Michael Ignatieff Does American Power

The title of Ignatieff's commentary is "Getting Iraq Wrong," (August 5). He presents it as his official mea culpa. "The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq has condemned the political judgment of a president," Ignatieff begins. "But it has also condemned the judgment of many others, myself included, who as commentators supported the invasion." No fewer than 16 different times Ignatieff uses the phrase 'good judgment' to name a trait that he believes good political leaders and intellectuals possess: In Iraq, bad judgment prevailed. Also, Ignatieff drops the names of at least nine famous politicians and writers: Samuel Beckett, Isaiah Berlin, Otto von Bismarck, Edmund Burke, Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, the Biblical prophet Isaiah, Immanuel Kant, and Franklin Roosevelt. If more than one of these names (i.e., Berlin's, para. 3) was mentioned to make a substantive point — as opposed to feign gravitas and show how well-read the author is — I sure couldn't tell. Were I Beckett or Burke or Kant, I'd be spinning in my grave.

Roughly three-quarters of the way into this laughable production, Ignatieff delivers his punch-line. Finally, he tells us something. "Measuring good judgment in politics is not easy," Ignatieff writes. He continues (para. 23-24):

We might test judgment by asking, on the issue of Iraq, who best anticipated how events turned out. But many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.

The people who truly showed good judgment on Iraq predicted the consequences that actually ensued but also rightly evaluated the motives that led to the action. They did not necessarily possess more knowledge than the rest of us. They labored, as everyone did, with the same faulty intelligence and lack of knowledge of Iraq's fissured sectarian history. What they didn't do was take wishes for reality. They didn't suppose, as President Bush did, that because they believed in the integrity of their own motives everyone else in the region would believe in it, too. They didn't suppose that a free state could arise on the foundations of 35 years of police terror. They didn't suppose that America had the power to shape political outcomes in a faraway country of which most Americans knew little. They didn't believe that because America defended human rights and freedom in Bosnia and Kosovo it had to be doing so in Iraq. They avoided all these mistakes.

These 225-words deserve to be read with great care; as for the rest, don't waste your time. The U.S. - U.K. invasion of Iraq is a "catastrophe" not because it is a war of aggression, not because it is a criminal war — a supreme international crime, in point of fact — but because the invaders have failed to completely pacify the territory they seized by force. What is striking is that Ignatieff cannot recognize pre-war opposition on the grounds that the looming war would be criminal or immoral. Instead, Ignatieff can recognize only those who "believed the president was only after the oil" or those who "believed America is always and in every situation wrong." This Ignatieff dismisses as "indulging in ideology."

In his own judgment — remember today's date: August 5, 2007, almost four-and-one-half years into this American war — the only people who "correctly anticipated catastrophe" were those who predicted that Bush's plans called for far too few troops to pacify Iraqi territory and turn Iraq into a free and democratic state. Yet — and here's the kicker — who never doubted the good intentions that lay behind this American war. Just as they lay behind the American wars in Bosnia and Kosovo back in the 1990s, Ignatieff proclaims.

Not once in his mock mea culpa does Ignatieff state — because he clearly does not believe it — that the "catastrophe" or "debacle" is a catastrophe and a debacle in a sense for which its perpetrators are criminally responsible. Instead, Ignatieff regards Iraq as some kind of metaphysically insoluble riddle that even the best of intentions have failed to master. Hence the reference to Samuel Beckett's "Fail again, Fail better" (para. 13): "[A]ll courses of action thus far have failed."

Throughout, "brute stubbornness" is the harshest criticism that he can summon for the American political leadership that launched the war. But, alas, we all make mistakes. And Michael Ignatieff is courageous enough to take to the pages of the New York Times to admit this.

Just for laughs — derision, ultimately, is what Ignatieff's work deserves — we might try suggesting some alternative titles that would better capture the message conveyed by Ignatieff's "Getting Iraq Wrong." For example:

The Purity of American Intentions.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

The Unintended Consequences of Noble Pursuits.

Or something to this effect. Of course, the deeper and more genuinely revealing title would be:

An Apologia for American Power.

After all, in what real-world sense was the American invasion of Iraq "wrong," a "mistake," and a "failure"? Because Iraqis on the ground did not roll over like dogs but resisted it?

From hereon, Michael Ignatieff ought to show better judgment, shut-up and go away.

David Peterson is an independent journalist and researcher.

References

"Getting Iraq Wrong," Michael Ignatieff, New York Times Magazine, August 5, 2007

"Michael Ignatieff: Apostle of He-Manitarianism," Michael Neumann, CounterPunch, December 8, 2003

"Our War on Terror," Samantha Power, New York Times Book Review, July 29, 2007