Andrew Sullivan has an excellent rundown on the selective memory of the "more war, but later" movement regarding the justifications for Iraqi Freedom (or you can just call it the invasion of Iraq, if you like). I was pretty sure that I had spent a lot of time countering a whole host of objections to the Administration's policies, inspired by some vocal NYT pundits and their ilk, to the effect that the Bush folks just had an unseemly number reasons for attacking Saddam's regime, and that they ought to focus on just one. This appears to be yet another situation where the wish was for reliance on a single argument that could be attacked, rather than a multi-variable Operations Research sort of optimization formula that left no doubt about the appropriate course of action. The thing to remember here is that virtually all of the reasons employed by the Bush Administration to justify the war were mutually reinforcing, and left a pretty impregnable argument even if some were omitted That's the sign of a pretty strong policy position.
What do I mean by "mutually reinforcing?" Just this: In addition to the logic behind the argument that Saddam was a mass murderer of his own people, the interaction between that and any intentions he might have for murdering people outside his current sphere of influence is strengthened. The same goes for the fact that the regime itself was considered by Freedom House to be in a dead heat with N. Korea and Burma for the most repressive on earth. (The rational assumption being that open societies are less likely to be a danger to other societies, all else being equal.) This doesn't mean that there weren't "constraints" on such propensities, but the interaction (which effectively creates a third variable) still can't be dismissed from the function, without a good reason. So if you have 3 primary terms you potentially have 4 additional variables, for a total of 7. If you begin with 4, there's a total of 11 additional combinations (interactions) for a total of 15 variables, or terms in the optimization. (Check here, for an explanation of how to compute the number of combinations.)
No wonder the "peace" movement wanted Bush to stick to one argument.
Posted by Demosophist at October 16, 2003 02:29 PM | TrackBack