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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.
Really just said ~ "Only white people have a high enough IQ to form democracies".
I mean, I don't even find it useful to engage that assertion, but it is funny to contrast that with the take that I often see here that democracy in the west is now dysfunctional due to low IQ HBD dysgenics and only might concentrated in a single infallible strongman avatar can save us (Deus vult).
(+1 to aceventura's "History is longer than the last 70 years." which is approximately "read a book". I doubt the Greeks who invented democracy would've identified closely with your self identification on the HBD spectrum, you know, based on who they were geographically interacting with: southern Italy, Egypt, Anatolia, and Persia).
I don’t think that’s what the person was saying at all.
The implication is that the culture of Afghanistan and Iraq and most of Africa and numerous other parts of the world, along with substandard intelligence, means that those places aren’t ready to be part of the better world.
This seems true.
If you were to say ‘ white people are clearly the most intelligent people, and the most innovative ‘ I would also agree and just kinda point to absolutely everything that they’ve accomplished (I’m Slavic - I don’t count) and how they’re the envy of the world.
I do believe the rest of the world will catch up - and I do believe if you steal a baby from some shit he country and stick ‘em in an average American home that they’ll just be like everyone else.
But why pretend they won’t be flooded with bad culture on top of bad genes on top of bad environment where they currently are and won’t accomplish much ?
My understanding of the HBD hypothesis is that the differences in outcomes across the world are, by a wide margin, mostly explainable by IQ differences in population. My understanding is that it's not a hypothesis founded or invoked with nuance, which is what you're trying to insert here. It's just trying to simplify complex geopolitical, domestic, and historical dynamics with "well, they're stupid". So please excuse me if my response to its invocation is equally terse and lacking in nuance.
Edit: Also, the thrust of my comment was more that it's funny to see the contrast of "Only white people are smart enough to form democracy" alongside (presumably) white people begging for the boot of autocracy to save them from the boogeyman.
Oh, no, there are a lot of nuanced HBD people who will talk to you all day about mitochondrial haplotype this and Y-chromosome that. Or there were, anyway, I haven't seen them around in a while; they just got called racists like all the others.
If that's your definition of nuance, then I'm sure phrenology and alchemy are right up your alley as well.
There's the difference between HBD as-in "Human genetics drift over time as populations are isolated, let's explore those differences" and HBD as-in "The genetic differences between populations can explain why the world looks like it does today[1]." Too often the former acts as a Trojan horse for the latter, and I guess people can't be trusted with the responsibility of communicating with nuance so they get called racist.
[1] Nearly every grand-theory-of-everything of why the world looks like it does today gets laughed out of any room with people who capable of deep critical thought in adjacent topics (see how anthropologists feel about Guns, Germs, and Steel) - HBD is not unique in this regard.
Edit: To add, the invocation of HBD in this thread was of the latter type, and not of the former type.
My understanding was that GGS was deprecated because it got objective facts wrong about the subjects it purports to address, not because it was ambitious in scope.
The facts it got objectively wrong aren't accepted as objectively wrong by anyone except online far-right autists. My impression is that it got depracated because it was meant to be compatible with 90's liberalism, which itself got depracated.
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