Eric states his hope that the limits of the military option sorely noted by the American public in the aftermath of the Iraq war:

I actually think that, with some clarification, the thing that Darling fears is what I hope for. If Americans do not walk away from the Iraq invasion with an understanding of the limits, if not the counter-productiveness, of military intervention in many contexts (particularly the ill named "War on Terror"), then that would truly be a tragic blunder and an unsettling harbinger of mistakes to be repeated in the future. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that we should develop an across the board, knee-jerk prejudice against the use of military force when necessary, but we must lose this belief that military intervention is an effective solution in more ways than what is practical - or that it is an effective vehicle for mass social change.

I think that this is something of a red herring because the vast majority of the American public did not invade Iraq for the purpose of setting up a democratic state. That was seen as a tangible benefit and is something I think that the majority of Americans expect we do every time we invade a country, but that wasn't the rationale that got 70% of the American public into supporting the war. People went into the war with the belief that Saddam had to be removed for reasons x, y, and z, with a majority of the public debate focusing in and around the issue of WMDs. As a result, I wasn't terribly surprised when a large number of the Americans became dissatisfied to hear talk about the goal of the United States setting up a democratic state inside Iraq as the primary rationale for our presence there even if they supported such an outcome. By any reasonable standard, that's what is known in marketing as a bait-and-switch.

That said, a large number of people within policy-making circles (not just the neocons) did believe that a US invasion of Iraq offered the opportunity to set up a stable democracy in the Middle East and saw that as one of the major goals of a campaign against Saddam Hussein. The vast majority of them, near as I can tell, were rather up-front about this even as they also presented other rationales for his removal. Moreover, I would submit (and judging from his comments it seems that Eric came away with a very different impression of An End To Evil than I did) that even the most bloodthirsty of these folks have been sated by the realities of the war in Iraq.

Eric also assures us that we need not fear the more extreme aspects of an "Iraq Syndrome" with the following:

Nevertheless, I am confident that the American people would treat the next Afghanistan the same way - regardless of the onset of Iraq Syndrome. For all of this nation's virtues, and there are many, throughout its history America has never really shown an aversion to using force. After all, in the era of the "Vietnam Syndrome," in which America was supposedly so disillusioned by Vietnam that it was unwilling to project force around the globe, we engaged in military campaigns in Beirut, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, the Balkans in multiple versions, Somalia, the Persian Gulf - twice!, and Afghanistan. Not to mention proxy wars and "advisory roles" in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Afghanistan, numerous African nations, etc. In other words, don't fret about a gun shy America.

No offense, but his listing doesn't exactly inspire me for a number of reasons and perhaps offers me an attempt to clarify my concerns as far as an "Iraq Syndrome" is concerned. I agree with Eric that no American president is likely to turn away from a military confrontation like that which we were faced with against the Taliban after 9/11. Yet I think it is quite important to note that quite early on we confronted with a great deal of commentary to the effect that Afghanistan was the graveyard of empires, would be another Vietnam, and so on and so forth. As it happened, we were fortunate enough that Mullah Omar's medieval theocracy collapsed in fairly short order despite the apparent staying power of its remnants. However, it's important to note until about the time of Operation Anaconda in the spring of 2002, the overwhelming majority of the US casualties that occurred in Afghanistan were the result of accidents and the like. If you want a reason why the "Vietnam Syndrome" didn't further assert itself during the early stages of the fighting in Afghanistan, there you go.

Please don't misunderstand me, I think it's very good thing that the US didn't sustain major casualties in Afghanistan during the early stages of the fighting there, but the reason I bring that up is because I think it helps to capture the essence of what the Vietnam Syndrome is: when the going gets tough, the US gets out. An interesting experiment in alternate history would be what would public support for the war in Afghanistan have been had we lost 1,800+ troops there between the fall of 2001 and the spring of 2002, which is certainly plausible given the nation's history. Such things are of course unknowable, but I think it's an interesting mental exercise as far as the current conflict in Iraq is concerned. A number of conservative commentators have sought to address the issue of US casualties in Iraq by comparing them to US casualties during World War 2 and, if I think at least part of this (if I may engage in the same mass psychoanalysis that I condemned Nadezha for engaging in earlier) comes out of a broader desire to break free of the Vietnam narrative as it deals with US conflicts.

In any case, I think it's worth looking at the other conflicts that Eric mentioned as proof that America's willingness to flex its military might wasn't harmed by the Vietnam Syndrome. Yet it is worth noting that two of those conflicts (Lebanon and Somalia) were US defeats by any reasonable standard and are the primary reasons why al-Qaeda views the United States as not having the stomach for a long war. The conflicts in Grenada, Panama, and Haiti were all essentially biltzkriegs that ended long before any serious opposition could manifest in real-time to impact the conflict, while our intervention in the Balkans was confined to either peacekeeping in Bosnia or the bombing campaign over Kosovo. I'm not bemoaning these facts, as I think the end-result of American military intervention in each of these cases achieved a net good. Bombing Milosevic out of Kosovo, for instance, was undoubtably a major factor in removing Serbia as a regional enemy. But I think it's foolish to suggest that our bombing strategy in Kosovo wasn't even the tiniest bit impacted by the fear of a Vietnam (or, in probably a more relevant example, Somalia)-like situation developing there.

US aid to foreign regimes as means of dealing with their internal problems is something that I'm a bit more skeptical on since, having known the foreign officers of a number of different countries while like living at Fort Leavenworth, I am quite aware of their strengths and weaknesses and have learned to appreciate just how rare a thing it is for a nation to have a professional military and police force these days. The Pan-Sahel Initiative (which I think is one of the great unsung success stories of the administration) and its idea of training the elite units of local militaries up to par with our own so we don't have to deploy forces there to fight terrorists is one that has a great deal of appeal to me, though I would also note that it was those same US-trained units that proved all too effective in Uzbekistan when deployed against the people of Andijon.

Let me frame a hypothetical to illustrate the distinction of life post-Iraq, even post-Iraq failure. The ruling regime in Sudan is destabilized, and a radical Islamist regime takes over which provides sanctuary and succor to Al Qaeda. Then there is another major terrorist attack on US soil that originates from the Sudan-based Al Qaeda leadership. My expectation is that the American people would recognize that military intervention would be necessary, and if the intelligence was available and reliable, hopefully we could have intervened in the hypothetical Sudan before the terrorist attack ever occurred.

Agreed, though I think that a net bad thing that results from the US having been so spectacularly wrong with respect to Iraqi WMDs is that public cynicism towards preemptive action is now at an all-time low, parallel to how much of a cynical view people started to take towards government in general post-Watergate. To make a parallel example, suppose we went public (either later in this administration or during the following one) with electronic intercepts proving that Brigadier General Qassem Suleimani and Qods Force were plotting a worldwide attack together with al-Qaeda and Hezbollah that required precision-point bombings to thwart. Do you think the majority of the American public would buy it? The core of the anti-war movement certainly wouldn't.

After making what I assume is a thinly-veiled illusion to how he views the Iraq war (short form: it was a distraction that diverted critical resources away from the real conflict that needed to be fought), Eric then turns his attention to what he considers the World War IV option:

Part of this learning process must be to come to grips with the reality that a John Podhoretz, David Frum, Richard Perle, William Kristol, Weekly Standard-style World War IV - which envisions the United States marching from Iraq, to Iran, to Syria, and to other Muslim nations in between, "liberating" them, implanting democracy and expunging terrorism in the process is reckless beyond words. First of all, as even David Brooks has been forced to acknowledge, democracy doesn't necessarily prevent terrorism and, unfortunately, democratic nations (such as France, Spain, England, Italy, etc) produce jihadist terrorist too. Second, such nation building writ large, or even on a small scale, requires a confluence of luck, underlying institutional development, a willing populace, economic preconditions, internal pressure, and a host of other tangible and intangibles that are not easily brought about by external actors - let alone via the barrel of a gun. And that's just in the country that is the target of our largesse. Our own needs (financial, military, diplomatic, etc) must also enter the equation and limit these big dreams.

There's certainly a lot to discuss here, though as someone who occasionally writes for the Weekly Standard I feel more than a little obliged to defend them against what I think is a very different reading that Eric has of what the neocons want to accomplish than I do.

First of all, here is Eric's summation of An End To Evil:

The World War IV characterization itself tracks nicely with the bellicose manifesto An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror penned by David Frum and Richard Perle (Pat Buchanon's take here), which was one of the most radical formulations of a solution to the Islamist terrorist threat to date. In that book, the authors advocate a series of invasions beginning with Iraq, and moving on to Syria, Iran, North Korea, and possibly Saudi Arabia, Libya and elsewhere in the Middle East (although I would presume Libya would be dropped from the list at this juncture due to recent developments). Along the way, according to the authors, the US should jettison the UN, and treat France as an open adversary.

As one who has read An End To Evil on several occasions and even reviewed it over on my blog, that certainly wasn't the impression that I got from the book. They certainly defend the invasion of Iraq, but I don't recall any calls in the book for the invasion of the nations that Eric enumerates above. Rather, a short form of my understanding of what they want to achieve is as follows:

Iran - Democratic revolution via economic pressure, support of dissident groups, promotion of Western media, and denial of legitimacy.

North Korea - No easy solutions, but attempt to make a Second Korean War less destructive and in the short-term attempt to create a North Korean regime that is more subservient to the interests of Chinese realpolitick.

Saudi Arabia - Saudi monarchy might be reformed at some point, but the US should encourage separatism in the majority Shi'ite Eastern Province in order to take the oil and the cash that comes with it away from the Wahhabis.

These are certainly controversial options and I have my own opinions as to the feasibility of some of them, but I don't think that this is quite the same thing as calling for the invasion of Syria, Iran, North Korea, et al. But one needs to understand what all of these options that are being proposed actually are in order to adequately critique them. Similarly, the Podhoretz piece that Eric judges as "sounding of the alarm for the defenders of World War IV" strikes me as most being a long piece on US domestic politics with an endorsement of supporting democratic revolution in Iran (possibly contradicted to his later reference to a casus belli - you'd have to ask him) and a reluctant acknowledgement that we probably aren't going to get out of the nuclear issue with North Korea save through military intervention.

That said, let me deal with some of the more substantive points Eric is trying to make rather than defending my favorite policy writers:

First of all, as even David Brooks has been forced to acknowledge, democracy doesn't necessarily prevent terrorism and, unfortunately, democratic nations (such as France, Spain, England, Italy, etc) produce jihadist terrorist too.

No, it most certainly does not. On the other hand, I think there's a definite reason why for all our wonderful political polarization, the only acts of political violence in the United States are carried out by isolated groups of cranks and wierdos - and there was none of it following either the 2000 or 2004 elections. Anybody remember the Symbionese Liberation Army? The Order or its cheap sequel, the New Order? Posse Commitatus? FALN? I can go on, but my point is that these are not large groups, nor do they find the kind of support or infrastructure in the US that say, al-Qaeda does in much of the Middle East. Most European groups have a similar background - Armata Corsica only had a core of 30 members, ETA 20, Baader-Meinhof 20-40, Brigate Rosse 30, NTA 20, and so on. Now I'm not trying to underscore the threatening nature of these groups, but I do think it says something as to how stable democracies help societies to immunize themselves from political violence by solving problems at the ballot box rather than with guns and machetes.

I would submit that the reason why the democratic countries that Eric listed have produced jihadis are two-fold: a failure to assimilate sizeable Muslim immigrant communities (with the result being that they bring the political culture of the Middle East with them into Europe, honor killings and all) into the broader democratic culture or (and this in particular goes to the UK) an excessive tolerance for a species of political extremism that, to put it quite frankly, would be unthinkable among Europeans were it coming from the representative of some far-right organization rather than a member of an "acceptable" class of egrieved Third Worlders, for whom the legacy of European colonialism is abused as an excuse to prevent the authorities from acting against them.

Moreover, it strikes me as self-apparent that political violence is likely to hold far more appeal in authoritarian states where it is the only means with which to take action against the government. In such circumstances this appeal is extremely powerful in the Middle East and in order to understand why bin Laden's message carries such weight there, one need look no further (if I may once again be permitted to descend into geekism) than seeing why Magneto carries the weight he does among mutants in the fictional universe of Marvel Universe. We can list off the number of terrorists the US political environment has produced over the last 20 years, but does anyone really want to compare that number to those produced by the political environment any major Middle Eastern state during the same period?

Second, such nation building writ large, or even on a small scale, requires a confluence of luck, underlying institutional development, a willing populace, economic preconditions, internal pressure, and a host of other tangible and intangibles that are not easily brought about by external actors - let alone via the barrel of a gun. And that's just in the country that is the target of our largesse. Our own needs (financial, military, diplomatic, etc) must also enter the equation and limit these big dreams.

Indeed, and Cordesman documents in full how our conduct combined with Saddam's produced our current situation in Iraq as far as the first categories Eric lists off is concerned. The second categories are a little bit trickier to tabulate off-hand, though I think the Iraq war has made all three a lot more clearer for the current generation of policy-makers.

He then quotes Fukuyama approvingly on his observations that we are fighting a counter-insurgency both in Iraq and worldwide (a view also held by Michael Scheuer), though I will take issue with this conclusion that Eric draws:

... When you use military force, you inevitably alienate the people you are trying to influence and in turn greatly assist your enemies. In Afghanistan, this was a necessary evil - mitigated in many ways by the appearance of legitimacy and of a just cause, even in the Muslim world. In Iraq, we were greeted with suspicion, mistrust and animosity - a platform unable to sustain such grandiose plans. This was only made worse by the inescapable brutality of war.

I'm not a big fan of this argument for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that I don't think you can assert a priori that the use of military force always results in the alienation of the local populace and in turn assists their enemies. There are a lot of complex factors that come into play here, not the least of which being who your enemies are and who the locals are.

To get an idea of the complexity at work in this situation, one need look no further than Muqtada al-Sadr's Shi'ite uprising in April 2004 that resulted in his acquiring An Najaf and the surrounding area. During the US military offensive against the city, widely viewed (at least by many Western commentators) as an attack on one of Shi'ite Islam's holiest cities, al-Sadr's rule had gotten so bad that many of the local residents turned against him and formed the pro-US Jaish Thulfiqar to drive him out of the city. Another example would be the US fighting in and around al-Qaim where, as Bill Roggio documented at the time, a group of Zarqawi's minions got so unbearable to the local Sunni smuggler tribes that they actually informed on them to the US military. There are literally dozens if not hundreds of additional cases that I can bring up, but my point is that while you cannot rely on military force alone when conducting counter-insurgency I would also advise that it is a mistake to rule it out altogether.

And I would rely like to write a further reply to Eric's comments, but I am told that they are now preparing to close down the computer lab so I'll have to leave this for right now and attempt to answer his other comments at some point tomorrow as time and the status of my computer/internet allows. A brief respite, as it were.

Until then.