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Notes -
John Psmith reviewed "Leap of Faith," about the institutional failures or collective "non-decision" leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The review begins:
By his description, everybody involved wanted to invade Iraq, but the dynamic that resulted in an invasion seemed to be that of the Abilene Paradox. He links it to CW issues, with discussion of "moralism" in American foreign policy and due to it being a major issue about which American government went against the overwhelming preference of the populace, and Trump being an outlier critic of the war being a big part of his early appeal. A handful of thoughts:
Coincidentally, I just listened to a long interview with an early American casualty in the "First Battle of Fallujah" - it's worth a listen
It's hard to square the Powell Doctrine with the description of Powell, which raises a lot of questions
I'm skeptical of the accuracy and/or probative value of the psychoanalyses of the people involved, more generally, and it's unclear if it's Psmith's own interpretation or him relaying that of the original author
One point raised is that the perceived easy success in Afghanistan was a major factor, which makes me wonder if military campaigns should be deliberately made to seem more difficult than they are
I don't remember any defenses of the war to contrast against Trump
While one can debate the merits of NATO Expansion, which Psmith criticizes at the end, I don't remember anyone advocating it on moralistic grounds (or the basis of specific alleged strategic threats) or think it's a good parallel, in general (you could say that it's an issue with a disconnect between government policy and the preferences of populace, but the disconnect would be in the general vein of the proverbial man on the street not following that area of foreign policy)
Part of the problem was that the left was too successful in casting things like HBD and culture being deep as unthinkably racist. They were extremely taboo on the mainstream right.
To put things in perspective, ousting the Soviets from Eastern Europe was largely successful. It was still highly taboo to talk about the problems in places like Zimbabwe and South Africa.
As a result it was impossible for anyone on the right to assemble an argument about how removing Saddam wouldn't result in a democratic revolution.
You'd sound too racist to be on TV.
Liberals from a more cosmopolitan background often have the attitude of "everybody knows X, it's just not polite to say it". But Republicans from small white towns frequently don't know it. They're going to go along with poor decisions if you don't let anyone tell them.
Edit:
I seem to be having some communications difficulties with this post. Back in 2009 or so HBD blogs were the only places having discussions about things like cousin marriage in Arab cultures leading to clannishness which caused problems when trying to impose individualist democracy on them.
I'm not even endorsing any particular theory. I'm just saying that the limits on public conversation made it difficult to fight a bad idea.
I don’t think you can blame this on the naivety of republicans because it was an elite stratum doing the invading.
When do you hold the rank and file accountable for the policies they voted for, versus blaming elites?
Say what you like about Dubya, Lord knows I have, but he was the most sincerely religious president since at least 1920. He had support from virtually all protestant Christian religious groups and leaders across America. One has to do some of kind of two-step to place him and his actions and their consequences outside the conservative movement or Red Tribe more broadly.
Bush was genuinely pious, but he wasn’t some townie(which is what the poster I replied to was getting at). He was, literally, a coastal elite who was educated in the Ivy League. He may have had blinders from ideology or end times prophecy but he and his admin weren’t villagers who had no choice but to believe what the scribes pronounced.
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