Just STFU, Chait

Once Upon a Time…

Just STFU, Chait

Oh, Jonathan Schwarz! Yoo-hoo! You, sir, are a prevaricator!

That’s what I first thought when I read this post,
and the excerpt from Jonathan Chait’s latest column that Jonathan
Schwarz included. “No,” methinketh, “Chait couldn’t possibly have said that! That [to use Jonathan S.’s apt phrase] is dangerously insane!”

But then I thinketh on it more. “Jonathan S. is one smart guy. I mean, really smart. (And funny! Never forget the funny. Buy his book.) He couldn’t have misread Chait that badly, even if Chait is
dangerously insane.” So I read Chait’s column. Chait actually, truly,
as real as the blinding pain in my head when I contemplate the fact
that Chait is a columnist published in the freakin’ Los Angeles Times and Jonathan S. and I aren’t, said it. Chait burbles:

[Jonathan]
Schell insisted [in 1990] that we could force Iraq to leave Kuwait with
sanctions alone, rather than by using military force. But the years
that followed that war made it clear just how impotent that tool was. Saddam
Hussein endured more than a decade of sanctions rather than give up a
weapons of mass destruction program that turned out to be nonexistent.
If sanctions weren’t enough to make him surrender his imaginary
weapons, I think we can safely say they wouldn’t have been enough to
make him surrender a prized, oil-rich conquest.

[Irrelevant
note to self: Why is everyone in this post named “Jonathan”? Well,
except Saddam. And me. Does this mean anything?]

Read Jonathan S. on these burbles from The Snake Pit. I have a few comments of my own to add.

Let’s take Chait’s deeply offensive opening paragraph:

I
DON’T WANT to accuse American doves of rooting for the United States to
lose in Iraq because I know they love their country and understand the
dire consequences of defeat. But the urge to gloat is powerful, and
some of them do seem to be having a grand time in the wake of being
vindicated.

The magnanimity toward “American doves” is
overpowering, like the stench of rotting corpses. And that, you
miserable son of a bitch, is the point. Those of us who opposed the war and occupation of Iraq wanted to avoid all the unnecessary
deaths and maimings that have resulted from our actions, and from our
damnable “war of choice.” Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and
tens of thousands of Americans are dead and maimed because of what we
have done. Most of us don’t give a damn about gloating: we want the killing to stop. We wanted it never to begin.

Speaking only for myself, I disavow the term “dove,” since it is obviously intended only as a smear. If Chait means to denote pacifism,
I am not aware of any significant public figure who opposed the Iraq
war whom it would fit. There may be one or two, but they don’t readily
leap to mind. I recognize that war is sometimes necessary, although
extremely rarely. Most of the wars the United States has fought in the
last 60 years were entirely unnecessary — including Korea,
Vietnam and, certainly and absolutely, Iraq. (If we extend the time
line farther into the past insofar as unnecessary and deleterious U.S.
involvement is concerned, the list of unnecessary wars must begin with
World War I, which led to most of the other conflicts of the twentieth
century, and the effects of which still reverberate around the world
today, most especially in the Middle East.) For the ten millionth time:
Iraq did not attack us. Iraq did not threaten us. Both propositions
were entirely clear before the first soldier set foot in Iraq. Not one
of the deaths, and not one of the damaged lives, need have occurred.
And they should not have occurred, if one gives a damn at all about people’s lives.

The
primary motives behind Chait’s column are transparently clear: first
and foremost, he is desperately afraid that he and the many other
pundits similarly situated might actually suffer entirely deserved
consequences for having been so profoundly wrong about this foreign
policy catastrophe. This just fate is one Chait is absolutely
determined to avoid. So he is similarly desperate to denigrate and
disparage anyone who dares to call him to account. You can sense the
tremors of anxiety that wrack Chait’s body, and the sweat that pours
off him like a torrent. Think of Albert Brooks’s on-air breakdown in Broadcast News. Chait’s column is laughably pathetic. The Los Angeles Times should be mortified to have published it.

In his final paragraphs, Chait reveals that — despite his claims to the contrary, and just like Andrew Sullivan — he has learned precisely nothing from this ongoing debacle, one whose consequences will be felt for decades:

There
are many lessons to be absorbed from Iraq. We’d be foolish not to
absorb them; only the most dense war supporter has come away from the
experience unhumbled. But the failure of a criminally negligent
administration to carry out a highly challenging rebuilding task in the
most hostile part of the world does not teach us everything we need to
know about the efficacy of military power.

Of course we’ll learn lessons from Iraq. I’m worried that we’ll learn too much.

The
highlighted sentences are critical. Chait’s reference to “a criminally
negligent administration” falls within the ambit of the first major
error I discussed here: “Trapped in the Wrong Paradigm.”
Chait does not object to the fact that we began an immoral and illegal
war of aggression, in defiance of international law and minimal norms
of conduct abroad. He objects only to the fact that the occupation has
been managed “incompetently.” If it had been managed “well,” he would
have no objection at all. War criminals have been hanged for less.

The other critical phrase is this one: “the efficacy of military power.”
And there is the awful truth: what Chait seeks to preserve above all
else is positive belief in “the efficacy of military power.” More
directly: whenever he and the other hawks again decide the time is
right, he wants to be sure they can do it again.

That’s all. That’s the whole thing. They want to do it again.
Maybe not next year, but sometime. Less than three decades separate the
final withdrawal from Vietnam from the invasion of Iraq. We were
supposed to have “learned” the lesson about aggressive, non-defensive
wars from Vietnam. We didn’t. And the hawks are determined that the
lesson will escape us once more, even after Iraq.

Whether it’s
Iran, North Korea, or somewhere else, they’ll tell you the next war is
necessary for our self-defense, just as they did about Iraq. It won’t
be true next time either, just as it wasn’t true in the case of
Vietnam, Iraq or World War I. But they are determined to be able to do
it again.

No one is “gloating,” Chait. We want only one thing:
we want you to stop preaching about the glories of war, and “the
efficacy of military power.” We want you to stop killing people and
ripping bodies apart when you don’t have to. With very, very rare
exceptions, you never have to.

To put it more simply: we
want you and the other warmongers to shut the hell up. Since you won’t
and because your “dangerously insane” burbles unaccountably continue to
see the light of day, we want to make sure that fewer and fewer people
listen to you, or believe one word you write or speak.

May the day come when no one listens to you at all. May it come very, very soon.

posted by Arthur Silber