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The people who were wrong about Iraq (or at least how easy it would be) now want us to rush back into Iraq to show "resolve" and "credibility." Daniel Larison calls bullshit in this profound article. Read the whole thing, but this part is worth quoting:
The funny thing is that many of the same people that think uses of force demonstrate “resolve” and protect “credibility” don’t react to other governments’ uses of force in the way that they think other states will react to ours. When Russia seized Crimea, that didn’t make hawks in the U.S. more likely to take Russian interests seriously or to show them more respect. Instead, it just intensified their existing hostility to Russia. If China uses heavy-handed and forceful tactics to stake out its claims in disputed waters, they don’t think this benefits China’s reputation with other governments, and instead of being impressed by it they take it as a challenge. When Iran props up an ally with its own forces and proxies, that just provokes American hawks to demand that the U.S. involve itself somehow in the conflict. Hawks routinely and unwittingly discredit their arguments about “credibility” and “resolve” with their predictably negative reactions to uses of force by other states.
ETA: Or read this one, entitled The mess in Iraq proves Obama was right to leave. Money quote:
In the finance world, banks sometimes make bad investments and end up insolvent. Regulators then need to step in and take prompt corrective action to rescue as many of the remaining assets as possible. The reason is that, from a management point of view, once your firm is already insolvent then there's no reason to worry about additional losses. You're going bankrupt and getting fired anyway. The self-interested strategy is to start gambling recklessly with the depositors' remaining money, in desperate hope that you'll strike it lucky and end up back in the black before anyone notices.
That is essentially what we were doing in Iraq for the past ten years.
The funny thing is that many of the same people that think uses of force demonstrate “resolve” and protect “credibility” don’t react to other governments’ uses of force in the way that they think other states will react to ours. When Russia seized Crimea, that didn’t make hawks in the U.S. more likely to take Russian interests seriously or to show them more respect. Instead, it just intensified their existing hostility to Russia. If China uses heavy-handed and forceful tactics to stake out its claims in disputed waters, they don’t think this benefits China’s reputation with other governments, and instead of being impressed by it they take it as a challenge. When Iran props up an ally with its own forces and proxies, that just provokes American hawks to demand that the U.S. involve itself somehow in the conflict. Hawks routinely and unwittingly discredit their arguments about “credibility” and “resolve” with their predictably negative reactions to uses of force by other states.
ETA: Or read this one, entitled The mess in Iraq proves Obama was right to leave. Money quote:
In the finance world, banks sometimes make bad investments and end up insolvent. Regulators then need to step in and take prompt corrective action to rescue as many of the remaining assets as possible. The reason is that, from a management point of view, once your firm is already insolvent then there's no reason to worry about additional losses. You're going bankrupt and getting fired anyway. The self-interested strategy is to start gambling recklessly with the depositors' remaining money, in desperate hope that you'll strike it lucky and end up back in the black before anyone notices.
That is essentially what we were doing in Iraq for the past ten years.
