On Thu, 12 Jun 2008, Dwayne Monroe wrote:
> At first, like the reportedly bewildered Power, I wondered how this
> could've happened.
You've done a perfect job of explaining why in your last two posts -- concise, well-referenced, and, as usual, amusing to read.
But now I just want to go back to this original sentence -- why were we even surprised for a second? Powers and Holbrooke are not just liberals. They are probably the two leading exponents of the branch of imperial liberalism whose arguments this list has always found most nuts and incoherent. She's the leading theorist, and he might be called the leading practicer, of humanitarian military intevention, which was was born in the cauldron of former Yugoslavia, in which they learned contempt for the UN that rivals the black helicopter folks. And in which they forged their founding conviction, that it is virtue to unilaterally attack countries run by dictators to get rid of them.
Under this scheme, the war in Iraq was not wrong. Rather it was exactly the kind of thing they wanted. And not surprisingly, these guys were for it. This is often forgotten, especially by them. But these two are like George Packer. They still think it was a good idea wrongly executed. And if you start with that premise -- and you add the wider humanitarian invention premise that there is no initial starting situation so bad that it can't be fixed by direct action (implicit in their preference for calling for it for amazingly divisive and vicious civil war situations) -- then of course you have to think Iraq can still be fixed.
Otherwise your defining premises are wrong.
So it's not only they're stupid about the surge (where you are exactly right in your analysis). It's that they are defending something they don't believe in. They are here defending the idea that getting out of Iraq quickly would be a good idea, because "The Dems Would Do It Quicker" is the whole defining difference in this debate. And of course they defend that position incoherently. They don't believe it's true. It violates everything they believe in. And if either or both of them are in power as advisors, they'll do everything in their power to make sure the Dems won't do it. Remember that the one time Powers was in the news before she called Hillary a monster was when she told someone that leaving quickly was "just one of many options" and implied it was probably not the one she would recommend.
So it's not just that raw imperialism always beats soft sell imperialism. Often soft touch imperialism is smarter. I might even say usually. The problem in this case is that when all is said and done, these four people are arguing about what the next president should do about Iraq. They are given two positions -- we should stay until we fix it vs. we should get out soon. And all four people agree with the side that Kraut and Fergie are defending.
So we shouldn't be surprised for a moment that Kraut and Fergie win. The other side is on their side. And if they don't know it, they are deeply divided within. Maybe that's what so depressed her.
Michael