Informed Speculation

Yesterday, I linked to Juan Cole’s 10 Iraq myths, with the surprising conclusion that I found much to agree with. I didn’t have the time or energy at that moment to deal with the one ‘myth’ I most strenously disagreed with, but Gateway Pundit has saved me the trouble.

A further problem with Cole’s Myth #10 (the Bush administration wanted free elections in Iraq) is that it completely ignores the ‘contingent’ nature of historical development. History seldom does us the favor of proceeding in an ordered, structured way, as Michael Schermer and Alex Grobman point out in the excellent ‘Denying History‘. Holocaust deniers argue that the absence of a ‘written order’ from Hitler ordering the mass murder of Jews, the fact that death camps weren’t ideally designed for mass extermination, etc., mean that the Holocaust as such did not occur.

Similarly, we see attempts to revisit the pre- and post-war situation in Iraq by claiming that this statement, that action, this omission, mean (take your pick): a. Bush didn’t want free elections; b. Bush lied about WMD evidence, c. the war is about profits for Halliburton, and on and on. Let’s be clear: I don’t accuse Cole here of base motives, but rather, intellectual laziness. The fact that we haven’t achieved everthing we hoped for in Iraq to date, and that some plans have been modified to fit events, is mostly an example of how policy must adapt to reality.