Steelmanning the Iraq War

That is pretty good, but I would add the following:

On September 11 we suffered a grievous loss, one that caused hundred’s of billions of dollars in not only in physical damage, but in fear and losses imposed by security measures taken in response to that fear. Those security measures like new airport security and greater surveillance also cost us some significant liberty and benefits of an open society.

We could sit back and play defense at home and abroad. We could increase security at home. We could continue to contain threats abroad. But that is asymmetricly costly for us in dollars and in ill will abroad.

Besides, defense is not the American way and it yields the initiative. Better to strike a quick blow now to create a model state in the heart of the Middle East. There are risks, but the potentila reward is worth it. A free Iraq would serve to inspire movements toward freedom in its neighbors eventually resulting in far greater freedom for hundreds of millions.

Note: that was my thought at the time. Since then I have come to believe that I overestimated the odds of success (but once burned, I not all that confident in my revised assessment).

I think the use of Germany and Japan as case studies is a pretty good strategy. I’d probably emphasize the idea that the benefits of liberal democracy in Iraq will be reaped by countless generations to come, and that almost any cost paid by one generation will be dwarfed by improving the quality of life for every generation of Iraqis henceforth; could even appeal to ‘domino theory’ and argue that a flourishing Iraqi democracy will precipitate the rest of the region to change as well, as Iraq’s neighbors yearn to share in their prosperity.

Curiously lacking in your speech, though, are economic arguments for the war: opening up Iraq’s economy to the world, establishing secure property rights, etc. and all the benefits those could hypothetically bring.

Lastly, another argument I’d consider making (perhaps inconsistent with your sanguine speech): the war will be worth it even if it fails to make Iraq a better place, because by punishing the Iraqi government for its abuses, we will deter authoritarianism, anti-Americanism, and crimes against humanity in the future.

Dave D, that’s a good point, but not quite there yet: conditions have improved in other countries as well with passage of time without any invasion.

(Just steady progress thanks to human effort and technology.)

This doesn’t seem like steelmanning to me, as it doesn’t really present a stronger case than Iraq War supporters’ actual case. According to Wikipedia, US deaths in Iraq so far number 4491, so the prediction of 1M American lives lost seems too high. Granted, we did not achieve anywhere near the victory that Caplan calls for, but the gap between 1M and less than 5k is huge.

Caplan bases the estimate from WW2, but that was between evenly matched powers. Casualties are much lower when one side is much stronger than the other. Some estimate, for example, that the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved hundreds of thousands or millions of lives. Had the US developed the bomb at the beginning instead of end of WW2, might the US casualty count have been much less then 400k? One could imagine that even the German and Japanese casualties would have been significantly reduced. Hiroshima killed between 90-146k and Nagasaki 39-80k. Germany lost 6.6M-8.8M and Japan 2.6M-3.1M in all of WW2 (civilian+military), so asymmetric strength ends a war more quickly, resulting in fewer casualties. (I’m not suggesting that the US should have nuked Iraq, just drawing an analogy between the asymmetries in strength between a nuclear-armed US vs. non-nuclear Japan-Germany in WW2 and US vs. Iraq and how that asymmetry reduces casualties compared to evenly matched non-nuclear US vs. Japan-Germany in WW2.)

Scott Sumner always mentions that, in monetary policy, a credibly committed central bank actually has to do less than an uncommitted bank. Does Caplan mean that the strongest case for war would involve the US credibly committing to being willing to sacrifice 1M lives so that it would end up sacrificing much fewer? If so, there were probably other ways of demonstrating committment, e.g., building a permanent military base in Iraq like the ones we have in Japan. I guess you could call that “100-yr occupation” if you want, but I’m not sure that we are considered to be occupying Japan, South Korea, Germany, etc. right now.

I agree with BC. If anything, I would suggest this was an unusually weak argument.

Invading Iraq with the explicit aim of permanently destroying large parts of their culture would terrify and possibly draw together other peoples around the world.

Pew surveys find that majorities in Asia/Pacific (65%), Africa (87%) and the Middle East (92%) think homosexuality is morally unacceptable. If the author was planning to occupy Iraq, without elections, until “gay couples can walk the streets of Baghdad holding hands” it implies that much of the world would be at risk of arrogant American imperialism, not just the Muslims. Picture a pan-global anti-American alliance and probable nuclear proliferation.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/04/16/europeans-hold-more-liberal-views-on-moral-issues/

The conventional arguments for war in 2003 were less ambitious, to my memory, and less intimidating to the rest of the world. Several Muslim-majority countries joined the invasion. If the message instead had been: “we’re coming for all of you – Asian or African; Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist – until you conform to our beliefs”, I would expect a fierce near-global opposition to coalesce.

While it’s wise to prioritize human rights over democracy, public displays of affection are a very minor aspect of human rights at best. Freedom of religion and free speech are the really essential human rights, along with some sort of protection of property rights and exchange.

The war in Iraq as it was actually fought was a just and beneficent undertaking. An openly imperialist war seeking to occupy the Islamic world indefinitely to impose the Sexual Revolution would not have been.

This is like some hawkish alt right case for and approach to Iraq. Weird that you think this is a stronger case than the actual case.

Another thing missing is the alternative to crushing the enemy now. If we don’t do this horrible and costly action, then what even more horrible and more costly future will occur?

Right now it reads as a request for a horrible and costly war which isn’t necessary.

Your steelman is made of an inferior quality of steel and rusting badly. I’m not sure there is any scenario based on realism rather than wishful thinking that would lead to the conclusion to proceed with the invasion.

The analogy with post-WWII Germany and Japan lacks one critical thing – something to keep the occupied population in line. In the case of (West) Germany and Japan it was fear of the Communist powers. No such parallel exists in Iraq, which is why we had such a vicious insurgency (something that many predicted would happen in occupied Germany). Plus neither country ever had anything like the Sunni-Shite divide in Iraq as a destabilizing force.

I supported the Iraq war at the time and to this day do not consider it a mistake (I do think that there were a number of terrible choices made in the next 3 steps of the decision tree, but that’s another discussion)

There are three main criticisms I’d have of your argument

1) A similar argument could have been made of a number of ghastly tyrannies in various times and places. You could just as easily have put this argument forward for invading Cuba at various times and plausibly argued that there’d be both a higher chance of success and a lower cost in lives vs Iraq. As powerful as the US military is, it still faces a budget constraint and so any pro-invasion argument must make clear why specifically Iraq and why specifically then. Your steelman argument is pretty perfunctory on that point.

You are correct that 9/11 is key, but go the wrong direction. Liberal (classical sense) societies can withstand terrorism on the scale of car bombs well enough, as evidenced by the British experience with the IRA, Spain with the Basque terrorist groups, and assorted communist terrorists in Italy and Germany. What liberal societies may not be able to withstand is terrorism designed to inflict maximum damage, either by targeting critical infrastructure or by use of WMDs (note that this does not just mean nukes- a serious anthrax attack could make a major city uninhabitable for months). 9/11 demonstrated two things: 1)such terrorism was a very live threat and 2)the organizational capability to achieve that kind of attack required the tacit support of a state or state-ish entity that exercised de-facto sovereign control of territory. The corollary those two realizations is that any state in the world that tolerated organized terrorist groups with such aims represents an intolerable security threat, regardless of their (in)ability to engage in military expansionism in the mode of 20th century fascism and communism. That such a consequential security threat could originate from such a remote, backwards, and conventionally weak country as Afghanistan was the big change of 9/11.

The trifecta of critical state threat was 1)overt mortal hostility to the US, 2)historical use or support for terrorism as state policy, and 3)possession or obvious desire for possession of WMDs. Thus Bush’s naming of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the “axis of evil”, as only they hit all three criteria. Syria, Pakistan, and Libya c. 2003 hit 2) and 3) but not 1). Cuba hit 1), arguably 2), but not 3). FARC-controlled territory in Colombia only satisfied 2). Between Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, Iraq was obviously the least difficult target for invasion/overthrow and one for which there was no realistic prospect of internal regime collapse, as there was/is for Iran and NK. Unlike NK Iraq was also not considered a buffer state in its sphere of influence by any great military power.

The nature of the security threat did not require that post-invasion Iraq become Switzerland to resolve it. Improvement to the level of non-hostile South American junta would have been adequate. That sort of limited improvement would not be worth a million lives but still would be worth some. Which brings up point 2)

2) While you are correct to emphasize the length of time required to establish a non-tyrannical government and more importantly the social foundations of a free society, you are setting the bar way too high on social changes, both in terms of what is achievable and what justifies continued military occupation. Furthermore, as other commenters have noted, it sets a much more terrifying precedent of imposing cultural values by force than does military invasion to resolve international security threats.

Japan c. 1960 was not exactly a socially progressive place. Should we have maintained the military occupation for another 20 years just to ensure women got a fair shake in the job market? Of course not. Had such a change been imposed militarily it would not necessarily be as durable, because the fact of foreign imposition would have reduced its perceived legitimacy. Legitimacy comes from self-determination and consent. Once a country has reached the point where everyone has agreed to resolve disputes within an agreed political system rather than by attempting to overturn it, then continued military occupation loses its moral justification. You’re an economist-think at the margin. You reach the point of diminishing returns on continued occupation far before you achieve the full slate of social changes you want to see. Contemporary OECD-level physical security for outgroups is admirable goal, but if you only get to the level of, say, rural India, would it still be morally acceptable to maintain a military occupation? I’d say not. Paternalistic imperialism does have a place in the world, but it’s not that big a place.

3) Again, a problem with your argument is any consideration of thinking at the margin. Granted, it’s formulated as a typical political argument and marginal thinking is rare in those, but a steelman should be an argument that comes closest to convincing you, and you’re an economist entirely comfortable with at-the-margin logic. Suppose that your tradeoffs when invading/occupying Iraq are (I’m not saying this is actually the case, just for the sake of argument) 1,000 deaths to create Yemen, 5,000 to create early-90s Colombia, 50,000 to create Pinochet’s Chile, 500,000 to create postwar Japan, and 1,000,000 to create a part-Singapore/part-Switzerland/part-Dutch/part-Vermont Libertarian paradise, all with commensurately increasing lengths of occupation. Even if the Libertarisn paradise is your ideal preferred outcome it’s not obvious the sacrifice in lives is justifiable past the margin of Pinochet. Obviously those numbers are all made up, but when considering a lengthy occupation you should have some sort of expectation as to what the lives/time/resulting outcome tradeoffs looks like.

Now your 1,000,000 American lives number was just as made up as mine were, and it’s simply preposterous. The actual number in Iraq totaled around 5-6,000. In the 90’s, Clinton was operating on casualty expectations of 10,000-20,000 when considering war with North Korea over its nuclear program. Multi-year wars against real militaries in Vietnam and Korea involved deaths on the order of 50,000. 1 million deaths would be larger than the entire active-duty Army. Using a number that large would also make hash of the (correct) argument that the initial military invasion of Iraq would be comparably easy. It’s not a bad-but-in-the-ballpark bad estimate, it’s bad by 2 orders of magnitude.

Now, it’s not entirely clear from the context, but that 1 million number seems to imply substantial domestic civilian deaths suffered in response to retaliatory terrorist attacks. If that’s the case it gets the security argument 180 degrees backwards. The security case for invading was that mass-casualty terrorist attacks were something the US was already exposed to, and that by invading Iraq we would reduce rather than increase the risks of suffering them by (see point 1) denying terrorist groups territory in which to freely organize and a potential state sponsor. A version of that argument was put forward back in 2003 under the name of “flypaper theory”, positing that given a certain amount of ineradicable violent hatred of the US it was better such would-be terrorists be engaged in Iraq by professional military rather than policed domestically with all the surveillance-state methods the latter strategy would necessitate. Of course as it turned out we got the Iraq invasion, some amount of surveillance state, and a campaign of systematic drone assassinations, so unless you have access to a lot of highly classified information there’s probably not a good way to delineate which (or in what proportion) gets to claim success for the lack of successful major terror attacks since 9/11. Given that the surveillance state and drone assassinations do not offer the prospect of freeing a country from a monster like Saddam Hussein it’s not obvious those are morally superior even if they directly kill far fewer people.

The bottom line is that the nation-building, society-changing goal was, and properly was, secondary to the security goal. It existed and was made and believed in (including by myself), but only because the security argument for deposing Saddam Hussein militarily would create the obvious problem of “and then replace him with… what?” The nation-building goal was from both a moral and strategic perspective the proper answer to that question, but it was not the fundamental reason to invade in the first place. We didn’t fight WW2 for the purpose of creating free and prosperous West Germany and postwar Japan, we did it to destroy what preceded them. Neither was the creation of a free and prosperous Iraq the purpose of the invasion (nor would it have sufficed morally had Iraq not also been an international security threat), but conditional on invasion to remove Saddam Hussein as a security threat such a secondary goal was obviously superior to the alternatives.

Plucky, I’m struggling to see how Iraq satisfied

(2) historical use or support for terrorism as state policy

except in the most peripheral of ways (unless you mean internally terrorizing the populace).