What Liberal Internationalists Don’t Understand About Iraq

[4est_4est_Gump]

What Liberal Internationalists Don’t Understand About Iraq
They say that there’s only a political solution. They’re wrong.
Matthew Continetti, NRO
JUNE 28, 2014

The situation on the ground: Iraq in flames. The black flag of al-Qaeda over Sunni-majority cities, Shiite militias cleansing Baghdad neighborhoods of other sects and ethnicities, car and suicide bombs exploding daily, the government of Nouri al-Maliki looking insolent and ineffective, the Kurds hinting at independence. Civil war. Iranian meddling. American defeat.

I’m not talking about today. I’m talking about 2006. Then, too, liberal internationalists had the following prescription: America can’t solve Iraq’s problems. A major diplomatic initiative, involving the entire region, might persuade Maliki to be inclusive. There is no military solution in Iraq — just a political one.

“We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves,” Carl Levin said in November 2006. “We’ve been told repeatedly by our top uniformed military leaders that there is no purely military solution in Iraq; there is only a political solution in Iraq.” The Baker-Hamilton Commission, in its December 2006 report, agreed. As America withdrew, it said, “The United States should immediately launch a new diplomatic offensive to build an international consensus for stability in Iraq and the region.”

But President Bush dissented. He understood that the advocates for American withdrawal had reversed the equation. Political settlements are not the cause of peace. They are the result of peace brought about by military means. So Bush ordered a surge of troops, and a shift to counterinsurgency, to defeat al-Qaeda in Iraq and bring security to Baghdad.

After a year of tough fighting, al-Qaeda was on the run, the Iraqi capital was pacified, and American and Iraqi casualties began a long decline, giving Maliki the freedom to take on Shiite militias in the battle of Basra in the spring of 2008, and allowing U.S. forces to draw down from post-surge highs.

It is one of the oldest tenets of modernity: The state must establish a monopoly on violence before civil society can develop and politics can thrive. Read your Hobbes: “And covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.” Or read the Founders, who, in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, argued that rights had to be secured before they could be exercised. Power precedes politics.

Something liberals too easily forget. Raised in material abundance, groomed in institutions of higher education, living and working in safe city precincts, liberals are susceptible to the mirror-image fallacy: the belief that, at the end of the day, all human beings are basically alike, basically good, and basically want the same things liberals want — autonomy, diversity, peace, H&M, inexpensive yoga classes, outdoor brunch.

Which leads them to suppose that international politics operates in the same way as domestic politics, through consultation, debate, negotiation, pleading, trading, log-rolling, and compromise.

If only it were so. The affluent societies of the West may be at peace, but the rest of the world remains a Hobbesian environment where there is no monopoly on violence, no global Leviathan. And where there is no overwhelming and dominant power, where there is no deterring balance among equals, there is war.

Consider:

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/381434/print

 

[RobDownSouth]

Yeah yeah, AJ, we get it "Bush won the war, then the negar Obama lost it" is the wingnut talking point of the week.

Since you glibertarians have "black and white" answers for everything, why don't you tell us what should happen in Iraq now, instead of hiding behind the opinion pieces of others.

 

[Adre]

Biden got it mostly right eight years ago, this week the Kurds took their part and I doubt they'll give it back. Get rid of Mailki and divvy up the rest.

 

[Que]

Yeah yeah, AJ, we get it "Bush won the war, then the NIGGER Obama lost it" is the wingnut talking point of the week.

Since you glibertarians have "black and white" answers for everything, why don't you tell us what should happen in Iraq now, instead of hiding behind the opinion pieces of others.

If you want to use the "N' word in #AscriptionAgain, man up and spell it right.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

I want one of you geniuses to give me an explanation for Orit Gadiesh setting up offices in Kiev in 2006.

 

[cjh]

You break it, you own it.

 

[RobDownSouth]

I want one of you geniuses to give me an explanation for Orit Gadiesh setting up offices in Kiev in 2006.

Just as soon as you give us explanations for

1. Exactly who or what the fuck Orit Gadiesh is, and...
2. Why we should care in the first place.

Get back to us, m'kay?

 

[subdued_passion]

Maybe I understand the term incorrectly but I thought that liberal internationalism meant intervention- could be military action or aid- to pursue their agenda.

Is this just another for teh libruhls threads?

 

[unregistered]

 

[eyer]

Biden got it mostly right eight years ago, this week the Kurds took their part and I doubt they'll give it back. Get rid of Mailki and divvy up the rest.

Once again:

What power do you or Biden propose to enforce your peace plan?

When you read the OP article...

...was it like looking in a mirror?

You break it, you own it.

Exactly.

 

[Adre]

Once again:

What power do you or Biden propose to enforce your peace plan?

When you read the OP article...

...was it like looking in a mirror?



Exactly.

Where did I call it a peace plan? I think the Kurds have a pretty clear idea when it comes to enforcement, i.e., come into our territory and pay the price. Sounds like you prefer the current situation.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Adre]

You've preferred its creator all along.

As opposed to the people like Cheney who fucked the whole thing up? You're correct.

 

[eyer]

Sounds like you prefer the current situation.

And it reads like you're doing summer school to retake freshman debate class.

 

[RjThoughts]

Let the religious "civil" war in Iraq play out.

And fuck Cheney! What gives him the right to speak on the country that he helped fuck up for the purpose of making billions for Halliburton.

 

[nowisthetime]

Let the religious "civil" war in Iraq play out.

And fuck Cheney! What gives him the right to speak on the country that he helped fuck up for the purpose of making billions for Halliburton.

Cheney has a black heart, too bad that heart didn't stop a long time ago.

 

[Adre]

And it reads like you're doing summer school to retake freshman debate class.

Such wit!

 

[unregistered]

 

[eyer]

Let the religious "civil" war in Iraq play out.

You mean, just keeps hands off and let the jihadis take control of Iraq...

...kinda just like we let that "religious 'civil war' in" Afghanistan "play out" and the jihadi Osama bin Laden-backed Taliban jihadis emerged dominant.

Yeah...

...that's a swell plan, Uncle Doublehead.

And fuck Cheney! What gives him the right to speak on the country that he helped fuck up for the purpose of making billions for Halliburton.

Probably the very same American right that provides you with the freedom to spout so much pro-statist government crap while at the very same time posing as some related-by-pigment victim of the very same system of statist government you champion here...

...friggin' Uncle Doublehead.

 

[RjThoughts]

Mythology.

You're one of those people that there were WMD in Iraq? That we had to get them? That they were moved out?

Grandpa, it's time for your medication to be changed.

 

[eyer]

Such wit!

Twice I've asked you the same serious question to your standard solution and you haven't yet offered how you or Biden will enforce your plan to divide Iraq into at least 3 ethnic/cultural/sectarian sections...

...it's almost as if you and Biden are totally ignorant (or worse: totally inconsiderate) of the fact that the great number of natural Iraqi patriots don't want their country divided - they want to find a way(s) to live peacefully together regardless of their ethnic, cultural, and religious differences. You know, just like most good folks everywhere envision their own homelands.

But, nonetheless, you and Biden know better than good Iraqis themselves...

...so - for the third time - how do you propose to enforce your and Biden's plan that will naturally meet will violent opposition?

 

[eyer]

You're one of those people that there were WMD in Iraq? That we had to get them? That they were moved out?

Grandpa, it's time for your medication to be changed.

How come you so nolip about President Obama and Syria, Uncle Doublehead?

 

[RjThoughts]

How come you so nolip about President Obama and Syria, Uncle Doublehead?

We're talking about Iraq. Stay with the conversation.

 

[Beco]

You're one of those people that there were WMD in Iraq? That we had to get them? That they were moved out?

Grandpa, it's time for your medication to be changed.

Did anyone believe that? I mean, besides Colon Powell?

 

[RjThoughts]

Did anyone believe that? I mean, besides Colon Powell?

Probably GW and some of the now Tea Party members.

Anyone that had half knowledge of metallurgy knew the aluminum tubes they "found" could not be used for nuclear bombs or anything to do with uranium. Aluminum's melting point is far too low for it.