Odds

See Beutler and Klein for some critiques of Brooks on McCain. Let me add my own. Brooks writes that McCain thinks "he has an obligation to seek victory as long as there is any chance of it." One hears this sort of thing now and again, and it's worth pointing out that it involves a pretty perverse moral calculus. If we should prefer any option that holds out any chance of "victory," no matter how high the price of that option or how small the odds of success, then the McCain doctrine must hold that the costs of defeat in Iraq are literally infinite.

That, of course, is absurd. Nations sometimes really do find themselves in wars where their survival qua nation is imperiled. They also sometimes find themselves in situations where the price of defeat will be the literal eradication of the population. Iraq, however, is not anything like either of those cases. What's more, it so obviously doesn't fit either of those models that one gets the sense that McCain, "the candidate who is the most substantive, most mature and most consistent," hasn't genuinely given any thought whatsoever to the strategic stakes in Iraq or the nature and purpose of America's overall policy in the region.

4/12/07 12:24PM del.icio.us this incoming links

Comments

Or in the words of another great foreign policy thinker, you've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em.

Posted by: JP on April 12, 2007 12:42 PM

If we should prefer any option that holds out any chance of "victory," no matter how high the price of that option or how small the odds of success

He means at the current level of cost to us. One would think that obvious to all, but apparently not.

Posted by: Al on April 12, 2007 12:52 PM

Nonsense Al. As every day goes by the costs to us increase. And the "surge" is making the costs increase at a faster rate. One would think that obvious to all, but apparently not.

Posted by: Brian on April 12, 2007 01:04 PM

And when DO we cut our losses, Al? 2012? 2027? 10,000 dead? 55,000 dead? On what foundation does this conviction rest that somehow Iraq won't be a flaming clusterfuck when we leave, if only we wait long enough and hope hard enough? Is this heartfelt naivete, or just naked political calculus that it's best to hold out until the Democrats are in charge, so you can blame 'em for your own bloody delusional incompetence?

If it's not worth any and all costs, then it's not worth maintaining a moderate level of involvement forever. All the Churchillian handwringing in the world can't cover up the fact that American forces will eventually leave Iraq and there will be fighting there after we leave, and somebody somewhere is going to have to make the decision to end this operation.

I have no great love for John Kerry, but he framed the pertinent question nicely. How do you ask someone to be the last man to die for a mistake?

I've heard a lot of callous, snotty, sarcastic dismissals of that question, but I've never heard an answer.

Posted by: LaFollette Progressive on April 12, 2007 01:06 PM

Hey, maybe the GAINS from winning in Iraq are infinite! Think about that one for a bit.

Posted by: mk on April 12, 2007 01:08 PM

For example, then we get to declare war on Syria!

Posted by: mk on April 12, 2007 01:11 PM

We've got to remember that the war in Iraq began as an "optional" war. It wasn't imperative to begin with.

It's like the bracket creep surrounding torture. We're offered the premise of the ticking bomb as justification, but there have been no ticking bomb scenarios and hundreds and thousands of the tortured.

Wars, as MY says, are not always to a country's benefit. I bet France wanted a mulligan on the Franco-Prussian War. The 100 Years War was a blunder all around. Ditto the War of 1812. And warriors don't always have the country's benefit at heart. (Too many to list.)

Posted by: Jeffrey Davis on April 12, 2007 01:11 PM

The Brooks column is odd in the way that so many Brooks columns are odd. If you lop off the last two paragraphs, it's actually pretty good. It portrays McCain as essentially honorable but doomed by his own blindness, which is a characterization I can buy.

Then it goes off the rails and suggests that McCain's stubborn consistency in the face of both the deep unpopularity of his views (conceivably laudable) and in the face of objective reality (not laudable at all) will someday compare favorably with all those fickle candidates who, you know, want to adjust our strategy to the situation on the ground.

Now as ever, journalists heart McCain.

Posted by: Adam on April 12, 2007 01:33 PM

I read Brooks' column this morning, before I'd had my first cuppa joe, thankfully, or I would have spewed it all over the couch. All I could think was how that column carries man-on-man metaphors to a whole new level. Leaving aside the policy specifics of McCain's Iraq policy (Joe Biden did a decent job of shooting them down, point by point, in his WaPo op-ed), what most offended me was Brooks' implication that no other politician running for President has thought through his/her position as deeply as McCain -- not Richardson or Biden, both of whom can boast foreign policy credentials more impressive than St. John's; not Brownback, who no longer tows the GOP line on Iraq; not Edwards, who had the good sense to apologize for his war-authorization vote; not Clinton, who is the impeccable embodiment of policy wonk. And what about other possible candidates, such as Gore and Hagel, both of whom served in Vietnam and both of whom understand the military as well as McCain (if not more so)?

No, in David Brooks' world, only John McCain thinks seriously about what we must do in Iraq, and why. Meanwhile, the rest of us pathetic, deluded masses can only look at today's events in Baghdad -- the suicide bomber who penetrated the Iraqi parliament building, the destroyed bridge over the Tigris -- and wonder why the media refuses to report on all the progress.

Posted by: brklynlibrul on April 12, 2007 01:49 PM

"McCain, "the candidate who is the most substantive, most mature and most consistent,""

Of course the most substantive, mature and consistent candidate isn't the only one who before the war was asking questions of how we secure the country and prevent the country from splitting along lines of identity. Of course the most consistent candidate isn't the only one who has been against the war from the start.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhpKmQCCwB8

Of course Obama isn't the candidate who best fits this bill in Brooks's Boboland. Obama isn't a fake Patio Man like McCain, so Obama can't be the best genuine candidate because he isn't pretending to be an exburb guy. Brooks's schtick is getting old. He can't deal with the fact he isn't Rambo or a red-meat guy, but instead teaches at Harvard Law School. It's like how Sartre convinced himself he was part of the French Underground.

Posted by: Reality Man on April 12, 2007 02:07 PM

One thing I would like to see addressed by the Dems more is "what are the consequences of pulling out?" I know it gives fodder for the GOP, its Bush's fault, yadda, yadda, yadda. That's all true, but I want to hear solutions too. What will be our policy towards Iraq once we withraw? What is our strategy to try to quell some of the violence in the Middle East? The sooner this war is over, the sooner we can begin to tackle some of these problems, but I'd like to have an idea of what we plan to do, rather than winging it like the Bush administration has been doing the last 6 years.

Posted by: Max on April 12, 2007 02:26 PM

If McCain, really thinks that "victory" is so essential, then he should call for the reinstatement of the draft and for us to send another 100,000 troops there for the next five to ten years. I think that such a policy would be sheer craziness, but I’d at least respect McCain as someone with the courage of his convictions. As it is he just seems delusional.

Posted by: RC on April 12, 2007 02:26 PM

I'm with RC: when the GOP leadership starts calling for a draft and instituting war taxes, then I'll believe they're serious about winning the war. Until then, they're just borrowing more money (and lives) to throw into a failed investment.

Posted by: jlw on April 12, 2007 02:50 PM

Exactly. Basically McCain is running on the idea that he is for keeping the war going, but not for doing anything substantial to raise the troop levels to win (if that would even be possible). He is the worst of both worlds.

Posted by: Reality Man on April 12, 2007 03:06 PM

Nations ...also sometimes find themselves in situations where the price of defeat will be the literal eradication of the population

Or a Democratic House, Senate, and White House, which is worse, at least if you think like the people running the joint.

Iraq was never a war so much as the world's most expensive campaign commercial.

Posted by: Davis X. Machina on April 12, 2007 05:45 PM

The conservative mantra of victory in Iraq gets funnier every time it is defended. If this is world war 4, if the terrorists will be attacking us on our shores if we are defeated, well, we certainly have a funny sense of priorities at the Pentagon. The huge majority of Pentagon directed funds are NOT spent on Iraq. Now, we could divert those funds. That would be fun. That would be the end of the Bush cult. Because diverting those funds from the perfectly useless and astronomically expensive military programs that the Pentagon desires would kick literally hundreds of thousands of highly paid workers in war-related industries out of their jobs. And at that point the suburban red state white male, the core of Bushydom, would kick. World war on terra is all very well, but how are you going to afford the payment on the two hummers if you aren't on the government make work dole?

All of which simply means that those who scream the loudest for the military to have its 'restrictions' taken off so it can win this war - of course, militarily - would also scream the loudest if anybody took them seriously. After all, if you aren't coding for some crazy battlefield robot scheme that will never be employed by the Pentagon in any conceivable war this country might fight - then you'd be out on your ass and you might have to sign up. Ugh.

That conservative ideology consists entirely of emotionally and vociferously advocating policies that you would not seriously want to be realized is why it is so easy for the rightwing to drift off to fantasyland.

Posted by: roger on April 12, 2007 09:49 PM

Wait a minute, folks. There's a difference between criticising Brooks for approving of an idea that Brooks attributes to McCain, and criticising McCain. I caught McCain's speech at the Virginia Military Institute. McCain's position was that the current plan was the right approach. He said that it might not succeed, because the plan depended in part on the actions of Iraqis, but that we should persue the plan even though there was no guarantee that it would succeed, because the cost of failing in Iraq was too high. So Matthew has a valid criticism of Brooks, but not of McCain.

My general impression of McCain's speech is that it contained an aweful lot of unsubstantiated assertions. It didn't convince me that McCain knows enough about the Middle East to be able to formulate an informed opinion on what we should do in Iraq.

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