Being a Hawk Means Never Having to Say You're Wrong

Being right pretty damned often has not helped the advocates of a sane foreign policy much.  Something that's been troubling me a lot lately is that if there is another terrorist attack in the United States, people like me will be blamed, at least implicitly.

Now, never mind that exactly nothing that I've advocated has in any way resembled U.S. government policy.  Never mind that people on my side of things have been warning since 2002 that the invasion of Iraq would have unintended consequences that could mean real trouble for the U.S. in the medium term.  Never mind that.

Today we get this headline from the WaPo:

War Helps Recruit Terrorists, Hill Told

Porter Goss tells us:

"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists."

Vice Admiral Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the DIA warns that:

"Our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment."

A little late to this party, aren't you, fellas?

What I wonder, though, is what it would take for hawks to admit they were wrong.  Say, for example, a dirty bomb is set off in Chicago.  Say several hundred people die in the melee, there's billions in economic damage, and intrusive new government powers are enacted.

Say that we trace back the attackers to Iraq.  They emerged in the aftermath of the invasion, learned the ways of urban counterinsurgency, and melded together into a group that wanted to hit the U.S. where it hurts most.  They were mobilized by the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and then they organized, recruited, and trained in its aftermath.  It's crystal clear that they emerged as a direct result of our policy in that country.

Would the hawks have to say, "Jesus, I really called that one wrong..."

Of course not.  It would just be a sign that the more dovish of us don't understand how insidious the enemy is, and how much we need to take the fight to the enemy before he takes it to us.  You can amplify any of the aspects of my hypothetical, and the hawks would say the same thing.

So then is there not a sense in which their argument cannot be disproved?  Is there any room left for recognition of error?  Clearly, the anti-war side may be guilty of this to some degree as well.  However, in the long term, we'll know for sure.  If in 10 years Iraq is stable and posing no threat greater than that which Saddam posed, I'll pretty much have to concede that the costs were not as high as I said they'd be.  (That said, I'll still maintain that the war was unjustified, given the fact that Saddam posed essentially no threat to us and the war killed tens of thousands of innocents, including half as many Americans as 9/11.)  It's harder to tell in the short term, unless there's a precipitous event, in which case I'll likely be proved right rather than wrong.

For hawks, though, there's a decent chance that a tragic, short-term event could prove that the warnings of doves were right.  But I'm afraid that the logic that's been cast by hawks can only be self-perpetuating, no matter what happens.  If things go well, they were right.  If things go badly, they were right.

Insidious bastards.

Comments

[Realish]

Well... of course. Speaking of being late to the party.

You may have noticed that this same immunity to disconfirmation holds true for virtually every ideological precept of the modern right wing.

Liberal media. Lower taxes. Family values. In all these cases success means their approach is working, and failure means their efforts have to be redoubled. There is no empirical data capable of showing the precepts false.

How one overcomes this kind of madness is beyond me. Frankly, my hope is fading.

[DonBoy]

You could sharpen the hypothetical by adding that the radioactive material was looted from the unguarded storage dumps. (I suppose you could say that about the conventional explosives, too, but there's really no shortage of those over here.)