6 thoughts on “Pre-Emptive War”

1. From the article:

   “And have they thought through even for one moment the kind of bar-lowering precedent they’re setting for the next Republican president to send ground troops into wherever the hell?”

   This is a key point that most liberals/progressives miss. And it cuts across the spectrum of politics. That is, whatever power they wish to give the present government (and by corollary take away from the public), the next opposition government has access to that very same power and can use it in ways they simply will not like.

   They do not understand that the optimum is to not give the government the power in the first place.

2. They do not understand that the optimum is to not give the government the power in the first place.

   They wouldn’t care if they did — that’s not the goal. The goal is to hang on to power forever. It doesn’t matter how many effing eggs they have to effing break — just make that effing omelette!

3. A question on US wars in general, why would the US want to put troops on the ground – fight their style of war with the high financial and casualty rates that follow, instead of standing back and using UAVs for a stick and standard foreign aid for a carrot?

   Nation building, where the US assumes responsibility for the future behavior of a poorly behaved country seems like an impossible task. This is not how the criminal justice system works. Would it not be better to use financial aid to encourage good behavior and UAVs/air superiority to effectively send the offending country back to jail every time it committed a new offence? Would this not be far cheaper and result in far fewer US casualties? Bush era “nation building” always seemed like liberal PCism gone made to me – if we can just teach them to be better people, give them the opportunities that everyone else had, then they would stop being criminals – they are only bad countries because they had a bad up bringing, all they need is to be loved… This is a noble sentiment, but it is also a costly one.

   In this light the recent Libyan approach seemed much better to me than the Iraq/Afghanistan approach. Punish bad behavior from afar at minimal cost/effort, play the game on US terms. And keep doing it in perpetuity if need be – it can be a fairly low cost and low risk form of international policing.

4. Bush era “nation building” always seemed like liberal PCism gone made to me – if we can just teach them to be better people, give them the opportunities that everyone else had, then they would stop being criminals – they are only bad countries because they had a bad up bringing, all they need is to be loved… This is a noble sentiment, but it is also a costly one.

   The problem in Iraq was that when the US deposed Saddam Hussein, they created a power vacuum that could easily be filled by Iran, Turkey, and Syria. Iran would have significant influence with the half of Iraq that is Shi’ite. Syria similarly would have pull and common interest with the Sunni minority that happens to border Syria. And Turkey would be hostile (perhaps to the point of invasion as they apparently have threatened) to a free Kurd nation on its border.

5. It’s a good argument, Pete, and the traditional wisdom. Certainly it’s something I might have argued at another time. The only difficulty is that history doesn’t quite seem to agree. Those wars in which the US quickly washed its hands after military victory — the First World War, arguably the Civil War, depending on how we interpret the failure of Presidential Reconstruction, the Spanish-American War, the Vietnam War, Gulf War I, perhaps the Cold War– did not result in ideal long-term outcomes. Wars in which the United States took a strong interest in social outcomes after the military victory, including the Second World War, arguably Korea (in the South), and Gulf War II, seemed to have turned out much better, long-term.

   If the moral of the story is not to get involved in a war unless you are prepared to continue on into “nation building” or whatnot afterward, to consolidate your victory in a serious change of political structure, then I’m OK with that.

6. Pete Says:
   “Punish bad behavior from afar at minimal cost/effort, play the game on US terms. And keep doing it in perpetuity if need be”

   So put in a no fly zone, occasionally bomb other military targets on the ground, and continue seeking UN resolutions against the target nation. In perpetuity or until a future president says the target country is continuously firing on our aircraft and violating the UN resolutions, then invades the target country?

   Why should we be in Libya if the result is the same (Moomar still in power) as us not being in Libya?

   I agree that only using air power might be cheaper than a full scale invasion but I am not sure that the outcomes will be better. Especially since we don’t know much about the rebels other than they totally suck at fighting.

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