Iraq Logic

Seasonal reminder of the day:
The USDA recommends not stuffing the turkey, but baking the stuffing separately.

Quote of the day:
“Yeah, maybe. Whatever. Again, I don’t really care.”
--Darby Conley, in today’s Get Fuzzy

Richard A. Clarke is a former counter-terrorism expert in the Clinton and Bush administrations. His excellent book about Al Qaeda and September 11th, Against All Enemies, is a compelling summary of the U.S. government’s knowledge of, and response to, Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda in the years leading up to September 11, 2001.

One important point he made, in detail, was that the Bush administration was aware of the immediate risks that al Qaeda posed, yet chose to focus its attention on other matters. Clarke’s thesis in that book has yet to be refuted in any major way. On Monday, he wrote this about Iraq:

“Too often in the Iraq debate, we have let intuitions, slogans and appealing thoughts cloud logic. Perhaps the most troublesome example is the argument that we must honor the American dead by staying until we can build something worthy of their sacrifice.

“Stripped of its emotional tones, this argument is, in economic analysis, an appeal to sunk cost. An MIT professor once threatened to fail me if I ever justified actions based on sunk cost--so I learned what is gone is gone, and what is left we should conserve, cherish and employ wisely.

“A similarly illogical argument for staying in Iraq is that chaos would follow any near-term U.S. withdrawal. The flaw lies not in the concept that chaos will happen, but rather in thinking that chaos would only happen if we withdraw in the near term. Chaos will almost certainly follow any U.S. withdrawal, whether in 2008 or 2012.”