Climbing Mount Improbable

No, it's the corollary to the "One Percent Doctrine": if any wacko could, under any circumstances, envision a successful outcome, a policy decision becomes mandatory. Otherwise we lack will. See also Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics.

So Chait gives Sullivan the out he's always desparately grasping at. Yawn.....

Just to be pedantic, let's review the run-up to Schlieffen Plan, 2003 edition:

1) Iraq had essentially lost two disastrous, back to back wars. In neither one did it exhibit either great military competence, or especially motivated troops. Military threat? Not hardly.

2) It controlled neither its own airspace, nor large swathes of its own territory. In addition, military defeat and sanctions left it economically moribund. Likelihood of secretly mounting a large industrial effort like, say, a nuclear weapons program? About nil.

3) It was and is, to us, a profoundly alien society. Customs, grievances, even hand gestures would be utterly unfamiliar to Americans. No war advocate, certainly no really vocal and prominent war advocate, knew enough Arabic to even read a Baghdad traffic sign. Let's not forget that the people we were going to use as street-level diplomats would be, in the main, high-school educated 19 year olds from the least cosmopolitan parts of the country -- you know, the kind of people Sullivan and Chait and Beinart et al don't like to spend much time with.

4) Save for the UK, countries with whom we'd had strong and mutually productive alliance for decades weren't enthused about invading Iraq. The eagerness with which Rumsfeld and Cheney and such tossed their counsel aside maybe butresses the incompetence argument, but in any case, their skittishness should have told us something. Hint: It wasn't because, deep down, they all hate America so much.

5) Even if a collective security expedition against Iraq was really necessary, there was no compelling strategic reason why it had to start in Spring 2003. There were silly arguments floating around about the dreaded Mesopotamian summer. Here it is, three years later, and the boys are still spending their summers in Iraq. Evidently Chait and Sullivan and their ilk are surprised by this.

6) There were many, many reasons to doubt the Bush gang's competence and integrity before the war ever started. In particular, the disinfo effort to "sell" the war showed a kind of slipshod amateurishness that, for me at least, was jaw-dropping. If a punitive action against Saddam was necessary, only a fool would think that Bush and Cheney were up to the job.

7) Again, if invading Iraq was really so vital, better by far to be honest -- with the country, and with themselves -- about the actual costs. Instead, Bush and his Krewe sold a painless, cost-free war, thereby all but guaranteeing inadequate resources and ultimate disillusionment. I suppose this is what the disingenuous "incompetence" excuse hangs on. But it's a little like saying, "Sure, we're homeless now, but if I'd bet the mortgage on black, instead of 18, we could've paid the rent for a year! So the Atlantic City approach to fiscal management is still a sound idea. Implementation details are for technicians and other menials to worry about."

There are lots more items in this list, but these are the arguments that convinced me, in 2003, that Iraq would be a disaster. In 2003, before a shot was fired, it failed the simplest strategic test: It would result in a situation with no good options -- where we've been for the last three years.

Guys like Chait and Beinart and Sullivan are definitive idiots for 1) not seeing this at the time, and 2) still, today, playing their bullshit special pleading games.

Was the Iraq War likely to suceed?

It's been my view since before the invasion that, given the invasion strategy, success was highly unlikely. It was clear before the invasion that Iraq was made up of opposing religious and tribal factions that had been suppressed by Saddam. These groups had no history of working together or trust for each other. The only reasonable expectation was that once the military force that Saddam was using to supress them was removed, there would be violence -- you didn't need a history degree or even anything other than average intelligence to see that -- so the only possibility of building a government where the groups would work together intead of attacking each other would have been to have a large military force to prevent the groups from attacking each other -- and the oppressive military force would have needed to stay in place for a sufficient time (years) that the opposing groups could (1) learn to trust each other, and (2) learn that power could be achieved through political means rather than by physical force.

Compare Afghanistan where there was an existing "Northern Coalition" -- i.e., the opposing factions had already learned over a period of years that they could work together against a common enemy, and could trust each other. But that trust came only after a period of years.

It made things even worse that our plan excluded international decision makers. Bush demanded that the US be in charge of everything. Again compare Afghanistan where the entire international community was involved in how to form a new government. The significant issue is whether the citizens can trust their new government.

So given the plan which dictated minimal troops and the US being the "decider", chances of success were significantly below 50/50 (recall the statement from France to the effect that Mr. Bush would find winning the peace much more difficult than winning the war).

I don't think any administration smart enough to make the Iraq War a success would have invaded Iraq in the first place...

Actually, using the 1% doctrine and Bayes Theorem, we can construct a model where we can determine the odds of a WMD terrorist attack if we remove Saddam from power (imagine we're doing this exercise BEFORE the Iraq war, when it might have done some good).

Let's say there was indeed a 1% probability that terrorists would acquire a nuke or bioweapon or other WMD and wipe out a U.S. city (which is basically what Cheney's 1% doctrine suggested--that if there is a 1% chance of this happening, we have to act as if it were a certainty unless we take premptive action.) Let's call this Pr(A)--the probability that A (a WMD terrorist attack) will occur.

Let's also say that if we invade Iraq, there is a 100% chance of Saddam's regime falling. This we call Pr(B), with B being the successful end of Saddam's government.

Let's finally say that given a terrorist nuking or gassing or germing a U.S. city, we would have definitely responded by taking out Saddam's regime, which I certainly believe would have been true. (Fortunately we never had to test this.) And this is Pr(B|A), the probability of B given A, and this probability is 100%.

Given all this, we can apply Bayes theorem to find out what the chances of terrorists successfully attacking a U.S. city with a WMD given that we've taken Saddam's regime out. This is Pr(A|B), or the probability of A given B.

Perversely (as is often the case with Bayes' Theorem), the probability of us getting nuked is still 1%! So aside from the colossal mess we've made, we haven't really made ourselves safer from a WMD terrorist attack at all!

This is all "fun with numbers", but I think even if the administration had used incredibly sophisticated analysis and statistical models before the war, they would have arrived at the same conclusion--removing Saddam's regime made us no safer from a high-casualty terrorist attack than not taking Saddam out would have.

[Still, it seems to be that before launching a war of choice, you're going to want some better odds of success than "not necessarily doomed."]

Especially because they will tell you that 'the consequences of failure in Iraq is just too horrible to contemplate, so we must stay the course", etc. If failure is too horrible to contemplate, shouldn't you be pretty DAMN sure you're going to succeed before you go in?

I don't think any administration smart enough to make the Iraq War a success would have invaded Iraq in the first place...

There's that...and the high probability that a plan for the invasion which could have worked would have been an instant political non-starter (double, or more, the troops; open ended, expensive comittment; mulitlateralism selling the Buchanan wing on Democracy Whiskey Sexy [+pony], etc.)

Does anyone remember Sullivan saying before the war that it would be extremely difficult? Neither do I. It would have been quite the stance, acknowledging that it was a desparate crap shoot while simultaneously questioning the seriousness and patriotism of the war's opponents.

RWB -- would you run that numerical analysis by me one more time? I'm not following the logic; aren't you looking that the chances of Saddam being knocked off whether there's a 1% or a 100% chance of a terrorist attack, not the chances of a terrorist attack whether or not we knock off Sadam? Or was it all a spoof?

Yes, absent the corruption, I think there is some modest chance that we could have accomplished this thing that we had no compelling need to accomplish with only about, say, half the number of Iraqis murdered and US service personnel lost.

Yet I think somehow the bottom line political reality - that any attempted transition to democracy is Iraq, no matter how it was managed, was bound to involve the subjugation of the Sunni minority to Shiite majority rule - would have occasioned some variation on the current violence.

Or, you could do the short form. If, after invading, we had taken steps to strengthen and support the existing socialistic secular government of Iraq, tapping the strengths of the very advanced Iraqi population, we would have had a lot of support for the restoration of essential services. And if there's one thing we know about the modern world, it is that people will leave a tribe in a minute if that's how they get hot running water and airconditioning.

Face it, Iraq after Saddam was like Germany after Hitler, and had a lot of people who were fed up with how their natural talents and resources had been wasted.

The problem is not in the stars, it is in us. Our tribal fundamentalist-religion corrupt government looked for, and easily found, counterparts in post-Saddam Iraq. We have met the enemy and he is us.

After Saddam was toppled (and probably before), the Bush thugs immediately treated the situation in Iraq the way Enron treated California: as a way to make lots of money. The speed with which that happened strongly suggests (it convinces me) that making money off of a chaotic Iraq was, in fact, one of the purposes of the war itself.

Subsequently, the protraction of the war permitted his handlers and toads to paint George W as a "war president" with all of the allowances and domestic leverage that provides. Sounds like another reason for the war to me.

Since both of those -- making money and passing domestic legislation -- have come to pass, how is George W (and handlers and toads) suppose to feel that the Iraq War hasn't been a success? HIS purposes have been realized in buckets.

Barry asked: "RWB -- would you run that numerical analysis by me one more time? I'm not following the logic; aren't you looking that the chances of Saddam being knocked off whether there's a 1% or a 100% chance of a terrorist attack, not the chances of a terrorist attack whether or not we knock off Sadam? Or was it all a spoof?"

Well, it was mostly a spoof, but Bayes Theorem exists and it would work more or less the way I said, given the probabilities I proposed.

Bayes theorem states Pr(A|B)=Pr(B|A)Pr(A)/Pr(B), or the probability of A happening given that B has happened is equal to the probability of B happening given that A has happened times the probability of A happening divided by the probability of B happening.

I said that A is terrorists attacking a US city with a WMD, and assigned A a probability of 1%, because that famously is the threshold Cheney set for preemptive action.

B I said was the probability that if we attacked Iraq that we would successfully remove Saddam's government from power, and I said that was 100% (because everyone knew that Saddam's army would crumble). I proposed this because whatever Bush and co. said, that removing Saddam apparently was their only goal when they invaded Iraq. They didn't plan beyond that goal. But the REASON for removing Saddam was iniitally stated to be to prevent his actual or potential WMDs from falling in the hands of terrorists--in other words, to help prevent A. (I'm leaving aside the issue of dishonestly about WMDs here--let's assume for this thought experiment that military planners thought there was a slim chance that Saddam would acquire WMDs and supply them to terrorists, and therefore the "1% doctrine" or preemptive action is invoked.)

And the final assumption I made was that if terrorist had set off a WMD in an American city--let's say instead of flying planes into the WTC and Pentagon, they had smuggled a nuke into the Port of Houston and detonated it--would we still have been able to take out Saddam's government if we so desired, and what would our chances of success be? I say we would have done so and there would have been no chance of failure because Saddam couldn't stand up to the U.S. military. So Pr(B|A) is 100%.

So the question is, did B actually help prevent A? According to Bayes Theorem, no--even though we are guranteed success in removing Saddam's government if we choose (and obviously we were successful), the chance of terrorist WMD attack remains 1%, whether you take Saddam out or not.

I'm sure some logicians out there will pipe up with some flaw in this argument, and at the very least, it is way too simplified to model reality. But my gut tells me it's right! I don't feel any safer now that Saddam is gone--do you?

Barry asked: "RWB -- would you run that numerical analysis by me one more time? I'm not following the logic; aren't you looking that the chances of Saddam being knocked off whether there's a 1% or a 100% chance of a terrorist attack, not the chances of a terrorist attack whether or not we knock off Sadam? Or was it all a spoof?"

Well, it was mostly a spoof, but Bayes Theorem exists and it would work more or less the way I said, given the probabilities I proposed.

Bayes theorem states Pr(A|B)=Pr(B|A)Pr(A)/Pr(B), or the probability of A happening given that B has happened is equal to the probability of B happening given that A has happened times the probability of A happening divided by the probability of B happening.

I said that A is terrorists attacking a US city with a WMD, and assigned A a probability of 1%, because that famously is the threshold Cheney set for preemptive action.

B I said was the probability that if we attacked Iraq that we would successfully remove Saddam's government from power, and I said that was 100% (because everyone knew that Saddam's army would crumble). I proposed this because whatever Bush and co. said, that removing Saddam apparently was their only goal when they invaded Iraq. They didn't plan beyond that goal. But the REASON for removing Saddam was iniitally stated to be to prevent his actual or potential WMDs from falling in the hands of terrorists--in other words, to help prevent A. (I'm leaving aside the issue of dishonestly about WMDs here--let's assume for this thought experiment that military planners thought there was a slim chance that Saddam would acquire WMDs and supply them to terrorists, and therefore the "1% doctrine" or preemptive action is invoked.)

And the final assumption I made was that if terrorist had set off a WMD in an American city--let's say instead of flying planes into the WTC and Pentagon, they had smuggled a nuke into the Port of Houston and detonated it--would we still have been able to take out Saddam's government if we so desired, and what would our chances of success be? I say we would have done so and there would have been no chance of failure because Saddam couldn't stand up to the U.S. military. So Pr(B|A) is 100%.

So the question is, did B actually help prevent A? According to Bayes Theorem, no--even though we are guranteed success in removing Saddam's government if we choose (and obviously we were successful), the chance of terrorist WMD attack remains 1%, whether you take Saddam out or not.

I'm sure some logicians out there will pipe up with some flaw in this argument, and at the very least, it is way too simplified to model reality. But my gut tells me it's right! I don't feel any safer now that Saddam is gone--do you?

Barry asked: "RWB -- would you run that numerical analysis by me one more time? I'm not following the logic; aren't you looking that the chances of Saddam being knocked off whether there's a 1% or a 100% chance of a terrorist attack, not the chances of a terrorist attack whether or not we knock off Sadam? Or was it all a spoof?"

Well, it was mostly a spoof, but Bayes Theorem exists and it would work more or less the way I said, given the probabilities I proposed.

Bayes theorem states Pr(A|B)=Pr(B|A)Pr(A)/Pr(B), or the probability of A happening given that B has happened is equal to the probability of B happening given that A has happened times the probability of A happening divided by the probability of B happening.

I said that A is terrorists attacking a US city with a WMD, and assigned A a probability of 1%, because that famously is the threshold Cheney set for preemptive action.

B I said was the probability that if we attacked Iraq that we would successfully remove Saddam's government from power, and I said that was 100% (because everyone knew that Saddam's army would crumble). I proposed this because whatever Bush and co. said, that removing Saddam apparently was their only goal when they invaded Iraq. They didn't plan beyond that goal. But the REASON for removing Saddam was iniitally stated to be to prevent his actual or potential WMDs from falling in the hands of terrorists--in other words, to help prevent A. (I'm leaving aside the issue of dishonestly about WMDs here--let's assume for this thought experiment that military planners thought there was a slim chance that Saddam would acquire WMDs and supply them to terrorists, and therefore the "1% doctrine" or preemptive action is invoked.)

And the final assumption I made was that if terrorist had set off a WMD in an American city--let's say instead of flying planes into the WTC and Pentagon, they had smuggled a nuke into the Port of Houston and detonated it--would we still have been able to take out Saddam's government if we so desired, and what would our chances of success be? I say we would have done so and there would have been no chance of failure because Saddam couldn't stand up to the U.S. military. So Pr(B|A) is 100%.

So the question is, did B actually help prevent A? According to Bayes Theorem, no--even though we are guranteed success in removing Saddam's government if we choose (and obviously we were successful), the chance of terrorist WMD attack remains 1%, whether you take Saddam out or not.

I'm sure some logicians out there will pipe up with some flaw in this argument, and at the very least, it is way too simplified to model reality. But my gut tells me it's right! I don't feel any safer now that Saddam is gone--do you?

Sorry for the double post!

"This is why McCain, Warner, Graham, Powell and every decent, sane conservative with military experience refuse to give in. There is already clarity in the law, the Geneva Convention, and the McCain Amendment. What the Bush administration wants is to introduce vagueness to get away with exactly the same barabarism they have deploying illegally for the past five years. They must be stopped. And eventually, they must be prosecuted for war crimes." - A. Sullivan

Hmm.

"There were many, many reasons to doubt the Bush gang's competence and integrity before the war ever started. In particular, the disinfo effort to "sell" the war showed a kind of slipshod amateurishness that, for me at least, was jaw-dropping. If a punitive action against Saddam was necessary, only a fool would think that Bush and Cheney were up to the job."

Right. Chait, knowing who was responsible for prosecuting the war and how it is being sold, still supported it. The incompetence dodge just won't fly in his case.

If I were to assess to probabilities of success in Iraq, presuming efficient and well-intended US reconstruction, I think I would need a fairly deep understanding of Shia internals. Sistani wanted a majoritarian Shia gov't, but with fair Sunni inclusion. Sadr and Sadr city could have worked with Sunnis and Kurds. Hakim I think wanted SE Iraqi separatism all along. There was an early assassination of an important Shia politician. This leads me to believe there was always going to be intense factionalism within the Shia community, which would partly play itself by competing degrees of intransigence and Sunni oppression and opposition to Kurdish independence.

A unified peaceful Iraq was likely impossible, without unacceptable amounts of repression.

Mr. Lemieux --
Your own blog makes the excellent point that, if a scheme really has any merit, it generally isn't necessary to convince people with a a barrage of lies and obfuscation.

Of course, with respect to the lunatic tax cuts, Sullivan has already admitted that he always knew that Bush was playing fast and loose with the truth. But that disinfo campaign was necessary for the greater good, or something. Maybe Chait has a similar "excuse" about Iraq?

All these clowns -- Sullivan, Chait, Beinart, the rest -- should shut up and enlist. They've got connections. They can surely get whatever waivers are necessary to wear the uniform.

Sure, success was impossible given the lack of resources, planning, and competence the Bush administration brought to the war.

But in theory, I suppose, if you had an arbitrarily large army, reconstruction fund, and an Arabic-speaking civil affairs corps, and stayed there as long as necessary, you could colonize Iraq and beat it into some kind of civilized shape.

The question then is what would it cost to put together a successful colonization effort, and would the benefits be worth the cost.

Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld invaded Iraq because they stupidly believed it would be easy and it could be done very cheaply. It's costing us $1-2 trillion. A successful effort might cost, say, $10 trillion over 20 years. That's about 5% of our GDP. We normally spend about 3.7% of our GDP on the military.

Is it worth the cost? Iraq has 112 BBL of proven reserves, at say $60 a barrel, that's $6.6 trillion. Almost enough to pay for the colonization.

I find it interesting how Andrew, yourself and others consider our iraq involvement "doomed". I don't really disagree, but I think that you guys may be guilty of living in a room with similar voices. An awful lot of Americans swallow the WH tripe and think that we're going to pull this thing off.

I say this because when we start mouthing lines like "George Bush is an idiot" "The Iraq occupation is doomed", or "The Democrats will retake the House" as a forgone conclusion, a dismissive arrogance creeps into our voices and it seems like we loose some of our critical/analytical edge. So beware, George Bush's true believers, coupled with those who back him because they don't think that Dems offer a credible alternative can still win in October and allow this ordeal to continue for another couple years, until it ends up an even bigger weight around the neck of the next presidency.

"Not necessarily doomed". That's sort of midway between, oh, "Might possibly have worked out if the laws of nature and all of human history had been totally different" and "Conceivably might be redeemed by a civilization vastly superior to our own." Something like that?

>Berkeley Choate said "I don't really disagree, but..."

Hmmm, after sitting through numerous meetings and hearing the phrase repeated over and over, I finally learned the "I don't disagree with..." invariably meant "I do disagree with... but I'm not ready to come out and say it yet". Since then I've had a lot of chuckles with friends whenever we hear anyone saying that.

Can Bush still hurt the US? Damn straight he can. Look at the idiotic debate over terrorist trials. The Bush Administration relied on secret evidence to conclude that there were WMDs in Iraq. Security prevented revealing the evidence to anyone but everyone was assured the evidence was compelling. Result; no WMDs. So now bush says we must use secret evidence to convict terrorists. Does anyone say "Hold on there. Your history with secret evidence doesn't exactly inspire confidence."?

Hello America; has anyone been paying attention?

But I digress. Just wanted to say you might want to stay away from that phrase "I don't disagree..."

RWB writes:
"So the question is, did B actually help prevent A? According to Bayes Theorem, no--even though we are guranteed success in removing Saddam's government if we choose (and obviously we were successful), the chance of terrorist WMD attack remains 1%, whether you take Saddam out or not.

I'm sure some logicians out there will pipe up with some flaw in this argument, and at the very least, it is way too simplified to model reality. But my gut tells me it's right! I don't feel any safer now that Saddam is gone--do you?"

I admire the mad, looking-glass logic! For the record, the demonstration works only because you've conflated the probability that we COULD take out Saddam with the probability that we actually DID. That's particularly clever because it appears that "because we could" was indeed the reason Bush and Rumsfeld took out Saddam. (Remember what the Dormouse said? "You might as well say that 'I breathe when I sleep' means the same thing as 'I sleep when I breathe.' -- and with Dormouse, that was pretty much the case.)

Staying in the looking-glass world, the republican logic before the war claimed that attacking Saddam reduced the chance that he would give WMDs to terrorists, which only made sense if he didn't yet have them! Yet they had to keep claiming that he did have them, and that now that we've attacked we can't find them because he's . . . what? Hidden them where only terrorists have access to them? Sent them to Syria where only a terror-supporting state has access to them? The mind reels.

Thanks
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