JONATHAN CHAIT AUGUST 22, 2011
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
Reason editor Matt Welch warns of a "success curse" in foreign policy:
Today's Team Blue dethroning of a tinpot dictator lowers the bar for tomorrow's Team Red assault on Iran, which of course will be confirmation that when it comes to the Constitution, President Perry (should he wrest the nomination from the more deserving Texan) is worse than Nixon and Hitler combined. Team Blue will once again regain the White House on an "anti-dumb war" campaign; a scattering of Republicans will then exhume their deference to the War Powers Act, and the U.S. share of global responsibility and military spending will continue its inexorable climb toward 100 percent. This is why some people refer to the bipartisan political class as "The War Party," and with plenty of justification.
Let us recall how Bill Clinton's Kosovo War laid the groundwork for George W. Bush's Iraq...
This is a persuasive argument if you oppose all military interventions. If you don't, it basically boils down to the proposition that a successful military operation is bad because it will lead to unsuccessful military operations. You could make the same argument on social policy (if we allow gay marriage, it will make some even more liberal social reform possible.) And you could make it the other way, too -- liberals shouldn't be happy if welfare reform works, because that will just make it more likely that we disastrously privatize Social Security. Essentially he is making an argument for ignoring all evidence in favor of rigid a priori pro-state or anti-state biases.
Welch concludes, "few phenomena rot the brain more thoroughly than political tribalism." Well, yes, but there's also ideological fanaticism.
9 comments
If you don't want a President Perry invading Iran, don't freaking vote for him, vote for Obama who will not invade Iran. I love all these Republicans going out of their way to not credit Obama for this, that we don't know the rebels and how it can all go downhill. Funny, I never heard them say anything about the post invasion Iraq that did not indicate that they believed it would lead to anything but a domino effect of freedom throughout the Middle east. And Kosovo did not set the groundwork for Iraq, 9/11 did. That was about as idiotic as anything I would expect from Reason, which is generally idiotic.
- blackton
August 22, 2011 at 5:10pm
Blackton scooped me on Kosovo and Iraq. Yet another reason (no pun intended) not to treat libertarian foreign policy any more seriously than it has been hitherto treated.
- wildboy
August 22, 2011 at 5:24pm
"Let us recall how Bill Clinton's Kosovo War laid the groundwork for George W. Bush's Iraq..." Deference to Bill Clinton? That's not how I recall the groundwork for GW's Iraq being laid at all. Actually, Kosovo came years after *failing* to intervene convincingly or in any meaningful way in the earlier Yugoslavian Wars and in the Rwandan Genocide, which in large part were *failures* of inactivity brought about by *failures* of action in Somalia. No. To the extent there was 'groundwork,' it was laid by Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz who'd been lobbying for 'regime change' in Iraq in the years prior to their occupying the various arms of government that made the war. The rest of the groundwork more-or-less was written hastily and on the fly. . .which the objectives continued to change as the war dragged on.
- Andy_Smith
August 22, 2011 at 5:26pm
In fact, I seem to recall Kosovo being a kind of evil witchcraft thing around which the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld tribe gathered, hissing and grimacing and throwing dead rabbits at it. Kosovo was about a military intervention to protect human rights rather than for securing oil, so they felt such a poisonous entity had to be exorcised out of existence.
- ironyroad
August 22, 2011 at 5:40pm
Yes, and we shouldn't get college degrees at major universities because that success will make it more likely that we will then try to get a degree at an exploitative for-profit school. In fact, we shouldn't do anything positive, because success will make it more likely we will do something negative.
- RHSerlin
August 22, 2011 at 8:49pm
I can't wait to read what Marty and Leon W have to say now about Obama and Libya.
- scrubby
August 22, 2011 at 9:38pm
Well, they will say, now that we have liberated Libya, let us liberate Syria, as the brilliant Sarkozy has led us to victory:)
- Sophia
August 22, 2011 at 9:55pm
"Essentially he is making an argument for ignoring all evidence in favor of rigid a priori pro-state or anti-state biases." He's a libertarian, I'm pretty sure that's the only thing he knows how to do.
- moskow
August 22, 2011 at 10:42pm
"Should we fear even successful interventions?" This isn't the question to be asked. American-centric debate about intervention or not is beside the point. For even non-interventionists to be second-guessing the tactics of a legitimate freedom/democratic movement is a bit arrogant, even silly. The TNC and the Libyan rebels have one duty to their people: use everything at their disposal to win! The rebels peacefully liberated most of the East and substantial areas of the West. They didn't get hung up on purity against Western intervention. They certainly know the history of colonialism and the nature of the disastrous US invasion of Iraq. They made it clear there would be no foreign ground troops in Libya. They are nationalists. It's THEIR revolt, not ours. Who are we to judge them making a 'pack with the devil' when disaster stared them in the face? THERE IS NOTHING IN THIS THAT IS ANYTHING LIKE IRAQ. The Libyan opposition made a TACTICAL DECISION to petition NATO for air-strikes to support a broad, representative popular movement. Iraq was an invasion by a foreign country that wasn't even a threat to the US. It this distinction isn't grasped, god help us all.
- CAMtwo
August 23, 2011 at 8:47pm