The Mechanisms of Denial

Justin Logan wonders if there is any piling on of empirical evidence that could convince hawks that they have been proven wrong. The answer, clearly, is no, thanks to two useful mechanisms of denial.

First, and most annoyingly, is simple revisionism. "Everybody said there were WMD in Iraq." Well, no, they didn't, especially not at the time of the war when inspectors were in the country saying they couldn't find any WMD programs. Second, and more threateningly, is stab-in-the-back stuff. Insofar as things go badly in Iraq, the cause of the badness is the perfidy of the anti-war faction. By definition the hawks are correct, and the worse things get, the righter the hawks are proven to have been, because it simply demonstrates that the circle of America's enemies is wider than previously believed, and the need for irrational lashing out therefore is proportionately greater.

In this regard, it's also worth reading Julian's post on the shifting goalposts in Iraq. He makes the point that, quite rightly, even if things turn out well from here on out in Iraq that would hardly constitute a justification for having launched the war. I -- or he -- could no doubt produce a long argument to that regard, but the simple argument is just that there's a reason Bush didn't say, "I want to invade a country that poses no threat to the United States, spend hundreds of billions of dollas and get thousands of people killed, in order to build a nice Shiite democracy." On the one hand, this argument is a needed debunking of much hawk propaganda. On the other hand, keeping the argument in mind will help non-hawks avoid any hint of subconscious desire for things to go poorly in Iraq. We can -- and should -- hope things turn out for the best, without believing that things turning out well in any way undermines our point.