What’s Wrong with the World

Did they really need to have a strategy that specific? Wouldn't killing thousands of Americans, showing their power, and bringing down a symbol of global capitalism have been sufficient?

It is always possible that they gave as little thought to the post-attack period in the case of 9-11 as we did in the case of Iraq. But I wouldn't count on it.

Also, on this understanding the calling-off of the mubtakkar subway attack by Zawahiri makes sense. It isn't that they are incapable of attacking us right now. It is that they are choosing not to attack us right now. Which makes sense, because there are probably any number of horrifying things that twenty men with $500K in financing and a willingness to die for the cause could do.

Granted, we should be doing more against Jihadists on the domestic front, but what should we have done abroad? Full scale invasion of Afghanistan with cross border forays into Pakistan? I think we might well be in a lot worse shape at this point. Despite the foolishness that has shaped the thinking of some "neocons" regarding Iraq, it is still an attempt (albeit a nearly moribund one at this point) to change the Muslim world enough that the great clash of civilization might be avoided. Personally, I'm a lot less "neocon" then I was in March 2003, having woken up to the centrality of Jihad in Islam. The all out fight may well be unavoidable, nevertheless it is not something to be hoped for. So again, what should we have done?

Just for starters, we a should have finished off the Taliban and AQ in Afghanistan (and possibly Pakistan, though I agree with you that that is very tricky) before even thinking about Iraq or any other military target not directly connected to 9-11.

There is a certain argument, not completely without merit, that 9-11 did create a heads-we-lose tails-they-win situation. It is impossible to really know, at this point, what a focused military effort which refused to get sidetracked into issues other than al Qaeda and its immediate affiliates would have accomplished. What we do know is that if this was their strategy we played right into it. And what that implies at the least is that the "fool me once" clause has been invoked, and that anyone who shows signs of being fooled twice needs to be ejected from the conversation.

That of course assumes that adults are or will be in charge of policy. And at this point I see little reason to believe that that is even possible as a practical matter.

It isn't that they are incapable of attacking us right now. It is that they are choosing not to attack us right now.

What do you make of the failed terrorist plots in Canada, Britain, Germany, and the U.S. (Fort Dix and JFK included)?

What do you make of ...

What I make of it is that al Qaeda isn't what people think it is. E.g., one of the things it isn't is a corporation in which everyone does what the CEO says, or a spook organization in which everyone reports up to the Director. The mubtakkar subway attack itself was planned almost entirely independently from bin Laden and Zawahiri: they had to explicitly interfere to stop it from happening.

What you're doing is ascribing prescience without prediction, a fallacy of no small attraction. Did the blind man swerve to miss the falling piano, or did he just happen to turn that direction?

Iraq was not the first place we went, Afghanistan was. It took 14 months after 9/11 to go into Iraq.

If Al Qaeda had planned to get us in a "war of attrition which we cannot win" in Iraq or elsewhere, why didn't they pretend to have been the Soviet Union, Pakistan, or someone other than who they were?

And your defeatist "war of attrition" comment runs counter to current events in Iraq. We're winning.

Much as I hear about out mistakes I hear precious little in the way of alternatives. Finish them off in Afghanistan? What if they didn't want to be finished off, what if they did the things necessary to fade into the woodwork and survive, to fight again as and when they pleased.

There was ample ground for invading Iraq, with or without the WMD argument. To weary to list them all but an aborted attempt to assassinate an American President is good for starters.

I would be cautious about attempts to read OBL's mind, I don't think he planned on living in caves for six years and he had the hapless history of Bush's useless predecessor as an indicator of American will.

The realization that we are in this for years, and more years, has yet to sink in. So we get caught up in discussions of what's going wrong in one, just one, theater of a war that has no discernible time limits.

This is one we will not be allowed to walk away from, our enemy is not opening the door to options. Technology through the pages of history has finally given jihadists the tools sufficient enough to attain a rough equilibrium. Coupled with the tactics of terror, and depending on time and and Western self negation, an opportunity exists to forward a program and faith that can be captured in two words, conquer or destroy.

Socrates:
What you're doing is ascribing prescience without prediction, a fallacy of no small attraction.

As I mentioned to Lydia, it is entirely possible that bin Laden and Zawahiri gave as little thought to the aftermath of 9-11 as we gave to the aftermath of Iraq. But it would be irresponsible to assume so, and our own intelligence agencies don't think that is right according to the Suskind book.

Iraq was not the first place we went, Afghanistan was. It took 14 months after 9/11 to go into Iraq.

If you read my July 2006 blog entry to which this post links, I went into a little more detail. The Afghanistan-like tar baby that was intended for us was Afghanistan. After all, a significant portion of bin Laden's life was spent using Afghanistan as a tar baby against the Soviets, although for a period of some months it looked as though he may have miscalculated. As Nasica correctly points out, it is possible that the Afghan tar baby in itself would have worked in the longer run, from AQ's perspective. We'll never know. But by invading Iraq we conclusively snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, or at least from the jaws of ambiguity.

johnt:
There are three entirely distinct issues, it seems to me:

(1) Was it morally justifiable to invade Iraq in the abstract: that is, was it possible in principle to justify some invasion of Iraq at or around the time period we invaded?

(2) Was our actual invasion of Iraq morally justified as a particular act?

(3) Was invading Iraq a smart or effective strategy?

My answer to #1 is "probably" (though it is irrelevant), and to the other two my answer is a definitive no. The focus of the present post is the third point though (because understanding ourselves and our enemy is necessary if we want to actually succeed in defending ourselves), and each of these points entails a fairly lengthy - but quite independent - discussion.

Just for starters, we a should have finished off the Taliban and AQ in Afghanistan (and possibly Pakistan, though I agree with you that that is very tricky) before even thinking about Iraq or any other military target not directly connected to 9-11.
Is a large-scale counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan, of the sort that would result in the establishment of an Afghan government strong enough to keep tribal leaders from engaging in brigandage and harboring fugitives from around the world, even feasible? It's possible to mount punitive expeditions into the barbarian wastes, but below a certain level of economic development, and given a certain degree of geographical difficulty, which Afghanistan has in spades, imposing a permanent order on marginal regions like Afghanistan (for the Persians, Greeks, British, Soviets, or us) or Mongolia (for the Chinese) or Europe east of the Rhine and north of the Danube (for the Romans) becomes, if not impossible, at least prohibitively difficult. You can mount a punitive expedition, kill a bunch of people, even execute their leaders in the Forum, but in some sense, it's like fighting with water. The Soviets had all the advantages of a shared border, ten years, and no restrictions on their conduct, and they couldn't do it. I fail to see how the US could, either. Some places are just ungovernable in the near and medium terms.

Viewed that way, Iraq with its centralized and comparatively urbanized population and flat topography was supposed to be easy, and a way around the Afghanistan tar baby with which Al Qaeda almost certainly wished to stick the US.
Accepting the logic of imperialism, invading Iraq made a great deal of sense, if it could be carried off, and perhaps it could have been with three or four times the number of troops actually used. I no longer accept the logic of imperialism, though, and the actual war the US has planned and fought has left a great deal to be desired.

I wasn't saying that full-scale occupation of Afghanistan was possible or desirable, though I don't know offhand why Iraq should be expected to be easier. The point is that Iraq was a distraction, a diversion of resources, utterly useless and counterproductive if the idea is to specifically break or disrupt al Qaeda's capabilities. It isn't obvious to me that full-scale occupation of anywhere is a particularly great idea.

Bush is actually using the fact that bin Laden talks about Iraq to justify Iraq as key to the GWOT. It is as if bin Laden were a Bush speechwriter.

al Qaeda isn't primarily an "operating" group, as I understand it. AQ provides mainly training and strategic direction/vision. IIRC the mubtakkar plan was almost entirely independent: Zawahiri didn't direct it or initiate it, he found out about it and - after figuring out how to contact them - asked the principals to stand down. Creating large-scale conflicts which recruit independent operators and allies for AQ doesn't help. Killing the Taliban and destroying training camps - dealing with directly connected institutional affiliates - does help.

I agree that militarily there was a "do something, anything that we can do rather than what we should but can't do" aspect to the decision to invade Iraq. But it is a mistake to broaden the idea of who the particular enemy is - to include even North Korea, for Pete's sake! - just because getting the actual particular enemy is difficult, or even impossible.

Our biggest tactical error in Afghanistan was probably trusting the locals and not having (enough of) our own guys on the ground at Tora Bora. (Understandable, but a tactical error nonetheless). But our biggest strategic error is in thinking that we have to (or that it is possible to) change the world, as opposed to getting the actual enemy who actually attacked us and making sure it is bloody hard for people like him to come to and operate within our country again.

The objective answer to "what is the best we could do militarily" may well be "no more than we were already doing in Afghanistan". Beyond that it may be a problem not amenable to a military solution. If so, we'd better face that fact. Hammers, nails, and all that.

The mubtakkar subway attack itself was planned almost entirely independently from bin Laden and Zawahiri: they had to explicitly interfere to stop it from happening.

How come in the most recent video, bin Laden said "It remains for us to do our part. So I tell every young man among the youth of Islam: It is your duty to join the caravan (of martyrs) until the sufficiency is complete and the march to aid the High and Omnipotent continues." On one hand he is telling Muslims to attack and on the other hand he is trying to stop them from doing so?

Zippy, I can't see how your #1 & #2 are or can be separated. If in principle [and what principle or set of principles] and in moral terms, however abstract an invasion was justifiable,"probably", how does it lose all justification in real terms?

Strategy and tactics are quite another thing and in that we are all armchair generals as well as experts. Of all human states hindsight is one of the most confident, proud, and unshakable. But if we are to venture into second guessing why not also venture into counter-factuals.

Assume nothing is done about Saddam. Collect in your mind all that was known about him, toss in what was justifiably suspected, and pose to yourself just what he, as well as Syria & Iran, might be doing to keep themselves happily employed while we chase around the mountaintops of Afghanistan. Happily employed I might add in borders not confined to that country, the world, as they say, being a stage and they definitely being players.

Ultimately it comes dome to will. Confrontation with, as Bush put it "rogue states" was and I add seriously, is inevitable. If as you say understanding our enemy is important then to understand their implacability is foremost.
We may digest and analyze past mistakes but until we come to grips with the extent of what we face, globally and with no end in sight, we are playing parlor games.

Generally, Zippy, you seem to believe that AQ is manned by a team of Einsteins (though surely they would take offense at that metaphor).

Al Qaeda has only two advantages: modern civilization's leverage and 7th century zeal. A man who is willing to forfeit his life can do just about anything, once.

They don't have to be very smart, just smart enough to use what we've created, and dedicated enough not to care about the damage to themselves.

Zippy, I can't see how your #1 & #2 are or can be separated.

I realize that most people don't see that. It is a separation of the actual from the abstract though, and every act subject to moral judgement is actual. (Even sinning through a hypothetical is still an actual interior act of assent: formal cooperation with evil, IOW).

Briefly (he says hopefully):

A just cause for a particular act must be two things: it must be justifying, and it must be what actually causes the actual act. Perhaps we hypothetically would have been justified in deposing Hussein to defend his people from his tyranny, to take one example. But that isn't what caused us to go to war, so it cannot justify going to war. We would not have gone to war with that in itself as sufficient reason. Sufficient reason can sometimes be a basket of reasons, but the basket stands or falls with each and every necessary reason in the basket. If the act would not have been caused absent a particular reason, then the act cannot be justified absent that reason, even if the other reasons in the basket still obtain.

What caused us to go to war was the putative WMD programs and AQ affiliation, both of which turned out to be false. There were other justifications given to be sure, but the idea that we would have actually gone to war absent those reasons seems to me to be manifestly false. The just war doctrine requires ordinary certainty about the damage inflicted by the aggressor. Clearly it wasn't certain in any reasonable sense in this case: first, the putative threat turned out to be false in fact, and second, we have documented evidence that the Administration's doctrine (what Suskind calls the one percent doctrine) explicitly repudiated the idea that we have to actually be threatened before we respond with military might.

So the Iraq war we actually initiated was unjustly initiated, even though it is feasible that an invasion might have been justifiable in principle.

I wasn't saying that full-scale occupation of Afghanistan was possible or desirable, though I don't know offhand why Iraq should be expected to be easier. The point is that Iraq was a distraction, a diversion of resources, utterly useless and counterproductive if the idea is to specifically break or disrupt al Qaeda's capabilities. It isn't obvious to me that full-scale occupation of anywhere is a particularly great idea.
Iraq should have been easier because its population is more concentrated and it is much easier to move inside of and around in. It's also easier to patrol flat desert borders than mountainous ones. The US made a hash of that, as all can now see.

Understand that I write, not to defend US policy, which I have come to see, perhaps rather too late for the sake of my conscience, is profoundly immoral and imprudent, but to explain it.

That out of the way, your point that Iraq was a diversion, assuming that the destruction of al Qaeda was the object of either that war, or US strategy more broadly, is correct. I just don't think it was, or is. Al Qaeda is just shorthand for the thousands of groups of angry jihadis who have penetrated every sizable city in the world. Al Qaeda is not, as you recognize, some vast and vertically-integrated international terrorist enterprise. It is not the GM or IBM of jihad, and if bin Laden were impaled on the steps of the Capitol building tomorrow, it wouldn't suddenly cause the threat of jihadi terrorism to disappear. It probably would have no effect at all.

I think Iraq was invaded because it was perceived to be a way of attacking the roots of terrorism as understood within the bounds of acceptable discourse. If the "democratic domino theory" espoused by Wolfowitz and Bush worked, it would change the politics of the region from which both the radicalism and money that support terrorism come. It would also give the United States a relatively tidy and conclusive victory in a theater where the largest spectrum of American assets could be deployed to their greatest military and psychological/theatrical effect. This would be unlike a slogging campaign in Afghanistan's deserts and mountains, which would demonstrate American impotence. In the abstract, a war against another Gulf State might have better accomplished these goals, but Iraq was the only state, other than Afghanistan, against which the United States had a plausible casus belli. One need not be told that these expectations have all come to naught, but I believe that that was the calculation, more or less, in Washington between 2001 and 2003.

Zippy, you seem to believe that AQ is manned by a team of Einsteins

It isn't so much that I assume that AQ is intelligent and acts with strategic purpose; it is that I don't assume that they don't. (FWIW neither do our intelligence agencies). Any approach to fighting against the Jihad which depends upon the assumption that Jihadis are unthinking morons will lose. And I don't like losing.

Cyrus: I completely agree with your 12:24 post. What isn't clear to me - and by this I mean it isn't clear to me, not that I think someone else isn't being clear about it - is what more is possible militarily that is both (1) effective and (2) morally acceptable, beyond what we were already doing in Afghanistan, with perhaps tactical tweaks to it. I think we have a great big hammer, but there don't seem too be many nails around.

(There are of course all kinds of non-military things we can do and are not doing).

Cyrus says:

"I think Iraq was invaded because it was perceived to be a way of attacking the roots of terrorism as understood within the bounds of acceptable discourse."

I agree and illustrates Bush's failure to understand the vastness of jihad ideology throughout the Islamic world. He needed and wanted a target lest he perceived as having a declared a "war on Terror" and finding himself without any terrorist to fight.

His disillusion remains. He is unaware of how easily those muslims inflicted with SJS (sudden jihad syndrome) have spread themselves to live amongst us infidels. In Bush's world, it is presumed every muslim intent on jihad MUST be a card-carrying member of Al Qaeda.

How come in the most recent video, bin Laden said ...

It seems to me that bin Laden uses the media to say things to us. The theory that he sends encoded messages that way or whatever doesn't strike me as particularly tenable. There are just too many different ways to get messages out to Imams, etc. And of course he is going to include general exhortations to recruit more followers, etc.

But even if AQ leadership has decided now that attacking us on our home soil is again in their interests, as we were getting embroiled in Iraq the top AQ leaders specifically interfered with and stopped at least one major attack on US soil which would almost certainly have succeeded. If they were just camel-riding dummies who attack us with clever tactics but without any strategic thought behind the attacks, why would they do that?

In Bush's world, it is presumed every muslim intent on jihad MUST be a card-carrying member of Al Qaeda.

I think it is the opposite view. It is the Left that believes that if only we got bin Laden, the jihad would be over. How often do we hear "Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11"? Bush never said it was a war against bin Laden or a war against al-Qaeda. He claimed it was a war against terrorism, a terrorism based on a "hijacked" version of Islam (as he would say). If Bush is to be critized, it is not because he was too specific, beliving that all jihadist have to be direct members of al-Qaeda, but that he was far too broad.

If Bush is to be critized, it is not because he was too specific, beliving that all jihadist have to be direct members of al-Qaeda, but that he was far too broad.

I don't think that exhausts what can be criticized in Bush's views. Rather than too broad or too narrow, I would just call his views wrong.

But the specific issue here seems to be what can be morally and practically done through military means. AQ counted (correctly) on us getting that wrong.

Well, "US or Them," there are some very strict boundaries to acceptable discourse on the subject of the Middle East. One can't think about terrorism in terms of Islam, one can't think about whether America's relationship to Israel makes the US a target, one can't doubt the essential rightness of US hegemony generally, or American policies in the Middle East more specifically, and one absolutely can't doubt that America must be open to everyone everywhere. Out of these premises, we are left with a vision of American enemies as lunatics who hate us for our freedom, have no reasons for what they do, and from whom we can only protect ourselves by turning everyone American. There isn't anything left to think.

If they were just camel-riding dummies who attack us with clever tactics but without any strategic thought behind the attacks, why would they do that?

Of course I do not know. Your reasons may be right. However, the article you posted said, "Though the officials said U.S. intelligence was still not certain why the attack had been cancelled, one former official said some feared that Zawahiri had cancelled the subway attack because Al Qaeda was planning something even more deadly and spectacular inside the United States." From this, it appears that Al Qaeda is waiting for a massive attack and does not want to waste efforts on small ones.

As you pointed out earlier though, since Al Qaeda is not a corporation and thus cannot control all active members, let alone all jihadist, it appears that even if they wanted to stop the attacks, they do not have the power to do so, at least in most cases.

I wonder if you think it is at all possible that part of the reason we have not seen attacks on U.S. soil, is that Al Qaeda is focusing much of its time and resources in Iraq.

I would just call his views wrong.

Fine. I was simply countering the view that "In Bush's world, it is presumed every muslim intent on jihad MUST be a card-carrying member of Al Qaeda." Whether Bush is right or wrong, this is certainly not his view.

X:
However, the article you posted said...

I linked to the article after googling "mubtakkar" as an on-line reference, but I read the full account in The One Percent Doctrine.

I wonder if you think it is at all possible that part of the reason we have not seen attacks on U.S. soil, is that Al Qaeda is focusing much of its time and resources in Iraq.

I doubt it is a matter of their resources being constrained by Iraq. We know for a fact that the mubtakkar subway plot wasn't obstructed by the cell being called away to fight in Iraq.

Cyrus:

That 1:07 comment of yours is a keeper.

"Out of these premises, we are left with a vision of American enemies as lunatics who hate us for our freedom..."

I'm afraid that's the type of place where Cyrus and I will part company, because frankly, I think jihadists would and will continue to carry out jihad against the West regardless of our foreign policies. In fact, I regard the whole "why do they hate us" approach to be largely misguided--whether the answer the person comes up with is "our intervention in Iraq," "our being an ally to Israel" or (this next one a la D'Souza) "our decadent lifestyle."

But I don't think we _can_ "make them Americans." So I guess you could say I'm not a paleo on some of this but that I'm enough of a pessimist to have no great hopes of the "democratization" project and to think that the latter is misguided in many ways.

but I read the full account in The One Percent Doctrine.

Did Ron Suskind give any reason as to why he thinks they canceled the plot?

We know for a fact that the mubtakkar subway plot wasn't obstructed by the cell being called away to fight in Iraq.

Maybe not that particular attack, but it is possible that the reason more attacks have not been planned is because Iraq is getting most of the attention.

I'm afraid that's the type of place where Cyrus and I will part company, ...

I thought though that Cyrus was listing things we weren't allowed to think about, not what we were supposed to think of those things once we actually are allowed to think about them.

I also believe that the Jihad will go on no matter what we do. But that doesn't mean that our foreign policy has no effect on the Jihad, does not strengthen (or weaken) it in any way, does not alter its appeal to various constituencies, etc. I don't see mutual exclusivity here.

Did Ron Suskind give any reason as to why he thinks they canceled the plot?

I don't remember, and I have loaned out the book. I'm not surprised that "intelligence officials" would say things intended to be comforting to the public though. IIRC, a single or small-scale mubtakkar attack is like what is described in the article; but a coordinated one like the one which was actually called off by Zawahiri could easily exceed 9-11 in body count.

I encourage you to read the book for yourself.

...it is possible that the reason more attacks have not been planned is because Iraq is getting most of the attention.

Sure. Anything is possible. That seems to depend on the notion that planning and executing an attack requires vast enough resources that it simply can't be done while the Iraq war is going on, draining all of those resources. I find the whole line of reasoning highly dubious.

I remember having an epiphany on or around 9-11 when I realized that the only personal resources I lacked in order to carry out an attack like that was twenty men willing to die for the cause. Given that, I could have done the whole thing myself, with no additional outside help. And the notion that the specific vulnerabilities exploited on 9-11 are our only vulnerabilities with that kind of killing leverage is also highly implausible.

Zippy is correct that I was only providing a list. I wish I could go back and edit my posts to clarify them. I fully agree, Lydia, that jihad in some form will continue somewhere regardless of American policy. On the other hand, it is entirely implausible that American policies and actions have no influence on how much jihad there is, or against whom it is directed. It is not directed against Americans because America embodies some abstract principles, as Giuliani or Bush would have it. Jihad is sacred violence, but it is also war, and political by its nature. It is not performed in some sacral vacuum, divorced from the usual causes and effects of politics.

I encourage you to read the book for yourself.

Alright. Maybe it will give me some other reason to doubt the "intelligent officials", but until then I will have to go with the reasons given by the intelligent officials.

That seems to depend on the notion that planning and executing an attack requires vast enough resources that it simply can't be done while the Iraq war is going on...

We have stopped numerous attempted terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, so obviously it can be done, but I do not find it all that unreasonable to believe that they are more concerned with defeating the U.S. in Iraq then they are about attacking U.S. soil. Even if we have one example of a plot called off, I find it hard to believe that the reason there has not been a succesful terrorist attack on U.S. soil is because they do not want to attack us.

Even if they chose not to attack us because of the Iraq war, that certainly gives new meaning to the phrase "we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here".

Even if they chose not to attack us because of the Iraq war, that certainly gives new meaning to the phrase "we are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here".

Well, yes. Please don't throw me in the briar patch, as it were.

"It is not directed against Americans because America embodies some abstract principles, as Giuliani or Bush would have it."

It's like pulling teeth to get me to agree with _anything_ Giuliani says, and I wouldn't vote for the man at gunpoint, but here I think you may be wrong. In some ways, religious warfare is all about abstract principles. European countries that have very different foreign policies from ours have been attacked as well.

"It is not performed in some sacral vacuum, divorced from the usual causes and effects of politics."

As a statement all by itself, that's hard to disagree with. But if it implies a counterfactual--e.g., that the jihadists would be noticeably less concerned with hitting the U.S. if we (say) cut all aid to Israel and started treating that country as Europes does, then I have to disagree. The attempt to conquer the parts of the world that were not Muslim was going on *because those parts of the world were not Muslim* long before _any_ of the foreign policy issues were even in play that are now talked about as reasons why America is a target. There is less of a connection to the "usual causes and effects of politics" when we're talking about, well, a desire to conquer the world for a particular religion than when we're talking about more local or ordinary political ambitions.

The chief way I see some sort of isolationism and separationism as helping is _not_ in making us (to any noticeable degree) less hated but in making us harder to hit.

Zippy, you've been a busy man.
Now to causes and reasons; A number of reasons may be necessary but the totality of reasons may not be.
For this to be operative it is only required that one be sufficient. This, no lecture intended, you don't need one, is the logic of causation.

Regards WMD's, well you have heard the one about hindsight & so I'll pass on that.

To shorten and then bow out, what is both justifiable and moral [ the two TEND to go together] is actionable. The only deterrent to any subsequent action would be possible event evaluations, or if you will, pragmatic considerations. I touched upon this in my second post.

Left unanswered in your response to me, no snideness intended, is the placement of the war in global, historic, and projected time estimations.
That is the crux of the whole matter and we may or will look back on Iraq as no more than this war's Guadalcanal.

Thanks for the response, johnt

For this to be operative it is only required that one be sufficient.

Yes, but the reason must be actually sufficient, not merely hypothetically sufficient. Just reasons for war have to be the actual reasons for war: thus the discussion of cause and the language of "just cause". IOW, in this case, it would have to be true that we would actually have started the war - this war - even if a WMD/al-Q connection had never come up in the pre-war discussion. I think it is pretty clear that we wouldn't have. Going to war for one reason (basket of reasons) R[actual] and attempting to justify that war on the basis of a different reason (basket of reasons) R[justifying] is a species of lie and is unjust as a basis for starting a war.

This is analogous to executing a criminal for a crime he didn't commit. Even if the criminal hypothetically deserves execution for other crimes, it is still unjust to actually execute him for a crime he didn't actually commit. (Note that the analogy is imperfect: war is prosecuted against communities, not individuals).

Left unanswered in your response to me, no snideness intended, is the placement of the war in global, historic, and projected time estimations.

I suppose I didn't answer the question because I didn't understand the question. (And I still don't. No snideness intended. =8^) )

That is the crux of the whole matter and we may or will look back on Iraq as no more than this war's Guadalcanal.

I'm not sure where this is supposed to be going. Without implicating you in any particular military doctrine, justifying a war morally doesn't work as a "one-time justification then all's fair" deal. Each and every time (e.g.) an airplane takes off to drop a bomb it requires sufficient moral justification. It isn't sufficient to say "this is a global war on the Jihad because some jihadis attacked us" (let alone on "terror"), thereby granting license to do militarily whatever we decide is in our tactical or strategic interests thereafter, independent of whether our specific targets are reasonably known to be an actual threat.

All adherents to the doctrine of jihad are our enemies, on that basis alone. It does not follow that inter alia we have moral license to kill anyone anywhere who is an adherent to the doctrine of jihad.

Zippy, on your first para; if a reason is just in the case of Iraq then perforce it is actual, there being a number of reasons which I hesitate to list. WMD's were one reason and a reason which caused little if any considerable dissent. Recall the seventeen resolutions passed by the UN and the paucity of evidential doubt expressed during the six month process in that august body.

When Hans Blix returned from Iraq he stated that they might never find WMD's, a statement wholly different from asserting non-existence. This was two weeks before the war, or more accurately, the campaign, was begun.

Nonetheless I maintain, and not out of pure stubbornness, that there were adequate reasons for invasion. If you wish to consider hypotheticals you might ask what adventures Saddam would embark on had we not invaded.

The flaw in your argument rests on ex post facto reasoning, we now know[ I think, maybe]that he didn't have WMD's, so to argue justice and morality after the fact and apply it to the situation then at hand I feel is an error in disputation.

To repeat, and perhaps beat a dead horse, there still existed reasons for military action, not the least of which was the fact that Iraq was a blatant and open sponsor of terrorism.

Now to the part that you don't understand, and still don't, my "question". If you put this current war, the one that will go on for years and has and will continue to involve other islamic nations, in an historical context then it takes on a different perspective. Or at least it should.

Say a perspective in time alone of twelve to fourteen hundred years. And you may add in the last fifty years or so for emphasis. An anti-western animus has simmered through the centuries, note Paul Cella's previous post as one example.

Factored into any thoughts about reasons for war must be this recrudescent militancy, a militancy not to be defeated by our climbing mountain tops in an impoverished country taking pot shots at evasive cut throats.

In other words, we're stuck with it. We are not to be left alone and in peace. As I say, a wholly different perspective and one on which the evidence is already on the table, historically and currently. The justification you ask for has been supplied by particular agents or entities and may be centered in the expression "self defense".

Perhaps that is an answer to your last para as well, they or whoever leaves us alone will and should be left alone in return.
Otherwise, what has to be done will be done.

The flaw in your argument rests on ex post facto reasoning, we now know[ I think, maybe]that he didn't have WMD's, so to argue justice and morality after the fact and apply it to the situation then at hand I feel is an error in disputation.

I've allowed in past discussions, and should make it explicit here, that it is conceivable that the Iraq war might be classed morally as an unjust mistake as opposed to a willful injustice. But it is never acceptable to confuse what is objectively just with what is objectively unjust.

I am more reluctant with this allowance now than in the past because we know at this point that the administration's doctrine was the preemptive one percent doctrine. Any war prosecuted under the one percent doctrine is inherently unjust, even though war might be justifiable under some other rationale.

To repeat, and perhaps beat a dead horse, there still existed reasons for military action, not the least of which was the fact that Iraq was a blatant and open sponsor of terrorism.

There existed hypothetical reasons. A true actual (as opposed to hypothetical) reason is not merely a verbal rationalization, no matter how much that rationalization may have been spoken aloud and no matter how valid it might be in theory: it is also the actual sufficient impetus to act, the impetus which constituted the sufficient cause of our choice to act as a nation. Again, the notion that we would in fact have invaded absent the (speculative and false, and required under the just war doctrine to be certain) WMD threat - that the impetus to act as a nation found sufficient cause in the remaining basket of putative reasons absent a WMD/al-Q nexus - is simply untenable.

It seems to me that either you haven't yet grasped the distinction between hypothetical reasons and actual reasons or you are simply denying the validity of the distinction. But if the distinction is not valid then actually punishing a man for a crime he did not commit isn't unjust as long as he had it coming in theory for something else entirely. That is one theory of justice, of course, but it isn't my theory of justice or a Christian theory of justice.

Here is an interesting and somewhat clairvoyant article written by James Pinkerton just before the start of the Iraq war. It's written from the perspective of OBL. One should take note of the accuracy in some of the article's predictions.

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0203/pinkerton_oasama.html

Thanks Zippy but I'll do the grasping and leave the knowledge of other minds to you, starting with al Qaeda, OBL, and now me. Nothing hypothetical about that is there?

As you refer to that basket of remaining but inadequate reasons as "putative", there being nothing of substance, nothing confirmed or known, nothing real,{ not even that he sponsored terrorism?} then why argue over the rest?

So I will call it a night.

As you refer to that basket of remaining but inadequate reasons as "putative",...

It is putative and inadequate in a different sense than what you are saying here: the notion that the nation would have in fact gone to war based on only that remaining basket of reasons - sans WMD and sans al Qaeda connection - is at best putative. It isn't putative in the sense that (e.g.) I deny the reality of Hussein's financial encouragement of "palestinian" terrorism against Israel.

Again, it comes back to the difference between hypothetical reasons and actual reasons, a difference that you may or may not understand but that you haven't given any indication that you understand.

One problem is that nearly all of the reasons that might apply for invading Iraq apply to other countries *in spades*. Was Hussein a greater sponsor of terrorism than Syria? I can't see it as a good enough reason to conquer Country A if we have to put Country A in a basket with several others to which the same reason applies and pull one out at random to decide which one to invade. Not that I hold any brief for that so-called "realism" that would have us make friends with terror-sponsoring countries. But between making diplomatic overtures to a terror sponsor and invading it there is a lot of space.

That is just one consideration.

I didn't intend for this post to be a discussion about whether initiating the Iraq war was or was not just: I intended it to be about whether by going to war with Iraq we did or did not play into bin Laden's strategy. But some time ago at my blog we had a discussion of "basket cases" for war, that is, justifying a war based on a whole basket of reasons and the moral implications when some of those reasons turn out to be unfounded. That discussion is here in case anyone is interested.

The Iraq war has surely worked out to the advantage of the global jihad. Whether it was necessary that it do so, or whether it was foreseen by bin Laden and his lieutenants prior to the 9/11/2001 attacks, which made an invasion of Iraq possible, is doubtful. We don't really know what bin Laden's strategy is or should be, but should be careful about ascribing too much subtlety or foresight to him. Probably bin Laden hoped that Afghanistan would turn out to be the quagmire for the U.S. that Iraq has become. While this is good for jihad in general, it is unclear that it is particularly good for bin Laden, whose prestige can't be helped by being stuck in a cave in a peripheral theater from which he will be unable to take much credit for U.S. defeat in Iraq.

Probably bin Laden hoped that Afghanistan would turn out to be the quagmire for the U.S. that Iraq has become.

That is exactly the hypothesis: that aQ's strategy initially failed, but that by invading Iraq we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

That is exactly the hypothesis: that aQ's strategy initially failed, but that by invading Iraq we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

US forces weren't going to "win" in Afghanistan beyond doing what they had already accomplished by spring, 2002 in deposing the Taliban and imposing a new government. If victory is defined as turning Afghanistan into a Pashto-speaking Denmark without tribal violence and with which all the world's NGOs will be happy - and this seems to be what is meant by "success" - t'ain't gunna happen.

It may be too fine a distinction, but I don't think that al Qaeda can claim much responsibility for what has happened since then. It is not because of bin Laden et al. that the US blundered into Iraq, and it is not because of bin Laden that the US is failing, or will fail there. To the extent that bin Laden is a selfless exponent of jihad, American defeat no doubt gratifies him, but to the extent that he wishes himself and his movement to be at the vanguard of the cause, bin Laden has at least not won anything. His strategy failed, and the fact that his enemy decided to lose somewhere else to someone else doesn't make it a success. The Iraq occupation is good for the jihadist cause, bad for America, and probably on balance bad for bin Laden and al Qaeda, who lack relevance in an Iraq-centric conflict. Now, if the Democrats get their stated wish and put 250,000 troops on the ground in Pakistan, then there will be an unqualified bin Ladenist victory.

If victory is defined as turning Afghanistan into a Pashto-speaking Denmark without tribal violence and with which all the world's NGOs will be happy - and this seems to be what is meant by "success" - t'ain't gunna happen.

Agreed. I don't have any problem using the term "victory" to refer to smashing the Taliban, replacing them with their local enemies, destroying the AQ camps, and capturing the guy who actually planned 9-11 (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed).

The Iraq occupation is good for the jihadist cause, bad for America, and probably on balance bad for bin Laden and al Qaeda, who lack relevance in an Iraq-centric conflict.

That isn't an unreasonable POV. But given the state of the world in March of 2003, did the invasion of Iraq improve things for bin Laden and AQ (viewed separately from the Jihad generally) or make them worse? It seems to me that it improved them. Maybe a better way to view it is that Iraq was a rising tide for the Jihad raising all jihadi boats, but that bin Laden's relative standing decreased? I'm not sure that that is true, but I haven't thought about it much and it doesn't strike me offhand as unreasonable.

Iraq may turn out to be a tar baby for America. That depends on how we proceed from here. If we simply withdraw immediately, then the Islamists will claim victory over another a second super-power. Their claim of Islamic ascendancy will gather even greater attraction.

There is another side to this though. If we withdraw now, then most certainly a civil war will ensue, that will suck in Iran, the one large Shia power, and also the rest of the Sunni world. We have the potential of creating a tar baby for the Islamic world, which will never end until one side is totally victorious. I doubt that al Qaeda has factored this in its strategy. If it has, then it is a Death Wish cult, bent on the destruction of Islam.

It isn't that they are incapable of attacking us right now. It is that they are choosing not to attack us right now.

This is a very handy type of reasoning, seeing as how it cannot be shown to be false. It's also just not credible. By all indications AQ's operational abilities have gotten progressively weaker, not stronger. Yes, how clever -- let's wait till we're all dead, and then the Great Satan will never expect us to strike!

It's also just not credible.

We know for a fact - as well as we know anything in this mess - that the mubtakkar attack on the NY subways was ready to go, could not have been stopped by us, and was called off by Zarqawi. We know for a fact that at least this one devastating attack was called off, not because it couldn't be pulled off, but because AQ top leadership called it off.

Maybe not that particular attack, but it is possible that the reason more attacks have not been planned is because Iraq is getting most of the attention.

1) Shortly after 9/11, the country was about as united as I have ever seen it in the last 30 years, and W was at the top of his ratings

2) The longer the US stays in Iraq, the more divided we become, the more W's ratings plummet in America, and America's ratings plummet in the world.

I don't think you have to be Einstein, a rocket scientist or even a third grade honors student to figure out the longer the US stays on Iraq the worse it is for the US.

Knowing this (that an attack on US soil increases the proponent's of the GWOT ratings, keeping them in Iraq lowers it), why is it so surprising or "not credible" to think AQ would be intentionally holding back? The US is quite obviously breaking itself in Iraq. Why on earth would an enemy of the US want to fix it?

We know for a fact that anything in this area stated with so much certainty and confidence is wrong, and, in your case, it is -- if only to the extent of the level of confidence you assert. This article alone (http://tinyurl.com/ypzjq5) casts considerable doubt on your level of certitude. We simply do not know for a fact -- regardless of what is claimed by investigative reporters -- why the attack was or was not called off, and it is preposterous to say we do.

"The longer the US stays on Iraq the worse it is for the US" -- no matter what happens in the field? No matter what happens politically? Your logic, notwithstanding the invocation of Einstein, is quite false. It is a statement of ideology, not fact, and not even a well reasoned prediction. Similarly, your statement that "The US is quite obviously breaking itself in Iraq" is demonstrably false and nothing but an ideological trope, not an argument.

Al Qaeda is losing popularity, losing influence; it has lost its only home-grown government; its spiritual leader is probably dead, or is at best reduced to making miserable, rambling videos from safe houses and in between costume changes.

Your questions ignore all this and just repeat isolationist talking points which expired about six months ago. Einstein.

We know for a fact that anything in this area stated with so much certainty and confidence is wrong, and, in your case, it is -- if only to the extent of the level of confidence you assert.

The confidence is sufficient to make your claim that "it's also just not credible" manifestly false. You may not think the idea that AQ is choosing not to attack us domestically is true, of course. Even I don't think that it is true beyond any doubt (few things are): I merely think that it is in fact credible, and that we should take the possibility seriously. That is ordinarily the best we can do when it comes to knowing the enemy.