Iraqi War Blues By Tibor Machan

America, BAB's A List, Democrats, Economy, Iraq, War, WMD

I’ve said before that I’ve nothing new to say about the crime the Bush administration perpetrated in Iraq. Other than the necessary repetition, few have. I take that back. My guest today on Barely a Blog is Tibor Machan, who has come up with this philosophically acute principle: “Believing something that’s unjustified to believe doesn’t count as a reason for acting on the belief.”

Machan is RC Hoiles Professor of business ethics & free enterprise at the Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

IRAQI WAR BLUES
By Tibor Machan

It is blues because it’s such a torment—to most Americans, to those who have died—and to a lot of families who have lost members—in this war, and to the supporters because they can’t advance a convincing reason to stay the course.

President George W. Bush may have wanted to hit Iraq even before 9/11 and his reason may well have been that he thought Saddam Hussein did hide some weapons of mass destruction. I have no idea whether Bush was honest but even if he was, it’s no excuse because believing that WMD were hidden in Iraq doesn’t appear to have been justified. Believing something that’s unjustified to believe doesn’t count as a reason for acting on the belief. Say you irrationally believe your spouse is cheating on you and so you decided to meet out punishment. It’s no excuse to say, “But I believed you were cheating on me— even if you did but in fact had no reason to.

Did Bush have good reasons, compelling ones, to think Iraq had WMD? There seems to be no support for this view anywhere now. So then attacking Iraq, while not anything most reasonable people could be too upset about so far as Saddam Hussein is concerned, doesn’t appear to have been justified.

How does this bear on the current debate as to whether the war in Iraq is “a war of choice”? Yes, this seems to be a big deal now—was the war necessary or did Bush decide to wage it as a matter of preference, something he didn’t need to do? Some—for example Republican pundit Morton Kondracke of weekend TV news program “The Beltway Boys”—think that since Bush believed there were WMD in Iraq, the war was not one of choice but of necessity. But this is the kind of justification I sketched above for punishing one’s spouse because one honestly but irrationally thinks one has been betrayed. Even if Bush honestly thought Iraq had WMD, if that belief was ill founded, as it evidently was, the war could be considered a war of choice. There was no objective necessity for it.

Mind you, most of Bush’s critics from among the liberal Democrats have no good case against him either. They haven’t ever objected to preemptive public policies that intrude on innocent people, let alone those under serious if mistaken suspicion. Just consider as a perfect current example how eagerly former VP Al Gore is urging his various precautionary measures—ones that would intrude on millions of us without any regard for civil liberties and due process—because he feels we face big risks from environmental hazards (global warming, climate change, what have you). Gore and his supporters, who complain about Bush’s preemptive war policies because they were preemptive, are hypocrites.

Only those who consistently uphold what we might dub the George Washington doctrine about getting America militarily entangled have a case against Bush & Co. These folks believe that free countries may only go to war when there is a justified and dependable belief that the country is under attack or about to be attacked. The emphasis here is on justified and dependable. Forcibly intervening in other people’s lives is only justifiable when these other people are mounting or about to mount an attack. A war is just, in other words, only when it is defensive.

George W. Bush’s war against Iraq was never defensive, not because he may not have believed the country needs defending from WMD, but because his and his administration’s beliefs about Iraq’s WMD were unjustified, ill founded. Nothing in the meantime, since the war commenced, has changed this fact. Not that there was nothing at all murky about Saddam Hussein and WMD. Yes there was, what with all that hide-and-seek involving the United Nations’ team of inspectors. But war is too big a deal, military, and indeed any other kind of aggression is too big a deal, to start in a murky situation.

Bush, of course, is no consistent follower of the George Washington doctrine. Nor are most of his liberal Democratic critics. So their quarrel about the war in Iraq is mostly incoherent. The only part that has some bona fide relevance concerns the issue of how long to keep American troops in Iraq now that the American military is there.

Coulter Correspondence

Ann Coulter, Ilana Mercer

As you can imagine, many of Ms. Coulter’s more maniacal followers responded to my rather tame and measured, “Coughing Up Some Coulter Fur Balls.”

As unpleasant as some got, they were never as racist, stupid, statist, and plain loathsome as the prototype, frothing-at-the-mouth left-liberal, epitomized by this character (now permanently blocked).

The left is worse than the right—about that Coulter is right.

There were, however, some lovely notes. I’ll share them with you.

Here’s one from Billy V.:

Dear Miss Mercer:

“I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to read your wonderful columns.

Miss Coulter in a confused, unprincipled woman. But Republocrats and Demopublicans are all just unprincipled rotters. And your writing on this matter is so right on. I can’t believe it but I do, and I thank you for it.

Thank you for the life saver and the rope to pull me to shore.”

Writes Rick from Florida:

“Mrs. Mercer: By pure accident, I ran into some of your comments while reading an article about fathers on the net. Your eloquence, excellent writing, precise and to-the-point observations, are quite refreshing. I tend to agree with your assessment of Anne Coulter. Absolutely no talent [i think she has talent–ILANA], very insipid [far from it–ILANA], and way off on her portrait of the 9/11 widows. My opinion? Vulgar and low. By being number one on the Best Sellers lists, she shows us how far down our country has fallen.
Keep up you great work. You now have another admirer.”

And this from R. R.:

“Ann Coulter has a tendency to incite.

You educate.

Thanks”

Thanks to all for taking the time to write; you made my day.–ILANA

Coughing Up Some Coulter Fur Balls

Ann Coulter, Barely A Blog, Media

“Ann Coulter, I imagine, considers herself an individualist, not a collectivist. Which is why her views on grief perplex. About certain September 11 widows Coulter has written the following: “These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them.” (Emphasis added.)

Nations don’t grieve; individuals who incur loss do. The nation, following September 11, can legitimately lay claim to the confusion that comes with a loss of a previous sense of security and to the sorrow that accompanies the deaths of compatriots. However, only the immediate relatives of the victims were in fact bereaved. The nation might be shocked, reeling, but only the families of the dead were utterly devastated. With every day that dawns, they alone face the kind of pain the rest of us cannot fathom…

The idea that people not directly affected by a tragedy ought to perform the rites reserved for the bereaved conjures the image of a tribe in the paroxysmal throws of a grief ritual. It’s inspired by the equally primitive specter of Oprah’s televised group therapy sessions, in which every individual’s pain is equally weighted. ..”

My complete column, “Coughing Up Some Coulter Fur Balls,” is here. A section of the column will be familiar to Barely-A-Blog readers.

I must say that the accusation that Coulter is doing things for money is idiotic ad hominem–attack a person’s unknown motivation. It’s an invalid argument. Today on “Hannity and Colmes,” a Democratic strategist alleged just that. What’s more, she carried on as though she had made a startling discovery. How did she know Coulter had written the book only to make money (not that there’s anything wrong with that; in fact that’s one excellent reason to write a book)? Well, the fool replied, “It’s number one on the New-York Times’ Best-Sellers List.” You can’t beat that for a circular argument. She knows Coulter intended only to make money, because she is making money.

UPDATED (8/24/018): Taki: Not Very Bright

Anti-Semitism, Islam, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Neoconservatism, South-Africa, Terrorism, The West

In “From Russia With (Less Than) Love,” I asked—and answered—the question as to why Russia and Israel don’t cooperate more. For one, both nations live adjacent to terrorist entities—the Russians to Chechnya; the Israelis to the Palestinian Authority. Putin must put up with Shamil Basaev (a Chechen terrorist and advocate of an Islamist state in the Northern Caucasus); Israelis have to contend with the new Dalai Lamas of Gaza (Hamas).

And both Israelis and Russians “are hectored by elements in the Bush and Blair administrations and the Europeans about granting statehood to their terrorism-endorsing neighbors. Against insuperable odds, both are expected to trust terrorists and their fan base to stop butchering babies and embrace Jeffersonian democracy and a Bill of Rights.”

Note the consistency of my position: Assailed by savages, Russia and Israel have my sympathies and support on this front.

A year later, Taki, a moldy scribe, with life tenure in various publications, makes a similar point in The American Conservative (TAC). He is smarting over the administration’s double standard: “American policy makers” are “bear baiting” Russia about its mistreatment of Chechen jihadists, whom the administration (as I pointed out) lionizes. Chechens are freedom fighters, but the Palestinians are terrorists? What’s up with that, he wants to know.

This is rich because Taki’s writing is laced with exactly the same illogic:

In fawning, radical-left fashion, he and TAC finesse everything about the savage and dysfunctional Palestinian society, yet evince a loathing of all things Israel. Or, if a little honesty pierces the fog, and they acknowledge the facts on the ground, it is invariably to blame Israel, Ã la the left’s theory of culpability. Apparently, if not for Israel, a veritable economic oasis and a culture of life would flourish where a black hole now threatens to collapse upon itself.

Yes, this is rich because it exposes Taki’s inability to detect the same category of contradiction he rightly accuses the administration of in his and The American Conservative’s oeuvre.

That’s good for a laugh.

UPDATED (8/24/018): Praised by a cult.