{"id":238,"date":"2003-07-28T03:34:31","date_gmt":"2003-07-28T10:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=238"},"modified":"2003-07-28T03:34:31","modified_gmt":"2003-07-28T10:34:31","slug":"wolfowitz-in-plausible-denial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2003\/07\/wolfowitz-in-plausible-denial\/","title":{"rendered":"Wolfowitz: In plausible denial?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wolfowitz today provided new justifications<\/a> for the war in Iraq:<\/p>\n

I think the lesson of 9\/11 is that if you’re not prepared to act on the basis of murky intelligence, then you’re going to have to act after the fact, and after the fact now means after horrendous things have happened to this country.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a statement worth pondering, for we finally have a senior US administration official openly proposing a new doctrine to replace the old criteria for what constitutes a just cause for war. Previously, a just cause involved a retaliation in case of attack, or — more controversially — when the evidence of an impending attack was overwhelming — say, Hitler massing his armies on your border and handing you an ultimatum. Wolfowitz has now widened the definition of self defense to include acting on reasonable expectations of an attack. In other words, a preemptive attack can be a legitimate defense even if you are just reasonably sure you are in danger of being attacked.<\/p>\n

But what qualifies as “reasonably sure”? Who gets to decide? And what if the information proves false, after the fact? Tony Blair in his speech to Congress answered that last point: It seems that this doctrine would apply only to failed states, where being wrong still means you are doing good merely by alleviating the yoke of a brutal dictatorship. You should only act when it’s a win-win situation, in other words. (I would like to hear Wolfowitz echo that sentiment.)<\/p>\n

All this is fair enough, and I might even sign up if a definition for “reasonably sure” was drafted and the UN Security Council got the final say. In fact, such a process was set in motion, with Powell acting as prosecutor, if you will, but the “jury” of 15 nations indicated it would veto war for the time being — and the jury would have been right, after the fact.<\/p>\n

It turns out that the jury was not convinced by the quality of the circumstancial evidence presented by the prosecution. The rest of the world was not reasonably sure Iraq was a threat to its neighbors or the US. And it was right, after the fact. Wolfowitz’s redefinition of a just cause for war is sound, but he and his neocon pals did not themselves take it to heart when they decided to act as judge, jury and executioner.<\/p>\n

But here ends my lenient interpretation of Wolfowitz’s words. Just some reminders: Six months ago there was no murky intelligence. There was incontrovertible proof, to be shared with us after the fact. Instead, we now know that six months ago, the administration on at least one occasion made the case for war citing intelligence that it knew wasn’t murky at all, but clearly false. Leaving such misinformation in the State of the Union simply because it was plausibly attributable to the UK is not the behavior of an administration carefully weighing evidence as it ponders war as a last resort.<\/p>\n

On a side note, is the Bush administration vindicated if it made up WMD evidence, embellished such evidence or inadvertently used false intelligence to go to war, but then, quite separately from the “intelligence” it had, it found WMDs? It may sound trite, but I think it is a fascinating philosophical question. Could you argue that the US had knowledge of WMDs in this case?<\/p>\n

An analogy: I see a picture of Saddam Hussein writing with his left hand. I conclude he is left-handed. In fact, the picture I saw had been flipped using Photoshop — he was actually holding the pen in his right hand. However, he is left-handed, it just so happened that in the picture he was holding the pen in his right hand. Or this one: I tell everyone Matthew Rose cheats at Scrabble, not because I know he does but because I want to sully his reputation. Then it turns out he does cheat at Scrabble. Did I know that? Did I lie?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wolfowitz today provided new justifications for the war in Iraq: I think the lesson of 9\/11 is that if you’re not prepared to act on the basis of murky intelligence, then you’re going to have to act after the fact, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-economics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7eNhC-3Q","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}