Point/Counter-point

It’s been my practice over the last several months that after rising, while I put on my boots before walking the dogs, I check quickly to see if anyone is trying to attract my attention by reading my email and checking for any new trackbacks to The Glittering Eye. This morning what to my wondering (if bleary) eyes did appear but a trackback to a formidable post from Nadezdha of chez Nadezhda over on the adjunct site Liberals Against Terrorism. Nadezdha’s post, in turn, took me to this post from the ubiquitous praktike. They are probably best read together.

Praktike’s post is a, shall we say, forcefully-worded condemnation of the war in Iraq, the Bush Administration’s conduct of the war, Norman Podhoretz, the idea of a jihad magnet, David Frum, and others. His rant is at least in part a reaction to this article by Dana Priest in the Washington Post. In the article Priest says:

In a major new study, the CIA’s National Intelligence Council says Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of “professionalized” terrorists, officials at the CIA director’s intelligence think-tank said today.

This stands to reason I think. One of the reasons that we have the finest, most effective military in the world (besides spending twice as much in relation to national income as anyone else and the advantages of scale) is that we’ve practiced. We’ve practiced in major live conflicts every ten or twenty years for the last century (World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Viet Nam, Gulf War I) and minor conflicts in between (interventions in Russia, Nicaragua, China, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Somalia, Kosovo, etc.). And we’ve learned a little more from each of these conflicts and applied what we’ve learned the next time around. Is there any reason to believe that actual live experience is less important for terrorists or jihadis? I don’t think so.

In fact that’s one of the reasons that although I opposed the invasion of Iraq I think it’s incumbent on us to eliminate the terrorists and jihadis there regardless of the cost or levels of force required. Otherwise we run the risk of cultivating a seasoned and trained terrorist and jihadi force who have acquired skills that have been found to be effective against us and allowing them to operate freely in Iraq, here at home, and elsewhere in the world.

Nadezhda’s post is significantly more temperate. For me the most significant part was the very end and I’ll quote it here:

So I encourage others to “take the pledge” with me.

• I will try to forego the “I told you sos.”
• I will try to keep my eye on the core objectives and the primary stratetgic dangers.
• I will hope to heaven that George Bush is successful in navigating this tragedy and putting the US posture in the broader Middle East onto a better footing for the years to come.
• I will criticize strongly those specific tactics I think are misguided or likely to be counterproductive. I will scream if the Bush Admin seems to be getting off track strategically.
• But I will support this president in finding a way to mitigate the horrors of the civil war that we helped launched. And I will support him in his efforts to find the “peace with honor” — regardless of how fabulous or ficticious it may be — that’s acceptable to the American public.

That’s pretty nearly where I’ve been since April of 2003. Except for the screaming part. I’m more likely to give sorrowful criticism (or bide my time). The one thing with which I’d take exception is that I think that the evidence that we’ve helped launch a civil war in Iraq is very slim. In my view Saddam had been suppressing an ongoing civil war in Iraq for nearly 30 years. Removing Saddam merely restored the status quo ante.

Nadezhda isn’t the only one who’s been writing lately about the likelihood of civil war in Iraq. Zenpundit, riffing on a post by Juan Cole, has a post on the possibility of a neo-Ba’athist coup in Iraq.

As I see it the only good alternatives we had with respect to Iraq were:

• Leave it alone.
• Remove Saddam and partition it.
• Remove Saddam, disarm the Iraqis, close the borders, and let the Iraqis work out the rest in relative peace.

Each of these alternatives would have had its own costs and consequences.

What we have done is remove Saddam, let the Iraqis stay armed, let jihadis come in from neighboring countries, and hope for the best. It may all work out. Who knows? We’ll have a much better notion in upcoming months. I sincerely hope so for the good people of Iraq and for us, as well.

But I do recommend you read both of the posts I’ve linked to above.

UPDATE: Submitted to the Beltway Traffic Jam.