Is Pessimism Patriotic?
Mark Kleinman points to an intelligent and honest discussion taking place at the Volkh Conspiracy, a Republican-leaning blog run by a few lawyers. One especially good post talks about the matrix of possible outcomes, as follows:
- The U.S. beats back the insurgency and democracy flowers in Iraq (call this the "optimistic stay" scenario),
- The U.S. digs in its heels, spends years fighting the insurgency, loses lots of troops, and years later withdraws, leading to a bloody and disastrous civil war (the "pessimistic stay" scenario);
- The U.S. decides that it's no longer worth it to stay in Iraq, pulls out relatively soon, and things in Iraq are about as best as you could hope for, perhaps leading to a decent amount of democracy (optimistic leave), and
- The U.S. decides that it's no longer worth it to stay in Iraq, pulls out soon, and plunges Iraq into a bloody and disastrous civil war with the bad guys assuming control eventually (pessimistic leave).
From a scenario-planning perspective, this seems like an exhaustive range of options. If your observations and political biases lead you to believe that staying will promote option 1 rather than 2, while leaving will promote 4 rather than 3, then the obvious policy is to stay the course, whereas if you see staying as leading to option 2 and leaving likely to produce option 3, then if makes sense to promote a fairly rapid wind-down.
But what if observation of both the situation and the capabilities of current American leadership (not American troops or America generally) lead you to see the likely outcomes as 2 or 4? That is, at this point, whether we stay or go, the situation is irretrievably lost from the perspective of American (and liberal Iraqi) interests because of an accumulation of prior mistakes and the finite limits of American power.
As readers of this blog may have gleaned from subtle hints here and there, I basically believe we’ve past the last exit to “good outcome” and are stuck on the highway to hell. Whether it’s a fast ride or a slow one doesn’t change the destination. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t be happy to be proven wrong. I just got off the phone with a good friend of mine, smart guy and hardcore Democratic political operative, who is nowhere near as pessimistic as I am. My problem is that the chart of the odds that America under Bush could salvage a respectable outcome in Iraq looks a lot like the chart of the Seattle Mariners’ odds of making the playoffs this year. It doesn’t make me less of a fan to acknowledge the verdict of reality.
The distinction that the Right can’t seem to get their little brains around is the one between thinking that things will turn out rotten and hoping that they do. Volkh conducted a survey on his site to find out exactly how many “leftists” vocally sympathized with the Iraqi insurgents – that is, supported their aims in the same way that some on the far Left supported Ho Chi Mihn and the North during Vietnam (as opposed to just protesting American involvement). Unsurprisingly, his survey turned up nary a name: a big fat zero among Democratic office holders or office seekers, prominent academics, journalists, or media types.
My disagreement with our friends on the Right over the politics of the war, then, rests on three basic points:
- Intellectual: Some folks look at the same information that I do about the war and reasonably come to a different conclusion. To me, this is the most honest sort of difference. I readily admit that both my data and my analytic framework are incomplete, and if someone can make a convincing argument that my view is wrong on the merits, I’m happy to listen.
- Practical: Obviously, most people prefer good news to bad. The Right-wing authors of this war therefore have a vested political interest in keeping the spin relentlessly upbeat, even in the face of contrary facts. The pessimism of war opponents, even if well grounded, is hard to swallow because it portends a moment of accountability that they are hoping to avoid. I understand the motivations behind this sort of “tactical optimism,” but because I don’t share their larger political objectives, I obviously have no interest in subscribing to it.
- Metaphysical. For some people, loyalty and obedience to authority are higher values than intellectual honesty. While these people are inherently capable of recognizing the truth of the war-skeptics’ claims, to do so would be intolerably offensive to their principles. They placed their faith and trust in Bush, and they won’t withdraw that faith and trust for anything. One extension of that urge to loyalty is to suspect anyone who doesn’t share their trust in leadership of the darkest motives. Dissent, to this sort of person, is axiomatically dishonorable. Truth, as they say, is no defense against libel.
In my experience, you can have a satisfactory intellectual debate with someone of different opinions, you can get along with those of opposite politics by stipulating that it’s legitimate for others to fight for their own interests (even if they conflict with yours), but it’s impossible to make headway with those in group number three.
One reason it’s so frustrating to argue about the war is that proponents often embody all three of these qualities. The tribal urge to loyalty comes first, bolstered by a whole arsenal of pre-fabricated political tactics and catch phrases (disseminated over right-wing talk radio), slathered over with a patina of carefully-selected “facts.” To such people, whether you’re wrong in your analysis, wrong because of your political affiliation, or wrong because you dare to question Dear Leader is an academic question that they have little to no interest in sorting out.
For this reason, it’s gratifying to see folks like the Volkh crowd trying to get to the bottom of this question of “do war opponents actually support the insurgents?” It’s an honest effort to clear away the intractable problems of issue #3 so that we can discuss the war as a practical and political problem without calling into play the whole emotional apparatus of loyalty and tribalism.
11:24:18 AM 
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