A Moratorium on Bad Analogies
Filed under: George W. Bush, Iraq, Lebanon — Kevin Sullivan on August 27, 2007 @ 1:31 pm CEST
Ok, so can we maybe reach a bargain here?
If we can agree that President Bush is an idiot for comparing Iraq to Vietnam, can we please not compare the possibility of American withdrawal to The American Civil War?
Matthew Yglesias has done just that, in addition to drawing a parallel with the Lebanese Civil War. His reasoning goes as follows:
To say that our current policy is working and needs just ten more years to stabilize Iraq is lunacy — just leaving stands a perfectly good chance of working just as quickly at radically lower cost.
…
By a similar token, the American Civil War ended fewer than ten years after James Buchanan’s blunders. Ten years isn’t just longer than America has political will to sustain, it’s genuinely too long. Policies that work accomplish their goals faster than that, something that’s supposed to unfold at the speed Petraeus is talking about isn’t working at all.
“Policies that work accomplish their goals faster than that”? This is absurd. I would love to talk about the Korean War, and the gradual decline of Communism and other wonderful foreign policy analogies that disprove such a comment. But NO. No more.
As for Matthew’s examples, the Civil War comparison is just silly. We had a central government. We had the foundation for a liberal and democratic society already established, which is why secession from the union was bad. The Nullification Crisis had already established this. This was Lincoln’s rally cry, and he was right. The Constitution was on his side.
The Lebanese example is equally bad. The reason being is that you could flip it on its head, and use it as a reason to stay in Iraq. The Cairo Accord forced Lebanon to allow a terrorist organization to operate within their own borders, so that said terrorist organization could attack Israel by proxy. This “civil” war was in fact fueled in many ways by foreign elements, much the way Iraq has been exacerbated by Saudis, Iranians and other foreign fighters.
So please…let’s just stop. Rich does a nice job of handling the “Spanish Civil War” comparison. Bravo!
I know it’s tempting to look back. I am guilty as charged. But I think we’ve all gotten a little bit carried away trying to prove our own points via historical context. I will not do this again in the future, unless I can lay out a very detailed analysis to substantiate the comparison. Since I don’t have the attention span, nor the desire to do so, the entire enterprise is highly unlikely.
You’re probably better off.
(Cross posted at my blog)
1 Tom
August 27, 2007 @ 12:33 pm CEST–from Matt Yglesias
I read the post in question and I have to say I got the impression that, as the above quote indicates, Yglesias wasn’t trying to compare Iraq to another war. He was trying to suggest that 10 years is too long for the domestic political attention span for American foreign policy.
2 Michael van der Galiën
August 27, 2007 @ 1:00 pm CESTWell, I find that to be silly - really I do. Major projects take years.
3 Kevin
August 27, 2007 @ 2:02 pm CESTTom: Matt was making a couple of points. One was thatten years is far too long for “good” policy to work, and the other was that leaving could be just as effective.
He used the examples of Lebanon and (yikes) the Civil War between the states to support both of those theories.
Honestly, I can’t blame him. I think we’re all just as guilty here. I’ve used Korea as an example, so perhaps rightfully, a war critic uses Lebanon. But there are in fact big holes with both comparisons.
Also, as I said at the top, it’s not entirely fair of the Netroots to pile on the president for comparing the conflict to Vietnam, and then give a pass when one of their own makes arguably an even less relevant comparison.
4 Tully
August 27, 2007 @ 3:00 pm CESTThe netroots are incensed that someone would actually follow and extend the inevitable logic of the Vietnam analogy they’ve pushed since before the war. The conventional wisdom of the left on Vietnam is that is was a victory for them, and they want that victory trophy without any responsibility for the blood of the SE Asians that was shed as the price of their victory.
Mostly the response on the left to the Bush VFW speech has been two-pronged. The first prong is to deny that the slaughter in SE Asia was due to our withdrawal (it was a direct and foreseeable consequence) and/or that our hasty withdrawal from Iraq would have similar results. The second prong is to claim that the direct and foreseeable consequences of the withdrawal from SE Asia (and the direct and foreseeable consequences of a hasty withdrawal from Iraq) would not be the fault of those who urge(d) said withdrawals.
It mostly boils down to the contention fom the anti-war factions that it would be OK if hundreds of thousands, even millions, died as a direct and foreseeable consequence of a hasty withdrawal from Iraq, because it would be Somebody Else’s Fault. And as long as it’s Somebody Else’s Fault, they do not have to bear any responsibility for the direct and foreseeable consequences of the policy they support.
5 Tom
August 27, 2007 @ 3:39 pm CESTMichael–
You’re right, but Yglesias has a point about the American public’s attention span.
Kevin–
You’re right, it was a bad analogy.
Tully–
You’re not right.
You’ve failed to note that hundreds of thousands of people died in Vietnam while we were there (1.7 million between 1965 and 1973), many either directly or as a result of collateral damage. Tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, also the direct and indirect result of US actions. And as one of the few members of the “anti-war faction” at this blog I have to say that I don’t think that the deaths of millions of Iraqis is OK. I will grant you, when things go wrong in Iraq I tend to feel vindicated. But suggesting I don’t mind genocide is taking things too far.
6 C Stanley
August 27, 2007 @ 4:03 pm CESTI was thinking about a response to Tully but hadn’t gotten around to making it yet. Then saw Tom’s reaction, which is the reason I anticipated the need for my response.
I agree with Tully insofar as the rebuttal to Bush’s Viet Nam analogy from certain people has been to deny that there was a horrible denoument to the VN war and that the US bears responsibility for that.
But what Tully doesn’t say, which I think is important, is that not everyone who disagrees with the analogy is making that claim. To varying degrees, I think many anti-war people are simply saying that they don’t think the situation will be improved by our continued presence in Iraq (and for some of them, they don’t believe that a longer commitment in SE Asia would have been positive either).
There’s a difference between denial of reality and disagreement over whether a particular course of action can possibly change the reality. I can respectfully disagree with people like Tom, whom I believe is in the latter category, while also agreeing with Tully that the people in the former group are just conveniently delusional.
7 Tully
August 27, 2007 @ 5:35 pm CESTYou’ve failed to note that hundreds of thousands of people died in Vietnam while we were there (1.7 million between 1965 and 1973), many either directly or as a result of collateral damage. Tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, also the direct and indirect result of US actions.
Are you familiar with the concept of “sunk cost,” Tom? Your observation is irrelevant, completely beside the point, because any such decision must be made based on the current situation, not on some might-have-been that isn’t. Just as it was irrelevant in SE Asia when we made the decision to cut off ALL support for South Vietnam. (Which, I note, happened long after our troops were out.)
We are where we are, and any decision NOW on how to proceed from where we are NOW must take into account the direct and foreseeable consequences of our actions. One cannot advocate a course of action and then deny all responsibility for the predictable results. You advocate the policy, you own the results. ALL of them, both good and bad. No picking and choosing. It’s a package deal.
I think many anti-war people are simply saying that they don’t think the situation will be improved by our continued presence in Iraq (and for some of them, they don’t believe that a longer commitment in SE Asia would have been positive either).
True enough, but I’m not addressing everyone’s arguments. Just the willful denial of any responsibility for the direct and foreseeable consequences of implementing the policies advocated.
8 Tom
August 27, 2007 @ 5:59 pm CESTI agree, we do have to accept all results, good and bad, of accepting a given policy.
I know that leaving Iraq may cause additional bloodshed. But I suspect that may happen even if we stay—contrary to what many think I don’t believe we have the strength to prevent an all-out civil war.
And that assumes that we can continue our military commitment at our present level, which it’s pretty obvious we can’t do.
9 Tully
August 27, 2007 @ 7:02 pm CESTBut even if you guess one way and implement, and things don’t go as you planned, you are still responsible for the results.
Others disagree about maintaining our present deployment levels, though it’s certainly debateable. I think we most certainly can–the question is at what cost. Current deployment levels would require more resources to sustain than we may be willing to commit. (If we’re not willing to pay the cost we can’t even maintain a Marine Guard at the Lichthenstein Embassy.)
But I suspect we’ll see several brigades coming home over the next year regardless. If progress is made, the need for that level of troops will decline. If it isn’t, the political will to keep them there will decline. Either way, there will be some drawback.
10 Divided We Stand United We Fall
August 29, 2007 @ 6:55 pm CESTIs Iraq like Vietnam? Wrong Question.
That said, and despite Kevin Sullivan’s reasonable admonition, it is worth considering the factual basis of the rhetorical question in the title of this post - to explore whether, which and how lessons extracted from the Vietnam experience can be appl…