Why the Doves are so frustrated. REASON
March 6, 2003
Winning the War of Words
Being a hawk means never having to say you're sorry.
By Brian Doherty
A U.S. war on Iraq has seemed like a foregone conclusion for months now, and the smart money says to cock an ear for the first "official" falling bombs sometime in the next week. (Though enforcement of the "no fly-zone" means the war has really already begun.)
All Americans of humane disposition of course want the war, if it comes, to be swift and as casualty-free as possible. But whether it is or not, those calling for war now seem to have pre-emptively slipped a big tip in the hands of the Judgment of History and winked.
Pro- and anti-warriors are now gleefully accusing each other of being blindly dedicated to their stances, no matter what new information or changing events bring?as if Karl Popper should be the gold standard of political-ethical debate about future actions. It is not surprising that nothing short of the actual outcome of the war will settle whether waging it was a good idea.
On all sides of the war debate, honest people are trying to judge what the likely outcomes, both short and long-term, of waging (or not waging) the war might be. In any event, this requires balancing suppositions about outcomes that, no matter what, will have their bad sides. In the American debate, hardly anyone is glad to see Saddam Hussein as dictator of Iraq; nor is anyone champing at the bit to see the streets of Baghdad running with blood. And neither side is eager to see a major American city destroyed by nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons.
It's that last point that's interesting, because both sides of the war debate can speculatively maintain that their stance is most likely to avoid that horrible pass.
But, regardless of the merits, I suspect that the hawks will have the better of it in the hindsight of standard accepted opinion. (As with any historical event, there will be revisionists in the debate either way.) Most Americans, filled with a rather invincible sense of international privilege whether or not they actually care much about most interventions, will almost certainly end up seeing it the hawks' way.
After all, if?as is quite probable?the actual active war is over with lickety-split with minimal American casualties, the hawks can proudly say that ninnyish carping over the horrible effects of a war with Iraq were absurd. And however complicated the aftermath, to most of the guardians of standard accepted opinion, it won't matter. Getting Saddam out of power will be seen as an honorable and just victory; and just as almost no one in America knows or cares what is currently going on in Haiti, the Balkans, or even Afghanistan, a complicated and difficult postwar mess in Iraq will doubtless do little to tarnish the glow of a victory over Saddam himself. Ten years from now, whatever problems we are having with Iraq will be seen as fresh problems, with only pointy-headed blame-America-firsters linking them to any action of ours in the past.
Of course, that's a best case scenario for the hawks. But in all likelihood, even a worse case scenario will be rhetorically turned around on peaceniks. If we are to believe even half of the reasons we are told a war is necessary?and it seems unlikely the administration does, because after all, what could be more foolhardy when dealing with a wickedly malign madman out to get us and possessing hideous and fearsome weapons than threatening him for months with "we're gonna get you...soon!"?then waging a war with Iraq will mean, well, that we are at war with Iraq. This may seem a meaningless tautology, but it could lead to horrors which will surprise mainland America, for whom most of the past century's wars have been more wars on than wars with.
But it seems overwhelmingly likely that the standard response to an actual attempt to bring the war back home will not be, Wow, maybe those peaceniks were right and we shouldn't have stuck our hands in that hornet's nest, but rather, My God, see who we are dealing with here? Of course we had to strike!
"Unfalsifiability" isn't necessarily a killing blow against strategic or moral stances. It could well be that certain actions are necessary or proper regardless of what the consequences turn out to be. But it does indicate, as Popper hinted, that the stance in question might be based more on faith than on reason.
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