More Pretexts

by digby

In reference to my post below about Bush and Blair casually throwing around possible pretexts for the war, Jonathan at A Tiny Revolution pointed me to a post he wrote almost a year ago in which he showed that this was openly discussed at the time by none other than the likes of liberal hawk hero, Kenneth Pollack:

…The Threatening Storm by Kenneth Pollack was the book all good liberal hawks claimed had convinced them we just HAD to invade Iraq. And Pollack spoke about this strategy quite openly.

And yet as far as I can tell not a single member of the media pointed out how weird this was. (Of course, it’s likely most of the people touting The Threatening Storm never bothered to read it.)

Specifically, Pollack writes about this in the “Case for an Invasion” chapter. He explains we have to invade Iraq because of Saddam’s relentless pursuit of nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, other countries refuse to recognize this grave, grave danger. So in order to build as large a coalition as possible, we need some help from Iraq:

Click the link to see Pollacks explicit advice that the government use covert action provoke Saddam into retaliation so that we might invent a cassus belli. Pollack patiently explains,however, that even if we are unable to manufacture a proper pretext, we must invade anyway.

This was the reasonable liberal position, you’ll recall. Those of us who were against the war because it made no sense were so beyond the pale that we didn’t even merit a mention. Those who argued that invasion was unnecessary to contain the threat were relegated to obscure foreign policy journals. Those who said that it was counterproductive were called appeasers. Kenneth Pollack represented the “respectable” liberal position — and he argued quite openly that the government should invent a pretext to invade Iraq — and if that proved impossible we had to invade anyway.

And nobody said a word. Of course, his book was nearly hysterical in its threat assessment, so the idea of having to create a pretext to invade another nation seemed a small thing to some, I suppose. (The NYRB didn’t mention it.) But why did no one note that the fact the US could not make its case straightforwardly may just have meant that it didn’t actually … have a case?

After excerpting Pollack’s blithe list of potential phony pretexts, Jonathan concludes with this observation — one that really takes the cake and shows how intellectually bankrupt the liberal hawks were:

The best part is that later ON THE SAME PAGE Pollack piously explains “the administration needs to do an honest job explaining to the American people… why the United States needs to undertake this effort.”

So, there you have it: we’re going to invade no matter what, but we should try to come up with some pretext, all the while being honest about why we’re invading. If you’re capable of believing that makes any sense whatsoever, you’ll be a welcome member of the US foreign policy establishment.

9/11 changed everything. It made people stupid.

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