Andrew Sullivan: Quitters

This blog is in a series of posts from my readings of THE RIGHT WAR? THE CONSERVATIVE DEBATE ON IRAQ. Please contribute your comments. The following is a discussion of Chapter 6, a republished article by the Andrew Sullivan, April 20, 2004, New Republic Online.


In response to the Editors of National Review (who posted their article online on April 16, 2004), Andrew Sullivan of the New Republic, posted an article on New Republic Online just a few days later. He labels the editors of National Review "Quitters" and says that "the war to depose Saddam was always an unlikely war for conservatives." In this, Sullivan, a neo-conservative in the original sense, means that there has always been a balance of national interest and isolationist skepticism in conservatism’s approach to foreign policy. But, he says, such isolationist strains were muted, for the most part, in the run-up to the war in Iraq.

He continues: “But there was, perhaps, always a moment when conservatism was bound to begin to resist more aggressively what is, indisputably, a liberal project of nation-building in Iraq. Perhaps that moment has now arrived with National Review's latest Tory editorial, which makes all the right noises about seeing the conflict in Iraq through to a democratic conclusion, while laying the groundwork for a conservative argument to cut and run at the first opportunity.”

Next, he goes about criticizing NR's points. First, ge tackles their statement “an end to illusion.” He says he does not remember one serious conservative supporter of the war in Iraq who believed democracy would flourish immediately. Only one year in, and NR is already retreating.

Sullivan says that we have not reached the level of “abyss” the NR editors claim. “… however much Iraqis rightly want to live in a country without 130,000 foreign troops, they don’t want a return to either dictatorship or the chaos of civil war. The only thing preventing that now is American power. There is no abyss beckoning here, except the abyss that would undoubtedly occur if America were to lose nerve and retreat.”

Of course, while Sullivan doesn't expect a quick success, he does place some blame on post-war planning on the Bush administration, particularly Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Sullivan criticizes Rumsfeld for having far too troops that was needed for the post-war order.

But he also reminds us that the U.S. military has a very delicate task of keeping order while winning “hearts and minds.” Sullivan also argues that before the Iraq war, “None of our options … were pretty. But we had learned on September 11 that mere observation could not shield us from devastating attack. In that context, the Iraq gamble – and it was a gamble – was regarded as one worth taking.” Again, we see an argument here that is consistent with some other arguments: in a post-9/11 world, we could not afford the risk of inaction.

Sullivan also takes on NR's notion that this was not a neo-conservative-led war. And he does it with boldness and pride. “The constituency for war against Saddam was not primarily made up of conservative realists. They were there – but their realism was tempered by the view that without radically altering the culture of the Islamicized Middle East, realism would be defunct as an option. There are times when ideological movements have to be confronted ideologically – and Islamo-fascism was and is just such a movement. This recognition doesn’t junk realist conservative thought; but it provides an essential complement. Blind realism is no realism at all. In some ways, neoconservatism is currently a hyper-realist doctrine because it has incorporated the role of ideas into the need to be vigilant against threats to national security.”

Interesting argument: neo-conservativism as realism. While it at first strikes me as defensive of neo-con foreign policy, it actually begins to look like an interesting argument: the neo-cons were able to provide an ideological basis for war at a time when an ideology was needed to confront a totalitarian ideological movement.

Finally, Sullivan concludes that we have to commit to be in Iraq for the long haul: “I see no way we can make a success of Iraq without a minimum commitment of a decade at least. To have supported the invasion of Iraq only now to support as quick an exit as possible is to give us the worst of both worlds.” In essence, the bottom line goal that the "quitters" over at NR have is not enough and isn't fair to the Iraqi people. I think we begin to see a divergence here between the "realists" over at NR and the "neo-conservatism" of Andrew Sullivan - at least where they both were in 2004.