Would You Like A Little Humility With That Whine?

Here's something I've been wanting to get off my chest: liberal hawks, democracy-promoters, and the like who are disappointed with the direction in which John Kerry is taking his foreign policy campaign might want to consider a little less whining and a little more self-examination.

Here's the thing. Before the war, such people were much more eager to hitch their banner to George W. Bush's star than Bush was to theirs. Bush's case for war overwhelmingly emphasized the Iraq War as a measure necessary to enhance America's short-term national security situation. The benefits of liberating the Iraqi people were, to be sure, mentioned, but as with Afghanistan this was portrayed as a sort of icing on the cake, a demonstration of American righteousness and good will, and not as the primary rationale for the policy. Vis-à-vis the Taliban, I think we all understood that. Bush invaded to depose the Taliban because the Taliban would not cooperate in efforts to root out Osama bin Laden, his key lieutenants, and the training camps they were operating. That the Taliban was a vicious regime was a consideration, but obviously not the decisive one -- hence the fact that America's Afghanistan policy took a rather drastic turn after 9-11. Consistent with this, Bush's commitment to postwar reconstruction in Afghanistan has been, as the democracy promoters usually admit, halfhearted at best. This, on Bush's terms, is basically fine -- the Afghan War was about fighting al-Qaeda and we have, indeed, fought al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Similarly, the case made for invading Iraq was that we had to remove Saddam from power quickly before he acquired nuclear weapons which he might use against us (possibly via connections with terrorists) or threaten to use in order to extract concessions from us. Liberating the Iraqi people was a consideration, but not the consideration. We invaded Iraq and not, say, Burma. What's more, we invaded Iraq instead of investing more resources in Afghan reconstruction because Saddam Hussein was a "grave and gathering" threat to the United States which made it vital that we act there.

Bush did, it is true, make some grand promises about an Iraqi democracy, but before the war we already knew that he had made some grand promises about a "Marshall Plan for Afghanistan" on which he had failed to deliver. We knew that his administration contained a dovish-realist bloc around Colin Powell that absolutely abhorred crusading idealism. We knew that it also contained a then-ascendant hawkish-realist bloc around Cheney and Rumsfeld that, while enthusiastic about the Iraq venture, was ill-disposed toward prolonged nation-building efforts. Last, we knew that it also contained a hawkish-idealist "neoconservative" element around Paul Wolfowitz that mixed enthusiasm for Iraqi democracy with enthusiasm for Ahmed Chalabi and his circle of cronies and that adopted a studied posture of ambiguity on the question of what they would do if the Iraqi people failed to democratically embrace Chalabi.

It was also clear before the war that Bush was implicitly arguing to people that the war would be relatively cheap in terms of money spent, lives lost, and time consumed. We knew that Bush had not set aside any money in his budget for a long-term occupation, nor welcomed a public or congressional debate about postwar conduct in Iraq. Many administration and administration-allied figures argued or implied that even if allied support was absent during the war, people would rally around our banner once the fighting was done. The term "cakewalk" was tossed around, and everyone expressed absolute certainty that the United States would uncover stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

Knowing all that, and knowing that the administration had never put democracy-promotion front-and-center as a primary rationale for war, a large number of people primarily interested in democracy-promotion chose to support the war anyway. Which is their right. You will note that the Cato Institute supports pharmaceutical reimportation even though the main congressional supporters of such a measure are liberal democrats who differ from Cato in why they think this is a good idea and what it's likely consequences are. I'm inclined to think that Cato has this right, the liberal democrats have it wrong, but I -- like the Cato Institute -- will be happy to see the liberals' program enacted because I believe the results will be good for the world. Again, a non-trivial number of libertarians have expressed the view that it would be good for John Kerry to be elected president because that result is likely to reduce the growth in federal spending. That certainly isn't what John Kerry has to say in his own favor, but there's pretty strong empirical evidence to support the view that (a) the GOP will controll congress in 2005-06 no matter what, and (b) dividing government restrains spending more than unified Republican government. So even though that's not Kerry's case for Kerry it's perfectly acceptible for people to embrace the small-government case for Kerry and vote for him.

But here's the thing. If your buddy tells you to vote for Kerry because that will restrain spending growth, and you take his advice, and Kerry wins, and then it turns out that the Democrats sweep to control of all three branches of government and start socializing everything, next time your buddy gives you advice you probably aren't going to listen.

Most democracy-promoters decided that the implication of their view was that one should support Bush's invasion of Iraq. Bush's invasion of Iraq hasn't worked out nearly so well as the American people were led to believe it would. It has cost a great deal of money, has gotten many people killed, our allies have not rallied around us, we've kept the casualty figure under control by means of compromises with bad actors, no WMD stockpiles were revealed, and it seems like establishing a liberal democracy at this point will be a long, hard slog.

Logically speaking, none of that proves that the democracy-promoting approach to foreign policy is wrong, but it's hardly surprising that there's been a backlash against it. It was the democracy-promoters, after all, who chose to associate their approach with Bush's conduct. So people who are not happy with Bush's conduct are now pulling away from the democracy-promoting approach. That's not 100 percent fair, but it is 100 percent understandable, and it was 100 percent predictable before the war that this is what would happen if things went badly. One of the risks -- indeed, perhaps the main risk -- democracy-promoters took when they chose to endorse the Iraq War as a democracy-promotion venture was that if it didn't work out, they would find themselves out in the wilderness. They could have said: "I have some concerns about the way Bush is going about this, and I think it's important to retain the credibility of foreign policy idealism, so I'll say that unless Bush really changes his approach, gets serious about costs and budgeting, and comes clean with the American people, I'm not going to support this war even though it's against a vivious dictator." But they didn't. They said: "Sure I have some problems with the way Bush is doing things, but this is 'the right war for the wrong reasons' and it should be supported anyone." The upside to doing things that way is that if the war had stayed popular and had produced a liberal democracy in Iraq, the promoters could claim credit. "See, we told you this was a good idea even if the president seemed a little dodgy." But the war hasn't stayed popular and doesn't seem to be producing a liberal democracy. So they get the blame. So both parties have, to some extent, turned more toward their respective realist wings.

At any rate, this jackass is a perfect example of what I'm talking about ("True, this administration made mistakes in pressing the case for war, but..."). Did the administration make mistakes or did he make a mistake in supporting a lying administration? Is he really so shocked that after the gambit didn't work out so well people don't want to applaud Joe "Like Scoop Jackson But With More Apologetics for Torture" Lieberman?