The Iraq war was a mistake. ~Jonah “Lie For a Just Cause Goldberg” in “Iraq Was a Worthy Mistake”

Via Kevin Drum

There then follows an entire column with every caveat, “yeah, but” and qualification in the book, boiling down to rehashing the same sickeningly tiresome nonsense that we have heard a thousand times before: we must press on, victory is our exit strategy, blah blah blah.  If it was not in our interests to fight this war, as Goldberg now condescends to allow, it is not in our interests to keep fighting it today.  It really is that simple. 

Iraq did not magically become vital to U.S. national security after we eliminated the government that also didn’t pose a significant threat to us.  What is perhaps most dreadful about this war is just how tangential to all our vital interests it really is.  If Iraq were the “central front” in the “war on terror,” it would only be so because of our presence there; the jihadis came to Iraq because we were there, and they will focus their attentions on wherever Western forces are.  That is rather the whole point of the “drive the Crusaders out” rhetoric.  Yes, they would theoretically like to establish control in Iraq, but then we might like to do the same and it isn’t happening.  Contra Mr. Bush’s obnoxious lectures, there is not going to be a “Taliban-like” state in Iraq after we leave.  There might end up being an Iran-like state, but then critics of the war knew that before it started. 

While we’re at it, let me call b.s. on one of Goldberg’s first claims:

In the dumbed-down debate we’re having, there are only two sides: Pro-war and antiwar. This is silly. First, very few folks who favored the Iraq invasion are abstractly pro-war.

No, not exactly pro-war (they are very often against other people making war in their legitimate interests against terrorists or foreign enemies–see Yugoslavia), but can you think of a single American war that prominent supporters of the Iraq war have ever opposed?  No, you cannot, because these people are reflexive supporters of any and every war that the U.S. government has fought.  More than that, they tend to be apologists for every outrageous excess committed in the course of all those wars.  How many of them have written about how “necessary” it was to incinerate hundreds of thousands of Japanese and German civilians?  Those, too, were deemed “worthy” things to do. 

Besides their most well-known neo-imperialist, Max Boot, who thinks every ugly deployment for U.S. Sugar or seizing Latin American customs houses or suppressing the Boxer Rebellion was a grand and noble cause (and, of course, it never had anything to do with corporate interests!), you would be hard-pressed to find someone at NR, The Wall Street Journal or Weekly Standard, to name just the most obvious, who did not support every military intervention of the last century from the Philippines to Kosovo.  You might find someone who objected to Kosovo, but usually this was because Clinton had taken the option of sending ground forces into Yugoslavia off the table–when they are critical of an intervention, it is not typically because they find it appalling, wrong or even misguided, but because the government has not applied enough force to crush the enemy with sufficient viciousness (whether “the enemy” needs crushing or not, they tend to be in favour of it). 

No, they’re not “pro-war” as such (oh, how they cry for the victims of Chechnya!). They’re just hegemonists and imperialists, who often support wars in the name of the “liberation” (frequently meaning the domination) of others, which is much better.  They are such fans of hegemony that they even support wars to advance it that are not waged by our government (see Lebanon). 

Every time there is an international crisis, their thinking turns to WWII and the dangers of seeking peace.  Munich is their watchword.  Never do they think of WWI and the dangers of the willingness to go to war.  Peace through strength used to be a handy Republican motto, and it made sense.  Now the motto is just “strength.”  To no particular purpose.  America must be “strong” and have “resolve”…in order to keep fighting more wars that have nothing to do with us.

On democratisation, Goldberg is less compelling than usual:

Bush’s critics claim that democracy promotion was an afterthought, a convenient rebranding of a war gone sour. I think that’s unfair, but even if true, it wouldn’t mean liberty isn’t at stake. It wouldn’t mean that promoting a liberal society in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world wouldn’t be in our interest and consistent with our ideals.

But promoting a “liberal society in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world” (the nearly half billion Muslims who live well east of Iraq might dispute that last point) was never in our interest.  Besides being impossible, it would be undesirable even if it had succeeded.  Does America really want governments in the Near East that reflect what their peoples think of us?  Think about that for a second before regurgitating yet another talking point.