Would you have voted for the Iraq War?

[bedstuy]

I can't say one way or the other because my opinion on war and the use of US ground troops was so profoundly shaped by Iraq. 

Well, what does the range of plausible counterfactuals look like? Not much better, unless American deaths are the only ones that count.

If you're the American government, American lives ought to count much more than Iraqi lives.  I think the counterpoint to what you're saying is this, you don't use American lives and trillions of dollars to test your theories about how it might impact the future.  You pull the trigger if you know what the mission is and are confident that the US military can accomplish it.  The problem with Iraq was that US troops could never accomplish the mission because completion of the mission was dependent on the Iraqi political situation.

[bedstuy]

Well, what does the range of plausible counterfactuals look like? Not much better, unless American deaths are the only ones that count.

If you're the American government, American lives ought to count much more than Iraqi lives.  I think the counterpoint to what you're saying is this, you don't use American lives and trillions of dollars to test your theories about how it might impact the future.

If we actually followed the decision rule that you suggest - i.e. "don't use American lives and trillions of dollars to test your theories about how it might impact the future" - the result would be total paralysis. Your counterpoint is a valid critique of any major policy decision. It leads us to the absurd conclusion that we should always avoid making major decisions, so it's not a compelling objection.

You're missing a big distinction.  You use the military to accomplish military objectives.  If you don't have a military objective and you just want to see how it shakes out in the future, it's too risky.  And, it's incredibly unfair to the military to put them in a situation where they're just waiting for political progress to eventually happen, while they're occupying a country.  "In the long-run, this might be good," just doesn't cut it.

You say that as if the US had nothing to do with the political situation in Iraq prior to the Iraq War. But our government was already deeply implicated in Iraqi politics, and had been since at least the time of the Gulf War. If I had to identify our government's single greatest failure with regard to Iraq, it would be in 1991, when George Bush Sr. did nothing to support the uprisings against Saddam Hussein.

By the time we invaded Iraq, we had (1) dropped bombs within its borders multiple times over the previous decade; (2) subjected it to sanctions that crippled its economy and reversed the state of human development by at least twenty or thirty years; and (3) openly encouraged opposition groups to overthrow its government, only to let that government crush that rebellion and kill tens of thousands of our supposed allies. You don't have to be a liberal internationalist to conclude that the United States had incurred an obligation toward Iraqis by the time of the Iraq War.

I just don't buy that understanding of international relations.  Iraq was screwed over by their corrupt, stupid, aggressive government that kept invading their neighbors.  We didn't force them to invade Iran or Kuwait.  We didn't force them to gas their own people, support terrorism or develop WMDs.  It sucks for the Iraqi people, but that's how it works, the leaders make the policy and the people suffer.   

[bedstuy]

Well, what does the range of plausible counterfactuals look like? Not much better, unless American deaths are the only ones that count.

If you're the American government, American lives ought to count much more than Iraqi lives.  I think the counterpoint to what you're saying is this, you don't use American lives and trillions of dollars to test your theories about how it might impact the future.

If we actually followed the decision rule that you suggest - i.e. "don't use American lives and trillions of dollars to test your theories about how it might impact the future" - the result would be total paralysis. Your counterpoint is a valid critique of any major policy decision. It leads us to the absurd conclusion that we should always avoid making major decisions, so it's not a compelling objection.

You're missing a big distinction.  You use the military to accomplish military objectives.  If you don't have a military objective and you just want to see how it shakes out in the future, it's too risky.  And, it's incredibly unfair to the military to put them in a situation where they're just waiting for political progress to eventually happen, while they're occupying a country.  "In the long-run, this might be good," just doesn't cut it.

I don't entirely disagree with this, but it's not relevant to a "with hindsight" hypothetical. As I said earlier, I doubt that I would have voted for the war in 2002.

No, that's true.  I think it's hard to put yourself in the same mental place that most people were in in 2003.  There was this attitude of "something has to be done!"  That mixed with the patriotism and fear created by Bush's popularity and the 2002 midterm win was extremely powerful.

Even though we don't want those political and emotional motivations to matter, they do matter for politicians.