Slate magazine recently published a series of mea culpas from liberal-hawks who supported the run-up to the Iraq war, but have since retracted their support. There has been plenty of great commentary in the blogosphere regarding this article, but rather than add to it (the commentary, not necessarily greatness), I’d like to take this moment and ask our readers and authors to reflect on their thoughts and feelings prior to the Iraq war.
Actually, I’ve been thinking about posing this question for some time, not just because of the Slate article. However, the Slate article and the five year anniversary provide as good a context as could be hoped for. When trying to assess my own thoughts and feelings prior to the Iraq war, I ended up talking to Zach. We were roommates in college prior to the invasion, and I was hoping he could refresh my memory somewhat. You see, I remembered that I was adamantly against the war, and that I was pretty convinced that we wouldn’t find weapons of mass destruction when we went in. The problem, looking back, is I can’t remember exactly why I felt this way. I was not nearly as politically conscious as I am now. I did not get any news from alternative sources such as blogs and the Knight Ridder. I basically read my other roommate Jeff’s Time magazine (certainly not a bastion of anti-war journalism) and odds and ends of other sources I happened to come across.
In trying to recollect my thought process during that time, one thought that came to me is that perhaps, for whatever reason, I decided early on that the war was no good, and my environment insulated me from the pro-war craze. I think in part this may have been true. I did not really watch TV news, which in retrospect was the main vehicle for selling the war to the public. College campuses are notoriously liberal, and my school was no exception. My peer group was also generally liberal and anti-war.
However, I do recall some glaring exceptions. I remember talking to a professor I respected about the Iraq war, and I tossed off that I was firmly against it. I can still clearly remember his response. He said that the anti-war position was shameful because all these liberals were taking a pro-Saddam position just because of a dislike of Bush, and how could we support a dictator like Saddam Hussein? He said liberals needed to get on board with the plan, because the true liberal position was to support a policy that would overthrow a dictatorship and restore human rights to the region.
I also remember taking a day in one of my big lecture classes to have a discussion of the war, and the responses were about 50/50 for and against. Also, most anti-war opinions were qualified in some way. So I certainly was not insulated completely.
I also did not have a favorite pundit or source whose judgment I trusted completely. I know a lot of people were convinced when their favorite pundits joined the war craze. After all, who are us normal people to disagree with the experts? Since that time period, I have several sources of news that I consider reliable, and several pundits whose opinions I trust. I wonder now what I would think if the voices I trust lined up behind a bad war in the way that so many did in 2002-2003?
In sum, a lot of factors contributed to my views at the time. A combination of distrust of Bush, insulation from the "mainstream media", a college environment, and, excuse the immodesty, perhaps a dose of common sense. The scary thing is, though, that looking back I wasn't particularly informed, and that is a problem. Coming to a conclusion partly due to ignorance and bias is not a rational way to form an opinion, regardless of whether the result was correct. I guess when we speak of lessons learned, mine is to be vigilant about making informed, rational decisions based on evidence and argument. Then again, when the "evidence" is fabricated, there is something to be said for trusting your gut. Overall, though, the people who really intelligently protested the war were those people who felt something was fishy, engaged in some quality investigative journalism, and rationally disputed the fabricated evidence. Too bad there were too few of those journalists around.
Please comment on your own personal experiences and thoughts during that time.
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4 comments:
I remember having strong feelings in the run-up to the war as well, although my actual level of political awareness was certainly lower than it is now. The nearly 1 million person protest in the streets of midtown Manhattan in February of 03 will always be a powerful memory: watching kids getting clocked by police sticks as seeing the authorities walking around with video cameras to record the faces of everyone involved is probably the closest I've ever personally got to feeling what it would be like to live in a totalitarian state.
Despite my relative lack of information, though, the primary reason I objected to the war was because the doctrine of preemption made absolutely no sense to me. If a nuke was being pointed at us, I could understand (and would of course expect) acting before they acted. But there wasn't nearly that level of evidence of clear and present danger. Saddam's threat was vague, amorphous, poorly sourced...how could we use preemption on so marginal a threat?
My issue with preemption went a little something like this: if we attack before any real threat exists, we are committing great moral wrong. Even though Saddam was a horrible dictator, as Chris's professor said, he wasn't doing anything to us. For us to end human lives over a gamble that perhaps someday he could pose a threat is morally indefensible. It also sets a very negative precedent in the world: what's to keep India from nuking Pakistan and claiming that Pakistan would have pressed the button had they not acted first? It just provides justification for any number of geopolitical tit-for-tat skirmishes, let alone whole-scale invasions/bombing on the order of what we see in Iraq. All of a sudden, the idea of gambling lives, stability, resources, and a lot of other things on the premise of a threat gained credibility in the world. The only reason I think more preemptive strikes haven't occurred since 3/03 is because our adventure in Iraq has been such a categorical failure: the global community now knows that preemption on flawed intelligence is no way to solve a conflict. Let's hope that this lesson in Iraq continues to inform world leaders, and our own.
In all honesty, Chris, it has been a pretty steady policy of this administration to misinform its public. If you weren't as well versed in the facts as you would have liked you are probably in good company.
I just remember being completely dumbfounded. I can't say I took a stance for awhile, because I didn't really grasp what was going on. When I was a kid George Sr. went to war with Iraq and I remember everyone bragging about how we were just kicking ass, like some schoolyard brawl, y'know? Everyone was all gung-ho, and then at school we'd sing that "Voices That Care" song. I dunno, I just didn't get it then. Come time for the war-mongering nepotism and I just didn't know how to react. It was like I was 10 again. Why do people rejoice at entering into armed conflict with other people? I remember hearing the radio address when Bush said we were going to attack. I was at a wine cellar with a buddy, drinking out of the casks in back and smoking on the loading dock. Part of the "It's the end of the world as we know it" nausea had already been numbed a year and a half prior. Going to war, I mean, it's not my war and never has been, but someone else trying to do it in my name felt so artificial. Really, at the time, I was completely apathetic. Later I agreed that the war was wrong, but I attended a rally trying to keep the U of Oregon from declaring a stance against the war because it was none of their business to speak for 24,000 students. I'd probably still take that stance. I think then what I think now: a University stance won't do any good. You wanna stop the war? Don't pay your taxes.
Really, I tried to be as neutral as possible. I remember them pulling Saddam out of a hole in the ground and feeling the slightest bit sorry for him. Once a proud tyrant, now reduced to a bedraggled rabbit. It made me wonder about a statute of limitations on fascist dictators. And how, with one wave of front-page photos, it's as if you've waved a wand over millions and convinced them that USA = liberators. Reminds me of what Kenny used to say back in high school: "GOD spelled backwards is 'UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.'"
I too am more political now that I was then. Difference is I'm still a hack. But I play my guitar and forget the world's problems. I go to college to rack up a perpetual debt to Uncle Sam while building a giant brain with which to serve him. Maybe I'll be a bit more chipper after I go take a nap.
Thanks for the comments guys. Zach, I agree with you and remember thinking the same thing at the time. I noticed that the dichotomy between the rhetoric directed at Iraq and the rhetoric directed at North Korea, both members of the Axis of Evil (a whole other inanity of the time). The message was loud and clear: if you have nuclear weapons, we will negotiate with you, if you don't, we'll turn your country into a parking lot. If there is a better recipe for rampant nuclear proliferation, I can't think of one. Morality aside (which, I guess, is where it was at the time), just the realpolitik of the Bush doctrine seemed at the time fatally flawed.
Also, yes that protest was an amazing experience. Besides the totalitarian feel, it was amazing to come in from seeing mobs of people as far as the eye could see on the Avenues, then come in, turn on the news, and see the media downplaying it and underreporting the numbers. I remember a profound sense of the futility of public protest that day.
Ruxton, good comment as well. I think that what was unique about the run up to the Iraq war is that the propaganda infiltrated the "intelligentsia" of the media. It is one thing for propaganda (or any sort of emotion based politics, like scandal stories, etc) to find an audience on the cable news programs and talk radio. I don't think I need to rehash the vapidity of cable news here. Needless to say, that is one level of information. It is not surprising that those who only get there information from that level are easily misled on misinformed.
The danger in 2002-2003 was that the propaganda infected the next level up. Not only was Fox beating the drums for war, but so was the New York Times. Not only could you find Rush Limbaugh advocating the Bush Doctrine, but also Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria.
So I guess when I said I was uninformed, what I meant was I was aware of the basic factual situation at the time, i.e. Hans Blix, the Colin Powell speech, etc. What I lacked was the perspective to see that good pundits and news sources had supported wholesale the Iraq invasion. I wasn't aware of the changes in the intelligentsia surrounding the war. I didn't know who Thomas Friedman was, to give an example, so I was unable to be swayed significantly by his opinion.
In retrospect, this ignorance was probably a strength. Like Zach, my initial reactions to the Bush doctrine were negative, and being tuned out to the intelligentsia kept those opinions intact.
One last thing. I find it amazing that Obama managed to speak out against the war at that time. Looking back now, when I have both perspective and a well-informed picture of the media climate at the time, his speaking out was incredibly risky, principled, and straight out ballsy. And, I think I personally identify with someone who protested the war at that time. I remember often having the sense that I must have been going a little crazy, or missing something important. Things just didn't make sense to me, although they seemed to make sense to so many other people. I think I have a natural affinity for someone who must of felt the same thing.
Sorry for the double comment, but I just couldn't leave this one alone. I have to go back to the Axis of Evil thing. I've always been afraid of group-think, mobs of people, etc. I guess I'm more of an individual then team type of person.
So when the President started to sound like the head cheerleader at a high school pep rally, spewing out inane phrases and ra-ra-ra let's go get them platitudes, I experience a visceral feeling of revulsion.
"Axis of Evil", "Wanted Dead or Alive", "Crusade", "Fight them there so we don't have to fight them here", plus the many invocations of black-and-white, good-vs-evil. I just couldn't stomach it, and I couldn't seriously accept that a person who sounded so juvenile could successfully lead a war.
Maybe just having been out of high school for a few years at the time was an asset, because when your country starts to resemble the dynamics of high school you put yourself on alert.
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