Straw wars
Post-invasion iraq - - Posted on October, 3 at 11:30 pm by Tim
Okay, this is my new favourite article:
Antiwar liberals last week got to savor the four most satisfying words in the English language: “I told you so.”
This was after a declassified National Intelligence Estimate asserted that the war in Iraq was creating more terrorists than it was eliminating. For millions of people who opposed President Bush’s mission in Iraq from the start, this was proof positive that they had been right all along. Yes, they told themselves, we saw this disaster coming.
Only . . . that isn’t quite true.
One of the most systematic errors in human perception is what psychologists call hindsight bias — the feeling, after an event happens, that we knew all along it was going to happen. Across a wide spectrum of issues, from politics to the vagaries of the stock market, experiments show that once people know something, they readily believe they knew it all along.
Hindsight bias. Yep, that’s the problem. Iraq is stuffed up beyond all recognition and terrorism is on the rise and the President doesn’t have a clue what to do and virtually every bit of intelligence we were given to justify the war has turned out to be wrong or fabricated or cherry-picked or sexed up and John Howard said a war timetable of several months sounds stretched to him and President Bush declared Mission Accomplished three years ago and Afghanistan is heading back into the hands of the Taliban and retired Generals are calling for Rumsfeld to resign and Rumsfeld said there was no insurgency and on and on and on but, folks, none of this really matters because the real problem is that the people who suggested that an invasion of Iraq might be more problematic than the liars who said we’d be greeted as liberators and given blow jobs and Turkish Delight are now getting a slightly overinflated sense of the rightness of their rightness.
Gosh, that’s an important insight.
I’m just looking through the scientific literature for studies on the phenomenon of wrong-about-fucking-everything bias.
ELSEWHERE: Jacob looks at the article too.
Posted in Post-invasion iraq |
October 3rd, 2006 at 11:44 pm
experiments show that once people know something, they readily believe they knew it all along
Yes indeed - you can google across the breadth and width of the internet and you won’t find a single article from 2002/3 that expressed doubt about the wisdom of the Iraq invasion.
Dear.Sweet.Jesus.
Outside of Tim Blair, who does he really think is fooled by this? Even Washington Post readers - many of whom would share the author’s hindsight, foresight and every-other-sight bias - could not have all been in a coma during the lead-up to the invasion.
October 3rd, 2006 at 11:54 pm
I’m getting the sense that maybe I was too kind to Vedantam…
October 4th, 2006 at 12:28 am
Well, this confirms it - the right really are just Making Shit Up!
October 4th, 2006 at 12:46 am
Hilarious Tim. Good on you for coining it!
I have to confess I was pretty convinced at the time Saddam must have had some WMDs hidden away in a bunker somewhere. The “evidence” was too overwhelming for this mug punter from the Mob. Remember, all I had was some blog reports naysaying the WMD accusation, and a tonne of newspaper articles (all fed from on high in Canberra) saying it was true. It’s not surprising I was at least partially fooled.
But I wasn’t sure.
I thought the UN inspectors needed more time. The Powell presentation in New York looked rigged to me. There was a lot of doubt there, but on balance I thought it was reasonable to think Saddam could be packing heat, WMD-wize.
That didn’t mean we should have invaded Iraq, though. As I said above, I wanted more proof (of which, we now know, there was none). I had a feeling we were being steamrollered with stories of imminent doom simply so that we could jump off the start line in March while the weather in the desert was still coolish.
So, I was against the war and the invasion, but I thought Saddam might have had WMDs.
Which brings me to “hindsight bias”. I think it certainly exists, and I don’t think anyone who wasn’t involved in deep access to intelligence documents (or, indeed, the lack of them on the subject of Iraqi WMDs) - in other words, a mug punter like myself - could really have been sure, at the time (2002-2003), Saddam didn’t have some WMDs somewhere.
What I’m saying is, I think there sure a lot of people who now claim to be certain Saddam was bluffing and that the Yanks were wrong, who could not have been as certain as they now claim they were. In other words, to an extent, the writer of the passage above is at least half right.
But does it matter?
The real question is: is “Might have had WMDs” enough reason to go to war? I didn’t think so. Even genuine hindsight bias sufferers didn’t think so. And it turned out, our doubts and suspicions were correct, and we can gloat a little bit.
There’s no need to say, “We knew Saddam didn’t have WMDs.” It’s enough to say, “We weren’t sure, and we were getting less sure as the days went by.”
That is why I think they went in when they did. Any more doubt and the summer would have been upon them, and in addition the doubts might have been confirmed. They couldn’t let that happen. Either way, the writer above has no case to sound so pleased with himself.
He was fucking wrong and our doubts turned out to be confirmed as correctly held.
October 4th, 2006 at 12:50 am
P.S. Nowadays I don’t believe a fucking word they say. I’m a reformed doubter, a chronic disbeliever.
October 4th, 2006 at 12:59 am
Biting and funny, Tim.
I was so against the invasion that I believed that all talk of WMD was bullshit propaganda. And even if I had believed Saddam had The Bomb, I’d still’ve been against an invasion.
The certain death of tens of thousands always trumps Washington manufactured nightmare scenarios that seem to work in with US interests in other areas.
October 4th, 2006 at 1:05 am
At the time, I wonder if you polled Australian opinion - it would reflect that we wanted to wait until the Arms Inspectors completed their investigation and for the UN security council to make the declaration for war. The COW refused to wait.
Hindsight bias, that’s what they’ve come up with for “That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality.”
October 4th, 2006 at 1:42 am
I’m possibly a victim of ‘bias confirmation syndrome’.
Some will recall how the Bush Admin said in mid-2001 that Saddam’s Iraq was effectively disarmed and hadn’t capacity to project even conventional military capability in the region. Soon after the Sept 11 attacks the scenario emerged of Saddam as a clear and present threat to the Free World. How did that happen?
Sure, there’s not much anyone can say when, suddenly, ‘intell’ begins accumulating that ‘confirms’ this new, unexpected narrative. But Bullshit Detectors worldwide had gone on High Alert at such a strange confluence of circumstances.
In isolation, of course, these kinds of observations don’t constitute an argument against invasion. No, but the argument against gathers legitimacy with the consideration that the application of massive lethal force ought to be undertaken as a last resort, a condition which clearly had not been established.
And a majority of people in the Free World, in distinction to their so-called leaders, knew this in their bones to be the case.
October 4th, 2006 at 2:33 am
I never bought the claims about WMD, or any of the other bullshit justifications for going into Iraq. But that’s an unrepentant congenital cynic for you.
October 4th, 2006 at 6:04 am
Told you so!
In fact, once you finally get your old surflop archives in accessible order Tim, you’ll find a comment from me in late 2003 all about a future murderous factional Iraq with US military advisors and private fixers trying keep the embassy and airport safe while trying to play rival tribes, factions and mobs off against eachother.
True, I didn’t predict that US Army would be slowly but relentessly racked into barely operational status in Mesopotamia and the ‘Ghan. But in my defence, I never thought they’d be stupid enough to let that happen. It appears I was wrong.
Look, never mind all the idealogical disputes about Mesopotamia, how about sheer bloody incompetence as an arguement against the venture? Who can recall such an incompetent Government sending their military into a such viper’s nest without any clear misson accomplished metrics.
Well OK, the Boer Wars, Vietnam and the Russkies taking it up the Khyber Pass in the 80s…just for starters.
They could have told you so, Mr Bush/Cheney Adminstration.
October 4th, 2006 at 6:51 am
Good call Nabakov.
While we’re at this we should be updating our predictions for posterity;
The US should be doing what Beazley is suggesting below and plan seriously to get the fuck out of Dodge and compensate for the damage. “Sorry, we made a big mistake. Here, have some gum.” They’ll be throwing flowers at them on their way out to get them to go faster - all except those that have been made powerful by the US presence that is.
They won’t go willingly of course and despite all their efforts to install a “friendly” regime it will all end up very badly. The Iraqis will stop shooting each other and become more focussed against the US-and it will be deja vu all over again. We just had a good example for all those with short memories who can’t remember Vietnam, try Lebanon. You can’t force them to love you by beating them up. - Except maybe someone like Lexy, but that’s different…You know what I mean.
October 4th, 2006 at 8:48 am
‘Antiwar liberals last week got to savor the four most satisfying words in the English language: “I told you so.”’
I disagree with the writer on that point. I think for those of us who disagreed with the war in Iraq in the first place, Sozzy sums up the position nicely:
“I told you so” are not the most satisfying word (sic) in the English language, unless you’re a jerk. You know what I think the most satisfying words would be?
Welcome home! I’m so glad you made it back safely! What can I do for you?
October 4th, 2006 at 9:03 am
‘Antiwar liberals last week got to savor the four most satisfying words in the English language: “I told you so.”’
I disagree with the writer on that point.
Me too. In fact the whole way the thing is characterised, as gloating as if over a football tipping competition or something, just highlights the article for the nonsense it is.
And even that “anti-war liberals” description. There were plenty of anti-war conservatives for instance. Are they gloating too?
I mean, overall, the point of inaccurate memory is such an unexceptional thing that it barely warrants mentioning, let alone blowing up into some sort of grand theory of anti-war malfeasance. In fact, the more I read the piece, the less sense it makes, or at least, the point it is making is so minor that it’s hard to see the article as anything other than an attempt deflect attention from the people who have made the real errors.
In brief some things don’t deserve to be taken seriously.
October 4th, 2006 at 10:35 am
And let’s not forget, the Prime Miniature says everybody on the left “holds sway” over national debate and apparently we’re taking away from the “unambiguous statements of belief and purpose” needed to fight Islamofascism. Oh, and apparently discussing more than one viewpoint in education leads to “incomprehensible sludge” instead of a nice, neat single narrative.
SMH article
The extent to which Johnny mimics the Republican tactics is unbelievable. More “agree with us or support the terrorists” false dichotomy.
How about “support intelligence, investigation, global consensus and multilateral action in favour of unprovoked military action, which should only ever be used as a last resort”?
I guess that’s too morally ambiguous for the neocon crusaders who KNOW they’re right.
October 4th, 2006 at 10:54 am
But while Tim Blair is celebrating the worth of an article he found, perhaps he should yhave read it all the way through - to lines like:
While hindsight bias in the context of the Iraq war was real, the psychologist cautioned in an interview against misuse of the idea — the argument by many supporters of the Bush administration that it was impossible to know ahead of time how the war would turn out.
“It’s wrong for people who should be held accountable to hide behind hindsight bias and say this was totally unpredictable,” Fischhoff said.
And this bit:
At its core, in other words, the hindsight bias is a form of overconfidence. Clearly acknowledging how you might be wrong is the only weapon against the error, Fischhoff said, but that is one thing politicians hate to do.
“Many people who are offended by the president are offended by his lack of deliberateness,” Fischhoff concluded. “We want leaders who look deliberately at the evidence and are candid about the gambles they are taking. . . . A lot of unease in this country is consistent with people not feeling like they are being leveled with.”
Mind you, you have to read all the way through to get to those bits. But I think that last bit resonates - there are lots of people in this country who felt they weren’t being levelled with before the Iraq invasion, and are quite certain of it now.
October 4th, 2006 at 11:07 am
Of course they were making shit up - read below dated 11 January 2004
GEORGE Bush’s former treasury secretary Paul O’Neill has revealed that the President took office in January 2001 fully intending to invade Iraq and desperate to find an excuse for pre-emptive war against Saddam Hussein.
O’Neill’s claims tally with long-running investigations by the Sunday Herald which have shown how the Bush cabinet planned a pre- meditated attack on Iraq in order to “regime change” Saddam long before the neoconservative Republicans took power.
The Sunday Herald previously uncovered how a think-tank – run by vice-president Dick Cheney; defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld; Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Bush’s younger brother Jeb, the governor of Florida; and Lewis Libby, Cheney’s deputy – wrote a blueprint for regime change as early as September 2000.
The think-tank, the Project for the New American Century, said, in the document Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, that: “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein”.
The document – referred to as a blueprint for US global domination – laid plans for a Bush government “maintaining US global pre- eminence, precluding the rise of a great-power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests”. It also said fighting and winning multiple wars was a “core mission”.
O’Neill was fired in December 2002 as a result of disagreements over tax cuts. He is the first major Bush administration insider to attack the President. He likened Bush at cabinet meetings to “a blind man in a room full of deaf people”, according to excerpts from a CBS interview to be shown today.
“From the very beginning, there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” O’Neill said. “For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the US has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap.”
O’Neill and other White House insiders have given the journalist Ron Suskind documents for a new book, The Price Of Loyalty, revealing that as early as the first three months of 2001 the Bush administration was examining military options for removing Saddam Hussein.
“There are memos,” Suskind told CBS. “One of them marked ‘secret’ says ‘Plan for Post- Saddam Iraq’.”
Another Pentagon document entitled Foreign Suitors For Iraqi Oil Field Contracts talks about contractors from 40 countries and which ones have interests in Iraq.
O’Neill is also quoted in the new book saying the President was determined to find a reason to go to war and he was surprised nobody on the National Security Council questioned why Iraq should be invaded.
“It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it,” said O’Neill. “The President saying, ‘Go find me a way to do this.’”
White House spokesman Scott McClellan rejected O’Neill’s remarks. He said: “We appreciate his service. While we’re not in the business of doing book reviews, it appears that the world according to Mr O’Neill is more about trying to justify his own opinions than looking at the reality of the results we are achieving on behalf of the American people.”
October 4th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
The point of the article seems to be that “anti-war liberals” may have suspected that the Iraq war would end badly but that they didn’t know.
This misses the point spectacularly. A bad outcome of the sort we have seen in Iraq dosn’t have to have been certain, just probable. If something this bad is a probable outcome of an action then a responsible administration would have exercised some caution and restraint and refused to take the said action.
Im tempted to call the attitudes of the Bush Administration circa 2002 failure of the imagination, but the fact is they were doing plenty of imagining about thrown flowers democratic domino effects and a lot of other crap. They just didn’t imagine that they could fail.
This failure of pessimism, sadly, is still with us. Last week I read a few opinion peices trying to justify Iraq on the basis of democracy reducing terrorism. None of them even spared a sentence to contemplate the impact of a failed democratic experiment on terrorism.
October 4th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
What those nutjobs fail to take into account is that in many cases it has taken a spot of terrorism to achieve democracy. The idiotic and ahistorical rantings we have been subject to in the past five years would be funny if the consequences weren’t so serious, in the first instance for hundreds of thousands killed as a direct and indirect consequence of the CoW actions in Mess-o-potamia redux, and in the second instance, for the traditional freedoms and liberties in the ‘democratic sphere’. BTW, Weren’t Howard’s rantings to the rusting and rusted on faithful at the Quadrant do last night a hoot.
I just love the rattle of ‘western civilisation v the rest’ rhetoric, but the best bit was the recycling for the tired and tipsy of the ‘trahison des clercs’ rhetoric of the traditional Right. Who do you reckon wrote it for him? Windshuttle? A CIS intern? Enemies to the left of them, a force ‘for’ or is it ‘of’ unchristian ‘terror’ on the er, right, forward to the elimination of liberal pluralism in the name of freedom and democracy. Just love it! I want to hear more frankly, next time with a bit more brio. I hope it resulted in lots of money for their next campaign, but I am sure Quadrant will find its coffers overflowing with government grants to correct the ‘institutionalised leftist bias’ of everybody who disagrees ‘mit uns’.
October 4th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
I guess the opposite of “hindsight bias” would be something like “foresight forgetfulness”? Here’s Tony Blair today struggling to remember his old friends:
October 4th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Hi Tim,
As a research psychologist, I can confirm that yes, hindsight bias exists. But of course you’re right that hindsight bias isn’t particularly relevant to the question of whether to invade Iraq, and that the article’s an attempt to hoodwink people. And hindsight bias goes both ways, of course. It’s just as present in those conservative columnists who immediately started pouring shit on Latham as Labor’s great mistake at the last election.
tim.
October 4th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Or in the government ranks when they tried to force Beazley to apologize for saying we’d lost the wheat trade before Vaile’s trip (which of course we had, and continue to do). I sussed that one on first principles: the Coalition always lies.