the Hobbesiverse, that's a minus, not a plus. The plus can only be a new and better sovereign that can achieve security more successfully with less interference. But the Iraqi government now in place is not cited as the success of the conflict because it's an embarassment. Hence the focus is on how a tyrant has been eliminated. But in theory, a tyrant is better than an ineffective government or no government. That's what Iraq has. Neither the occupation nor the illegitimate, phony, disfunctional regime now in place can outperform Hussein on the metric of providing basic security, providing the most basic public needs, and providing a ground where citizens can interact to benefit themselves. A million dead and five million displaced is not security or the product of a genuine sovereign, it's a state of nature.

(2) One of the tricks that misleads people into perceiving improvement is the reporting of delta-to-the-nth-degree improvement without pointing out delta-to-the-first-degree decline. I've addressed before this in the context of global warming. You have a situation whose quality is defined as x. Delta x over t is the rate of improvement or decline in that situation. If the rate is accelerating or slowing, the change in rate is delta-squared x over t-squared. That rate also may be changing, which would be a third-degree delta. In Iraq, you have a bad situation, which is getting worse, and the worsening has been hastening, and the hastening has been hastening in an n-th degree downward spiral. Real improvement would mean that the base metric is actually getting better.

In Iraq, that is nearly impossible. Consider the most obvious aspect of the Iraqi condition: a million excess Iraqis are dead as a result of the war. Tomorrow will not see that number go down, and the loss represented by each death will not fade quickly. Each day more are killed by violence, which is a net loss. Mathematically, there is a certain fixed death rate which is neutral, where the loss represented by past deaths is lightened because the dates pass where they would have died anyway, putting the direct loss in the past, leaving only the attendant losses of the violence and prematurity of those deaths, which fade as memory fades, and as the expected economic benefit of continued life dissipates into entropy. So long as the death rate remains above that (relatively) fixed level, there is a continuing net loss. The mere putative fact of the death rate going down would mean only that the rate of decline is diminishing. It would not mean any actual improvement. And as long as the excess death rate was above zero, the any improvement would be attributable only to the curative effect of time, not to the continuation of the war.

The other metrics one might consider fare little better. False hope lured between one and two percent of external refugees back to Iraq, but that does not mean their normalcy has been restored, and new refugees continue to leave. The loss of precious historical sites and artifacts, such as Paleolithic structures and tools, medieval writings, and classical mosques, is even more irremediable than the loss of human life. The immense labor, talent and inspiration that went into lost writings and architecture cannot be restored without immense labor, talent and inspiration. The historicity and age of human artifacts likewise cannot be quickly recovered. When one historically significant 10,000-year-old item is destroyed, it can only be replaced by investing some other item with similar historic importance, and preserving it for another 10,000 years.

(3) I disagree with Glenn Greenwald concerning a part of what he says here and here. (It's unusual that I do disagree, and the disagreement now is partial.) He says that one of the lessons of the Iraq war, unrecognized by most of those who got it wrong by supporting the war initially, is that the U.S. should not invade, bomb and occupy countries that have not threatened or attacked us. And he adds that at best, the reconsideration of the erring warboosters remains sadly utilitarian. I disagree because I do not think that experience teaches moral lessons. At most it can teach practical ones, and in this case, it teaches nothing general about war because the test was about as bad as you can imagine. I think the decision to go to war ultimately cannot be anything but utilitarian.

On the first and last points, the rightness of an action is related to whether it will be successful, but is not solely determined by success or failure. On the one hand, it was very possible for people to morally say, "I predict this war will be a complete success but I'm still against it because I do not think total fulfilment of its goals is sufficient to morally justify it." On the other hand, it is not possible to morally say, "I predict this war will be a total failure at achieving any of the goals from which it might be morally justified, but I support it anyway." Most actions entail at least some minor downside, and they must have an upside to be justified. People say the ends do not justify the means, but all that can truly be said is that some ends, even if certain, will not satisfy some means. The fact is that only the ends will ever justify the means of any act. I'm going to cut you with a knife, which I ordinarily do not do. I justify it because this simple surgical procedure will save your life, and I know you will thank me for it. War is incredibly negative and is only ever justified when it at least has a positive end in mind. Such an end is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to justify any violence. A reasonable prospect that the end will successfully be achieved is also essential.

On the second point, this war (or really, this occupation) was a disaster, but it does not prove that occupations are necessarily disasterous. George Bush's team cannot make anything work. The fact that they cannot make this work does not mean that invasion and occupation generally won't work. To show whether or not such things can succeed would at least require a fair experiment where a competent team was in charge that might give the thing a chance.

I'm not against war in principle, although it would be misleading not to note that my opposition to starting virtually any wars is based on a calculus so close to insurmountable, that it merges with principle. I'm happy to articulate the principle, even if in reality, there may be theoretical exceptions. Purely defensive combat, proportionately waged and with a prospect of success, is generally justified. Ultimately war, like everything else, is a special case of the same general moral principles: choose the action with the best consequences for all, but recognize that it is generally best to forbear action where risk of harm is substantial and uncertain, such as when understanding of consequences is deficient or where action diminishes a viable beneficial policy.

(4) What is "success"? What is "getting the job done"? Much of the discourse is just far to facile tossing about vague and undefined references to the object of the occupation. It seems to me there are several possible objectives we might have for staying, depending on who the "we" is. Saving the face of the president, keeping war funds flowing to contractors, protecting the building of massive permanent fortresses, bullying the puppet government on oil policy, spending federal resources in order to break the capacity of the treasury to support liberal programs, venting bloodlust -- all plausible. Peacekeeping between internal Iraqi factions, fighting terrorism, promoting regional freedom and prosperity -- all pretty farfetched. (How does arming and training both sides, but disproportionately the fanatics of the majority sect, promote peace? How does occupying, humiliating, and decimating a society while flooding it with weapons do anything but stir hatred and provide a training ground and arms supply to enemies? How does installing an illegitmate regime and initiating an immense humanitarian disaster in the name of democracy raise the image of democracy?) It is arguable that the best policy would not be to leave Iraq but to reverse our activities there by roughly 180 degrees, but since the debate is not what direction to go but how far and how fast in the wrong direction, leaving as soon as possible seems like the best thing on the table.