When Would You Support a War

In February, John Pike posed that question to the political left on his blog Pike Speak. His contention, shared by many on the right, is that there are never cases where the left would support a war.

At the same time, it has generally been the left that has taken us to war, but his question has to do with contemporary politics.

I supported the invasion of Afghanistan (with a great deal of worry for our troops; I am very familiar with the Soviet experience there) because the regime there sheltered and otherwise supported the people responsible for an extremely bloody attack on the United States. The Taliban were given the option of turning bin Laden and his associates over to the United States and possibly avoiding war, but they refused to stop shielding one of the more prominent mass murderers of our day.

As Pike suggests, a great many people on the left did not support even this military intervention. Their rationale, as far as I have heard in discussions with friends, is entirely humanitarian. There are people in the world who don't think it's okay to bomb a country for the behavior of a few hundred people at the top.

Out of these conversations, I have come to describe myself as a Lefty Hawk. Nations have, and should have, the right of self-defense. There is no question in my mind that bin Laden is directly or indirectly responsible for the 9/11 attacks, the African embassy bombings, the USS Cole, the Madrid Bombings, the Bali Nightclub bombing, not to mention propping up a soulless theocracy that stoned women to death for a lock of hair falling loose into visibility. There is no question in my mind that bin Laden is an opportunist who would (and likely will) attack America again when the he feels that the situation is appropriate.

Nations have the right of self-defense, and this is probably the preeminent mark of sovereignty.

But I opposed the Iraq invasion of March 2003. Why?

There are a variety of reasons, most of which I think have borne out. I felt that Bush was rushing to war, and that a delay of a few months in order to negotiate with allies and be less divisive in the preemptive invasion of a sovereign state would be a good policy for the United States.

Bush plays hardball even when he doesn't need to because he likes playing hardball. It has cost him much; there is no bipartisanship to speak of in Washington and world opinion is pretty solidly against him. One wonders if his Social Security plan would have had more traction if he hadn't vigorously excluded Democrats from the legislative agenda in his first term. The United States would certainly have better options for pressuring North Korea and Iran if our military wasn't bogged down in Iraq. A broader coalition would have reduced all of these strains: more bipartisan support for the President in the run up to war, more global support if, for instance, "Old Europe's" financial considerations had been addressed by the administration in order to tone down the opposition in the governments of France, Germany, and Russia. No, I'm not saying that the French would have sent three divisions; just that those governments' desire to spearhead a global opposition to the war could have been greatly reduced with some diplomacy.

It seemed that Bush wanted to fight a war on the cheap, ignoring the advice of his military advisors and punishing them when they spoke out. The shortage of troops has led to two years of bloody chaos in Iraq. Would another 100,000 boots on the ground have made early policing easier? Would they have made it more difficult for the insurgency to take root? Would that have made it easier to guard to armories and weapons caches throughout the country, making it more difficult for rebels to become armed? Would they have shortened the timetable to handover and elections, possibly significantly?

Reason tells me that the answer to these questions is yes, but of course that's conjecture.

The number of lives being gambled was overwhelming. If Iraq was as crawling with WMD as we were told, and Saddam was as crazy as the Administration would have had us believe, the risk to the people of Iraq was incredible. There were concerns that once our forces were within a certain proximity to Baghdad that chemical weapons would be released. This would have been bad for our troops who, even with their NBC gear, would have suffered a number of injuries and deaths. However, Baghdad is home to about five and a half million people without NBC gear. The winds carry these agents a long way.

Would the invasion have been more or less justified if five million civilians had died in the second week? I don't know the answer to this, but I do know that what war boosters continually lose sight of is how very lucky we got in the initial invasion. They like to pose as though it's obvious that we'd lose very few lives and self-evident that the nation would fall quickly, but neither of those is true. We got lucky. Millions of civilians could have died if Bush had been right about WMD, and he invaded anyway. I'm not at all sure what the word for that is.

Our doctrine of preemption is extremely dangerous in the modern era and should be disavowed by the world. If you support the "preemptive self-defense" rationale for the US invasion of Iraq, then I'm not sure how you could argue against a "pre-emptive self-defense" rationale for Iran to attempt an invasion of the United States. It has been named as an enemy of freedom, and is under intense pressure from the United States. The United States is a nation that has a demonstrated inclination for invading and occupying Middle Eastern nations, including two that border Iran. No less than the President of the United States has declared that "all options are on the table" when it comes to dealing with Iran.

Of course, the only possible way to defeat the United States is with a nuclear strike, which is why this whole notion is so dangerous.

The 2002 midterm elections were made a referendum on saber rattling. Once Bush chose to politicize his Iraq policies, it became clear that he had probably intended to follow that timeline for invading Iraq even before 9/11. By making the war a partisan issue, he chose to alienate the left. In today's America, many people (on both sides of the Bush divide) feel that you can only be patriotic if you support the President. No, that's not even true, since in 1999, patriotism was opposing the President. According to the right, patriots, by definition, support George W. Bush. And I think he's been a bad leader. And I love my country. And I mourn for how divided we are now.

The left generally supported the war in Kosovo while the right generally opposed it. This suggests that the answer has to do with the perceived compentence of the President initiating the action. But of course, no one asked Rush Limbaugh, "When WOULD you support a war?"

I'm on the left, and I've supported far more US engagements than I've opposed, but apparently by opposing the Iraq invasion of March 2003 for what I consider principled reasons I am some kind of America-hating looney.

I'm willing to accept that many on the right will always think of me that way, despite supporting Gulf War I, Kosovo, and Afghanistan.

My issues with Iraq were (and continue to be) largely structural. I feel that this President has done a poor job with the war, and I believe that historians will note that a positive outcome was never a given. Bush deserves credit for tenacity and vision, but he may yet be remembered as the President who broke the post-Vietnam volunteer military, the finest fighting force in the history of the world.

So when would I support a war? Well, apparently I'll support most wars, but not when war is a political game. And that's what Iraq has been. If there are positive outcomes, of course I welcome them, but I will also thank God for lucky breaks--for us and for the people in Iraq and the Middle East.