naked capitalism

Anonymous says:

You should stick to markets where your analysis is excellent. These types of political, Bush bashing, excerpts are not worthy of this blog.

Clayton says:

Yves,

I agree with anonymous. The ability to select the weakest points in an argument, let alone the weakest points in a piece of evidence for an argument, hardly reflects the skill that you apply to other arguments.

*Even if* you’re right about Vietnam, and I have no evidence to the contrary, Bush’s use of the historic record is really only meaningful as a graphic representation of the possible outcomes and carries no legitimate weight as a logical argument. Iraq is a different time, place, and situation, and we should not expect the outcome to be the same.

Bush’s fallacious (though politically expedient) arguments aside, nowhere in your response do you present evidence for the superiority of a policy of complete or partial withdrawal (as is implied by attacking his reasons for staying).

This is the same logical fallacy that is used to argue against the war. Whether or not Iraq had WMD (and for the sake of argument, I’m willing to assume that they did not), the agument to *not* go to war must be built on an accounting of how the world would be better without the war.

Obviously, we know the costs of one scenario in the going to war portfolio… lives, money, international political repercussions. This outcome had some probability if we went to war. For completeness, we have to figure out the probability and cost of other scenarios (lower and higher costs of the “go to war” choice).

… But more importantly, we have quantify the consequences of not going to war.

If you actually review the evidence (as in this case I have), the “no war” scenario is not entirely without risk and cost. First, it is extremely probable that “no war” would have led to the removal of sanctions via bribery around the oil for food scandal and the granting of favorable contracts to French and Russian oil companies *contingent* on the elimination of sanctions. Even if you discount the immediate risk, eventually this would have happened because our presence was increasingly exacerbating regional tensions and inciting terrorism through the “infidels in the holy land” thing.

Once the sanctions had been lifted (high probability, variable timefram), Saddam would have restarted his (herein assumed inactive) weapons programs as was clearly indicated by the Duelfer report. There seems little to no debate that he had the scientists and capability, just not the weapons themselves.

And in the “no war” scenario, we face the prospects of another Kim Jung-Il developing WMD in the middle east and empowering the Iranian government by offering the government an excuse to be a rallying point against the “hated Iraqis” (I have a very good friend who escaped Iran on foot when the Mullahs took over so I’ve come to understand that country’s conditions quite well). No matter what probability you put on this outcome, this is not a costless scenario.

Following this logic out, the prospects of facing a second Persian Gulf with a WMD’d and potentially Nuclear capable Saddam (or son Hussein) are frightening. But in the greater analysis, it is a legitimate scenario that must be calculated into the accounting of the “no war” scenario.

In real world decisions, “no action” has consequences and it’s not simply the negative of the “act”. I challenge anti-war people to elevate the debate by offering these perspectives rather than attacking actions proposed by those with whom they disagree.

Yves Smith says:

Clayton,

Did you read what I wrote?

…. the spectacle of the President of this country uttering patent nonsense to justify our continued occupation of Iraq is more than I can bear to watch. So forgive me for venting a bit.

The balance of this post is entirely about Vietnam and Cambodia.

I take offense that Bush implies that there is a Pol Pot like actor waiting in the wings if we withdraw. This is such a strained and spurious argument that it demands comment.

You say I am using this to argue we should withdraw. No such argument was presented. This is your projection.

How hard is it to understand that I am offended by the Bush administration’s need to distort reality to try to rally public support? You cannot have meaningful public discourse unless it has some anchor in reality.

Now if there were a factual argument to be made in support of their policies, such as the one you advanced, that would be a different matter. Then we could have a real debate. But the Bush administration has made and dropped various rationales for its course of action in Iraq, and now appears to be veering from slogan to slogan. That is destructive to a democratic process.

Anonymous says:

It’s funny to see that when someone makes a political comment in an economic blog, some people gets very embarrassed.

Politics and economic facts go together always.

Let’s hope that USA stops exporting debt and war, soon.

Iraq oil will be expensive for the whole world: hundreds of thousands of dead, millions of refugees, two trillion of $ expense (Stiglitz estimated two years ago), and someone still says that “Sadam would have…”

The only answer it deserves is that terrorists got melted into the ordinary population, like USA’s CDOs and SiV in the financial world, but they are a lot and nobody knows where they are.

Thanks for your great blog Yves!

john c. halasz says:

Er, yeah. Nixon began bombing in Cambodia in 1969 and the Lon Nol coup was CIA sponsored. And then there was the “incursion” into Cambodia, of late Kent State fame, in pursuit of a mythical NVA HQ, which completely mistook the way that the NVA operated, or, for that matter, the way of the VC in the Mekong delta. Subsequently, the oft predicted NVA “bloodbath” largely failed to occur, while the NVA invasion of Cambodia at least put a partial stop to the Khmer Rouge holocaust, while the U.S. government aligned itself with the Chinese position supporting the Khmer Rouge. And all this is cited by Bush to support what position?