Orin Kerr's Three Questions
Orin Kerr posts three questions, and says he'll link to people who answer on their blogs. So here I am link-whoring. whee. =)
1) First, assuming that you were in favor of the invasion of Iraq at the time of the invasion, do you believe today that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea? Why/why not?
I continue to believe today that the invasion was a good idea, for basically the same reasons that I thought it was a good idea ex ante:
o To eliminate a vicious dictator
o To bring and end to the operations northern/southern watch and the sanctions regime
o A war with Iraq was inevitable. It was in our interests to choose the timing of the war, rather than letting Saddam Hussein choose the timing
o To get better positioned militarily vis a vis Iran and Syria
o To eliminate the possibility that Saddam Hussein may give WMDs to terrorists
o To give the UN some credibility
2) Second, what reaction do you have to the not-very-upbeat news coming of Iraq these days, such as the stories I link to above?
Although things aren't going well over there, I think also of the consideration that going into the war, I had figured it would be a really difficult and expensive war, and we'd lose thousands of our guys. Now, a full year and a half into the war, the death toll has barely crossed the one thousand mark. Clearly those thousand deaths are a thousand too many, but given that my expectations were much higher, that death toll has to be seen as a success.
The continuing unrest is very disappointing but it is really hard to rationally blame it all on the administration. Clearly the administration made a number of grave mistakes which we can now see in hindsight, but hindsight is always 20/20 as they say, so it is hard to say if those mistakes were really forseeable and preventable.
I am frustrated over what appears in certain cases to be a lack of will to take back the cities which have been lost to the terrorists. Our military could clearly take control of those cities if they wanted to, so the question is why.
Speaking for myself, I am more upset to see soldiers dying from IEDs while doing routine patrols than seeing soldiers dying (even in greater numbers) when engaged in offensive operations, because the latter deaths at least are sacrifices with a clear purpose. I don't know if the general public feels that way, but if they do, if the military is holding back for fear of the public being upset over the loss, that tactic is misguided.
It could be, however, that military leaders are holding back because they are waiting for the Iraqi army to be trained so that they can take back the cities themselves. This would clearly have significant benefits over coalition forces taking back these cities, so the question then is if it is worth letting the situation detoriate further until that is possible. I have no idea. I'm glad it's not my job to answer those questions.
3) Third, what specific criteria do you recommend that we should use over the coming months and years to measure whether the Iraq invasion has been a success?
Given that the primary interest of the United States is its own security, the key metric should be whether or not Iraq becomes a failed state which continues to harbor and support terrorists or a successful one. While a fully democratic Iraq would be nice, the invasion I think could still be considered a success if a liberal government with a stated intention to move towards democracy were the immediate result. Such a state would be respectful of human rights and thus unlikely to support terrorism.
