The late George Stigler once remarked that there did not exist a petition so stupid that it could not get a dozen Nobel laureates to sign it. And so, last week Mark Kleiman tried to hawk one of these petitions, pretending that a bunch of left wing social scientists were some sort of natural Bush constituency.
Henry Farrell and Dan Drezner link to a public letter signed by close to 700 academics, who call themselves a "nonpartisan group of foreign affairs specialists". Farrell and Drezner, who know about a lot more of these people than I do, agree that it is a diverse bunch. But I remain unimpressed, because the letter offers no counter-factual, or, in other words, no evidence of how things could have worked out better.
The misleading reference to the Duelfer report is suggestive. The letter mentions that the report concludes that Iraq had no WMDs, but makes no mention of this conclusion:
Saddam’s primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have UN sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the Regime. He sought to balance the need to cooperate with UN inspections—to gain support for lifting sanctions—with his intention to preserve Iraq’s intellectual capital for WMD with a minimum of foreign intrusiveness and loss of face. Indeed, this remained the goal to the end of the Regime, as the starting of any WMD program, conspicuous or otherwise, risked undoing the progress achieved in eroding sanctions and jeopardizing a political end to the embargo and international monitoring.
We know, for example, that the sanctions were collapsing, and the Duelfer report makes clear that Saddam was preparing to rebuild. The letter claims there were bigger threats.
In comparative terms, Iran is and was much the greater sponsor of terrorism, and North Korea and Pakistan pose much the greater risk of nuclear proliferation to terrorists.
Okay, so what would have worked better? Other than asserting that more troops would have better, and asserting that the Iraqi army should not have been disbanded, the letter offers no coherent alternative. Drezner dismisses this as unimportant, noting
the failure to articulate an alternative strategy (which, to be fair, was probably impossible with such a diverse group of signatories).
If they cannot agree on an alternative, we are left with the awkward situation of a group of academics claiming that each signer's idea would have worked better than Bush administration policy. Absent a coherent alternative (and noting that Iran is dangerous is an observation, not a policy proposal), this is nothing more than carping.
