SENSIBLE LIBERALS AGREE: SADDAM HAS GOT TO GO

A funny thing happened to Joshua Micah Marshall on his way to right an in-depth article skewering the neocon hawks for dragging us into war with Saddam - he discovered they were right. A bit reckless, and playing loose with truth, but on the core question of whether we need to remove Saddam from power, dead right.

One side is comprised of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, most of the career military, nearly every Middle East expert at the State Department, and the vast majority of intelligence analysts and CIA operations officers who know the region. These folks generally think that the idea of attacking Saddam is questionable at best, reckless at worst. On the other side are a few dozen neoconservative think tank scholars and defense policy intellectuals. Few of them have any serious knowledge of the Arab world, the Middle East, or Islam. Fewer still have served in the armed forces. In other words, to give the go-ahead to war with Iraq, you'd have to decide that the experienced hands are all wrong, and throw in your lot with a bunch of hot-headed ideologues. Oh, and one other thing: The last few times, the ideologues have turned out to be right.

According to Marshall, the hawks case for invading Iraq is both simplistic and unassailable.

[the case]...is basically an escalating series of true or false propositions that leads inexorably toward massive military confrontation: Do you believe that Saddam Hussein is an evil tyrant who would use weapons of mass destruction against us or our allies if he got them? Check. Do you believe he is trying to acquire nuclear or biological weapons and the means to deliver them? Check. If so, doesn't it stand to reason that he will eventually succeed in getting them? Check. Aren't we then obligated to stop him? Check! Sooner, rather than later? Check!!

The trouble is that this is a syllogism--one conspicuously short on details about Iraq, geopolitics, or anything else. And yet the logic is still pretty compelling, an impression that only grows when you talk to his critics. While they can point to an endless number of pitfalls and hurdles that the hawks either gloss over or ignore, they're less able to break apart the tight chain of reasoning that gets the hawks on their war footing

The debate between the neocons and the foreign policy and military establishment as described by Marshall is fascinating - the establishment throws out all sorts of things that could go wrong and the neocons fire back - so what, its still better than doing nothing. Marshall concludes that the the best Iraq policy is one that combines the strength of each group. As he sees it, the neocons are visionaries - people you want setting your strategic goals, but reckless with the details, and ill-prepared for unforseen disasters. The diplomatic and military establishment on the other hand are so means-oriented and risk-adverse that they are unable to think outside the box, but those have the knowledge and experience to succeed even when things go awry.

I think Marshall has it right for the most part - although he underestimates the costs of the ticking clock as we work to get all our ducks in a row. Still, he has effectively realized that the arguments about whether to invade Iraq are better framed as how we should invade Iraq. And after the military and foreign policy establishment is done minimizing the costs of dumping Saddam, we can let the visionaries explore the next step towards making the Middle East freer and America safer.