| | > One rational decision does not a rational man make.
Agreed. But invading Iran, while a big decision, is only one of my examples. See e.g. parts 4 and 5.
> [D]eterrence is not relevant. The goal was to put lots of tanks and M16s right outside the door of Iran, Syria (and even Saudi Arabia) in order to motivate everyone to help prevent more 9/11s. . . . [W]e wanted to occupy [Iraq].
Yes, whether Saddam was deterrable is irrelevant if you want to justify the war on the basis of a post-9/11 mindset. As Rumsfeld explained, "The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit" of nuclear weapons. "We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light—through the prism of our experience on 9/11."
Yet, as I argue in "Al Qaeda Was Never Iraq": "[S]uch views are all-too familiar, and evoke the alleged communist monolith of the Cold War. As Jeffrey Record observes in a 2003 monograph published by the U.S. Army War College, American policymakers in the 1950s held that a commie anywhere was a commie everywhere, and that all posed an equal threat to the U.S. Such conceptions, however, blinded us to key differences within the 'bloc.' Ineluctably, the Vietcong—like the Baath today—became little more than an extension of Kremlin—or Qaeda—designs, thus leading Americans needlessly into our cataclysm in Southeast Asia, as in Iraq today."
"[R]ather than exploit our national tragedy to lump all threats together, strategic discrimination should supersede moral clarity. We must distinguish between Al Qaeda, a highly adaptable, decentralized, clandestine network of cells dispersed throughout the world, whose assets after Operation Enduring Freedom are essentially mobile, and rogue states, which comprise institutions of overt, bordered governments with capitals to bomb, ambassadors to recall, and economies to sanction."
Also see Roderick Long's recent essay, "That Pre-9/11 Mindset: Meet the New Normal, Same as the Old Normal."
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