{"id":98,"date":"2005-06-19T10:31:20","date_gmt":"2005-06-19T14:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=98"},"modified":"2006-11-02T10:28:59","modified_gmt":"2006-11-02T14:28:59","slug":"worth-it-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"Worth it or not"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that some on the right have concluded the obvious\u2013the Iraq was a mistake in its inception and in its execution\u2013a new argument has appeared on the scene. It\u2019s not a new argument, of course, it\u2019s an old one dressed up to fit current circumstances. It goes something like this. For those, like John Kerry, who say the Iraq was not worth it, we have to ask what the costs of leaving Saddam in power would have been. We see a variation on this argument in Sunday\u2019s *Washington Post.* Short of saying that the invasion was worth it, Robert Kagan<\/a> revives the rhetorically effective 2004 Republican campaign strategy of citing the opinions of Clinton-era policy types as evidence that Saddam would have gotten worse if left unchecked. And that\u2019s just the thing. For serious and responsible world leaders\u2013some of them perhaps French\u2013the question was never the one that was thrust on them by bifurcating American hawks: <\/p>\n

>go to war against Saddam and remove him from power<\/p>\n

or<\/p>\n

>trust that he will no longer be an evil person and do nothing (or some variation of the status quo).<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s overly pedantic to point out that between these two false alternatives lies a range of possibilities. Even if the status quo was not keeping weapons out of Saddam\u2019s hands (and it was\u2013by the way\u2013he didn\u2019t have any WMDS; and he barely had an army with any will to fight, least of all invade a neighbor), there were still many options short of an Anglo-American invasion. The depressing thing about Kagan\u2019s piece is that Bush\u2019s silly dichotomy\u2013something for which he has a marked tendency (cf., “you are either with us or with the terrorists”)\u2013resurfaces in the calm light of what otherwise might seem to be careful historical analysis. But it\u2019s not careful or historical\u2013it\u2019s simply regurgitated pro-invasion talking points that were no more cogent the day they were uttered than they are today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that some on the right have concluded the obvious\u2013the Iraq was a mistake in its inception and in its execution\u2013a new argument has appeared on the scene. It\u2019s not a new argument, of course, it\u2019s an old one dressed up to fit current circumstances. It goes something like this. For those, like John Kerry, … Continue reading Worth it or not<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,2,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-false-dichotomy","category-op-ed-writers","category-robert-kagan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}