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[ASPB]

When I was a kid, my granparents were sticklers about correct use of the words "can" and "may" for some reason I never really understood. If I had asked, "Can I go over to Tim's house?", I would get told, "May I?" And I would have to repeat the question correctly, "May I go over to Tim's house?"

I understand the difference, of course. "Can I?" Do I have the capability? "May I?" Do you grant permission? But I never understood why it bothered them so much.

Still, that difference is an important one. You have to have capability, but you don't always need permission. Admiral Grace Hopper is credited with saying that, "It is easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission."

And sometimes you don't need either, because busybodies who claim to be in a position to grant or withhold permission don't really matter.
Form and Substance. De jure and de facto. Permission and capability. Authority and power. Credentials and knowledge. Awards and achievements.

Appearance and reality. That's what it's all about. It's a fallacy to assume that they are the same thing. The difference between them has become a major factor in politics and diplomacy during the last 3 years.

Sometimes appearances do ultimately matter more. If your enemies can control the perception of your success so that it is widely viewed as a failure, that can have severe consequences. Hence the incessant drumbeat of quagmire! quagmire! quagmire! played by those who want us to lose this war, or who have other reasons for wanting it to look as if we are losing this war.

In April, shortly after the simultaneous uprisings of Sunnis based in Falluja and of some Shiites led by al Sadr, Kevin Drum wrote a triumphant post:

War supporters are forever complaining that things are going great in Iraq and the only reason we don't know about it is because of media bias. You know, that nasty SCLM wants us to lose in Iraq....

So here's my question: it's pretty clear that things have, in fact, gone to hell. We may eventually clean up Fallujah, arrest Muqtada al-Sadr, end the riots in Sadr City, and retake Najaf. But even if we do, it's pretty obvious that Iraq is close to meltdown, we don't have enough troops to keep order, and media reporting about all this has been perfectly accurate.

So how about it, guys (and you know who you are)? Are you going to step up to the plate and admit that the media has been pretty much right all along and things really do look pretty bleak? Or are you going to continue to complain that reporters are just ignoring all the good news about school openings and electric grid repair?

I am no regular reader of Kevin's site, so I have no idea whether, in light of later events, he in his own turn "stepped up to the plate" and admitted that Iraq wasn't actually all that close to meltdown.

Because it doesn't matter. In the short term, the reality in Iraq didn't actually matter; what mattered was how it was perceived elsewhere, especially by voters in the US. Contrariwise, in the long run, the perception didn't matter; the reality of what was happening in Iraq can not ultimately be denied.

Unfortunately, the "long run" is made up of a lot of "short runs". On July 13, Kevin no longer seems to be talking about meltdowns, but was still referring to the invasion of Iraq as "a mistake". Why? Because he's making another form/substance error, and confusing justification with purpose.

Leaving aside questions of 20:20 hindsight (it was not at all clear in March that the inspections had proved anything), and of historical revisionism (the US did not give UNSCOM detailed info about where to look, because UNSCOM leaked like a sieve), his basic point is irrelevant even if he is right about it:

The fact is that by March 2003 we didn't have to rely on CIA estimates or on the estimates of any other intelligence agency. We had been on the ground in Iraq for months and there was nothing there. There was nothing there and we knew it.

Did the CIA screw up? Probably. Did it matter? No. George Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003 not because he was convinced Iraq had WMD, but because he was becoming scared that Iraq didn't have WMD and that further inspections would prove it beyond any doubt. Facts on the ground have never been allowed to interfere with George Bush's worldview, and he wasn't about to take the chance that they might interfere with his war.
Whatever faults the CIA has, let's not blame them for the war in Iraq. We all know exactly whose mistake it was.

WMDs were never the real purpose of the invasion. WMDs were the focus of the spotlight, however, because of serious diplomatic efforts to gain UNSC approval for an invasion. Within the context of the UNSC, the only way to justify an invasion was to claim that Iraq had not fully cooperated with UN inspectors. Which, despite what Kevin would like to pretend, Saddam's government had not, even as late as March 2003.

But the public justification made in the UN had nothing to do with the real purpose, the real strategic goal which required the invasion. Kevin makes casual reference to that, when he says, Facts on the ground have never been allowed to interfere with George Bush's worldview, and he wasn't about to take the chance that they might interfere with his war.

Except that "facts on the ground" did not interfere or contradict the real purpose, which was to depose a corrupt dictator and to "nation build" so as to make one core Arab nation a better place for the people living there. By so doing, the goal was to infect the imaginations and aspirations of the citizens in other nations in the region, to "destabilize" the corrupt dictatorships in charge and to try to bring about long term change to the whole region. And that could not be publicly proclaimed at the time without deeply imperiling the strategy for the overall war.

So why were we at the UN? Mainly because Tony Blair needed to fulfill a promise made to the more leftist MPs in his party that he would not take the UK to war without a UNSC resolution or an "unreasonable veto".

There were other reasons as well, but that was the most important one.
So we went to the UNSC to seek permission for something we actually had the capability of doing. (The only permission Bush actually required was granted to him by Congress in October of 2002.) And when it finally became clear that permission would not be forthcoming, we went ahead and did it anyway.

For some, that made it an "illegal war". It was a "war of choice", not a "war of necessity". It was a "violation of international law".

None of those distinctions actually matter. They're all aspects of form and appearance; there's no substance. They're also all matters of opinion, subject to considerable dispute. Why was a war without UNSC approval "illegal"? Where did the "international law" come from which this violated, and how did that "international law" become binding?

Why is a distinction between "war of choice" and "war of necessity" even important, and even if it is, how do you tell them apart? I happen to think that the invasion was necessary. But it wasn't necessary in order to gain revenge for direct Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 attack (there's no significant evidence that Saddam's government was directly implicated in that) or to prevent "imminent danger". It was necessary in order to prevent significant non-imminent danger.

Much of this obfuscation is motivated by post-nationalism. The plan for a long time had been to bypass questions like "Is there any such thing as international law, and is it desirable for such a thing to exist?" by assuming that it already does exist and is already somehow universally binding. "Is there any such thing as a world government, to which all nations must submit? Should there be one?" That's another embarrassing question; so they just assume that it already exists and all nations are already obligated to submit to it, at least if they're located in North America and aren't Canada or Mexico.

If I can do something, and if you can't stop me from doing it, then your only hope of preventing me from doing it is to convince me that I should not do it. (In military analysis those are known as capabilities and intentions.) If the US is building up military forces in Kuwait with full intention to invade Iraq, then if you don't want such an invasion your only hope is to somehow convince the US government that it should not invade.

One way to do that is to actually satisfy the US government short of invasion, but if you also don't want to do that, then you try to emphasize permission or authorization. You try to deal at the level of justification, and try to ignore purpose.

In a sense, you deliberately make the very mistake my parents were such sticklers about. You say, "You can't invade" when what you really mean is "You may not invade". You refuse to grant permission, and then you wave your hands really fast to try to make sure no one asks why your permission is required at all, and why absence of permission implies absence of capability.

One would be hard pressed to find a better example of this than the recent pre-ordained decision by the "World Court" that Israel is violating "international law" by building a fence around the core of the West Bank in anticipation of unilateral enforced separation between the Palestinians and Israelis. The Palestinians went to the "World Court"; Israel kissed it off and said it didn't recognize that the World Court had jurisdiction.

Even so, a "trial" was held, and the Court released a decision condemning Israel and "ordering" that the wall be torn down. The Palestinians were jubilant. Arab nations asked the UN General Assembly to pass a resolution, which is virtually certain to happen.

There's only one problem with all of this: the wall's still there. Israel is still working on it. It continues to get longer. Amazingly enough, it didn't vanish in a flash of light when the World Court released its decision. And it won't vanish when the General Assembly passes a resolution.

Jack Chalker said, "A bureaucrat doesn't believe in heaven or hell, church or state. A bureaucrat only believes in paper." It's noteworthy that the EU's big response to the looming terrorist threat there was to create a new bureaucracy.

The EU is trying to pretend that nothing happened, and is hoping the whole thing vanishes off the radar screen as soon as possible. They're "studying it". And here's the reason they're treading lightly:
The Union has made supporting international courts and institutions a key pillar of its common foreign policy.

They're in serious peril of being exposed as posturing fools for doing so, as it becomes increasingly clear that said institutions have little or no real power, irrespective of how much authority is claimed for them.

France said, "No, America, you cannot invade Iraq." But America actually could, and Iraq got invaded. The World Court is saying, "No, Israel, you cannot build a wall around the Palestinian territories." But Israel actually can build such a wall, and the wall continues to get longer.

Here's another rhetorical catch-phrase which emphasizes form over substance: "traditional allies". It's become an issue in the election.
It's been decades since the "platform" drafted by each party actually made any difference, but sometimes they're amusing, and often they're highly revealing. Consider this news report about the Democrat's platform:

Half of its 35 pages are devoted to national security issues at a time when terror alerts and the war in Iraq dominate political discussion.

"This is a reflection of John Kerry's strength on these issues," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe. "The Democrats are stronger than ever on national security issues and are going to the election confident of winning the debate on who can keep Americans safe."

The draft is laced with criticism of the Bush administration, which it said alienated allies, ignored U.S. military leaders' advice, and sent inadequate numbers of soldiers to Iraq "almost alone with the target squarely on their backs."

"They rush to force before exhausting diplomacy. They bully rather than persuade," it said. The Democrats said they would build an America that "extended a hand, not a fist."

The draft acknowledged disagreement within the party about whether U.S. troops should have invaded Iraq but said leaving before security is restored would make Iraq "a breeding ground for terror."

The platform called for expanding the U.S. active-duty military by 40,000 soldiers, upgrading military training and equipment and employing diplomacy to build "an America that is respected, not just feared."
"We will never wait for a green light from abroad when our safety is at stake but we must enlist the support of those we need for ultimate victory," it said.

That last sentence is a straddle worthy of the master. It's also boilerplate. For what this really says is that the Democrats think it is more important what reputation the US has in "the world" than what the US accomplishes to reduce the threats we face. The goal of foreign policy should be to get the Europeans to pat us on the head and to praise us for being good boys and girls.

Who are these "allies" we've alienated? Who are "those we need for ultimate victory" we must enlist? It wasn't the UK, clearly, or Australia. It wasn't Japan. It wasn't the majority of the members of NATO, given that more than half of them have contributed troops to operations in Iraq. We got those.

Er, um, France and Germany, mayhaps? Are those the allies to which they refer?

And what's this business about "extending a hand,not a fist"? What's with this dedication to persuasion instead of bullying? Sounds an awful lot like exactly the kind of foreign policy the EU, and many nations in Europe, have been relying on in the last couple of years, which have been notable failures.

The underlying message in all this has been consistent: Approval is more important than achievement. Awards are more important than accomplishments. Credentials are more important than knowledge and capabilities. Justification is more important than purpose.

Form is more important than substance. Motives are more important than results.

You can't do anything if you may not. If you go ahead and do it anyway, it is "a mistake", even if the result doesn't turn out to be "a meltdown".

Perhaps my grandparents were wiser than I gave them credit for being. They never confused permission and capability. "Can I?" and "May I" really are unrelated questions.

Hattip: SS Clueless
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