9.07.2005

Great arguments on the Daily Show

Christopher Hitchens, the contrarian, and Jon Stewart get into a reasonable, fun argument on Iraq. Here's the video. (Check it soon, it may be gone or hard to find after two weeks or so.)

I'm not sure who I think "wins" but the discussion is invigorating. I could watch them go at it for hours so wish this clip wasn't limited to 8 minutes. Enjoyable none-the-less.

7 comments:

Ben said...

I've gotta agree with you on the "hard to be pro-iraq war" front. I came around to the decision that the invasion was a good thing a few months before their elections but have since had difficulty describing my rationale when there's so much horrible shit going down. But that is perhaps the topic of another post.

Re: The blog spam. I've been trying to keep an eye on it, but it's definitely a pain in the ass. However I just noticed a feature on Blogger that requires a commenter to pass a word verification test. It's now been implimented and hopefully will keep the spammers at bay. If it continues I will have to impliment another solution. Any suggestions in this regard would be appreciated

Joe said...

Yeah, that was pretty good. While checking it out, I also listened to the interview with John Irving where he recounts the time that he gave Kurt Vonnegut the heimlich maneuver (that sentence has a lot of hard things to spell). It's pretty funny.

I think Stewart got to the heart of the matter...yes, it's good to be tough on terrorists, but what is the connection between the Iraq and terrorism? That question can be answered, but not easily (I realize that this isn't a particularly novel or profound observation). It's been the heart of the anti-war message from the beginning..Hussein is not Bin Laden.

There are lots of other reasons that the war could be construed as good (freedom, democracy, all that), but if those were our motivations, the country should have had the chance to weigh the real possible benefits against the real possible costs. But, that didn't happen, and probably won't happen (there's no way that people are going to look back and say, "that wasn't worth it." Public officials can't even bring themselves to say that about Vietnam).

Hitchins brings up the important concept of forfeiting sovereignty. There was an interesting description of that in the last issue of Foreign Policy. The author, Richard Haas, president of the council on foreign relations, makes the point that if the world agrees that sovereignty is "conditional," then "the diplomatic challenge will be to gain widespread support for principles of state conduct and a procedure for determining the remedy when these principles are violated."

Ben said...

Quick thought: You're right Hussein is not bin Laden. In real terms (number of people whose death he is directly responsible for) he was/is much worse. He simply wasn't as successful at killing Americans. If all the anti-war folks have is that comparison, they've already lost.

Joe said...

Yes, Hussein killed a lot of people. But that's NOT the point that the war was sold on. As a people, we have agreed that the integrity of the process is integrally relevant to the rightness of the outcome...that's why we don't admit evidence in court if it was gathered illegally. It's a uniquely American value. With this war, the process was bad. When you sell someone something based on some reasoning and give them something else, it's called a Bait and Switch, and it's illegal. (The flipside, which I also have some sympathy with, is that people are stupid and selfish and have to be manipulated for the greater good).

It is also somewhat ironic that we very much turned a blind eye to the kurdish genocide when it was occuring (see Samantha Power's A Problem from Hell).

Even if one's evaluation of the war ignores the process issues and simply focuses on cost/benefit analysis, one still faces a huge challenge. How can we ever possibly know if this was "worth" it? Where is the computer that will calculate this for us?

This is all somewhat irrelevant to the question of what to do now. As I've said before, I tentatively support the Bush policy. But it may be relevant as we face decisions about Iran and North Korea.

(I'd like to explore the issue of alternative policies at some point..I at least have some ideas).

Question: Do y'all support the war from an altruistic perspective (that it was good for the Iraqis) or a national security perspective (good for the war on terrorism)?

Joe said...

I disagree that the selling point is irrelevant, and I don't look to historians as the only arbiters of justice.

You also vastly underestimate the cost of the war. It isn't just in terms of dead and wounded American soldiers. There's the cost to innocent Iraqi lives..the cost in dollars, the cost in increased animosity toward the U.S., the cost in losing the "devil we know" for the devil we don't, the cost in terms of stability (functioning plumbing, roads, jobs, etc) for the Iraqi people, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, the opportunity cost of running the war. The question is not simply whether the benefits exceed the cost; it is also whether we could have used those resources in better ways. You may be right that the benefits will eventually exceed the costs, but I don't think we can say that right now, given the huge costs and the tenuous situatin there, and I don't think we'll ever be able to say it with certainty. For instance, what if the Iraqis democratically elect a theocratic government? Will the women in that country be better off? No way! We will certainly never be able to calculate the real opportunity costs. How many lives would have been saved, how much more global utility would have been generated if that money had gone into reinforcing the levees in New Orleans, or into mosquito nets in Africa, or into job training programs for poor Palestinian men, or into the coffers of moderate groups in Saudi Arabia, or into Arabic language training for CIA operatives? All of those programs can protect people, save lives, and improve lives, in a much more direct and cost-effective way than the war.

Here's another way to frame the question. Any way you approach it, the war was risky. The potential benefits were (and are) uncertain and the potential costs were (and are) high, especially if we fail. The important question then is how much risk should public officials take? In evaluating the soundness of a risky action, you can't base your judgment on the outcome. (If I spend money on the lottery and happen to win, it doesn't mean that spending money on the lottery was a good idea). You have to base it on whether or not someone made a reasonable assessment of the risks involved. I think our government underestimated the riskiness of this operation and overestimated the potential benefits and that these resources could have been spent in more effective ways.

Joe said...

Is process relevant? It isn't hard to come up with situations in which rules designed to ensure the integrity of processes lead to prima facie unjust outcomes. That is precisely why many people, not just dictators, prefer dictatorships. There are no rules to get in the way of justice. But Americans have made a value choice that, over the long run, ensuring the integrity of the process creates a better world for everybody. I would stress that this is a conscious choice that we have made with full knowledge that, in any given individual situation, it might not create the best outcome.

Batman is a good synopsis of this problem (I just read Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns..very good). Batman is so bad ass because he doesn't have to abide by pesky rules like probable cause and Miranda rights. And we love Batman! But when Batman's followers start cutting of the hands of suspected thieves, it doesn't look so cool.
So, are you sure that you want to discount the importance of process altogether, or just for foreign policy issues? If just for foreign policy issues, then can you articulate a principle to justify this exception?
Also, are you really trying to compare WWII to the Iraq? The stakes were much bigger for Roosevelt than for Bush. Hussein wasn't steadily marching across Europe.

Joe said...

Those are important points about Iraqi infrastructure, public service, and jobs. If you're right, we can move those from the cost category to the benefit category.


I think some of your other responses miss the mark a little..they don't quite answer the right questions.

"The Iraq war caused increase in the loss of Iraqi life: I would say the suicide bombers are pretty effective, but Saddam/Sanctions still had them soundly beat – and I believe things will only improve."

Saddam in the past vs the insurgency now isn't quite the right comparison to make. It should be the likely number of people Hussein and his descendents WOULD have killed in the future if left in power vs how many innocents WE killed + the number the insurgency killed. In other words, is it likely that he and his kids would have committed another genocide, or started another war with Iran, or something similar? The conclusion may still be the same (that taking him out saved more lives than it cost) but it is more uncertain.

Many of your other points rest on the the quality of the current constitution. But we all know that constitutions are only relevant if the people support them. The point is that we don't know what's going to happen with this government in the long run. The Iraqi government, not the insurgency, is the devil we don't know. You're right that the insurgency itself isn't that big of a deal...it's what happens to the government as a whole that matters. Will they truly become a democracy, and if so, will that democracy have an impact on the wider middle-east culture? Both of those questions are still in doubt.

I want to reiterrate one final point before drop out of sight for the week. Even if the costs turn out to exceed the benfits, it may still be possible to say that we shouldn't have done it. We can't evaluate this decision in hindsight. We have to ask, given the relevant facts and probabilities facing the administration (and the congress) at the time, was it a reasonable risk to take? I say no, even though I'm willing to admit that it may turn out to be a beneficial action on the whole. (this is my lottery analogy from before). The opposite is also true...it may turn out to be a disaster, but we could still say it was a good idea at the time.