I’m kind of confused by why these consequences didn’t hit home earlier.
I’m, I hate to say it, an old man among these parts in many senses; I voted in 2004, and a nontrivial percentage of the Lesswrong crowd wasn’t even alive then, and many more certainly not old enough to remember what it was like. The past is a different country, and 2004 especially so.
First: For whatever reason, it felt really really impossible for Democrats in 2004 to say that they were against the war, or that the administration had lied about WMDs. At the time, the standard reason why was that you’d get blamed for “not supporting the troops.” But with the light of hindsight, I think what was really going on was that we had gone collectively somewhat insane after 9/11 -- we saw mass civilian death on our TV screens happen in real time; the towers collapsing was just a gut punch. We thought for several hours on that day that several tens of thousands of people had died in the Twin Towers, before we learned just how many lives had been saved in the evacuation thanks to the sacrifice of so many emergency responders and ordinary people to get most people out.
And we wanted revenge. We just did. We lied to ourselves about WMDs and theories of regime change and democracy promotion, but the honest answer was that we’d missed getting bin Laden in Afghanistan (and the early days of that were actually looking quite good!), we already hated Saddam Hussein (who, to be clear, was a monstrous dictator), and we couldn’t invade the Saudis without collapsing our own economy. As Thomas Friedman put it, the message to the Arab world was “Suck on this.” And then we invaded Iraq, and collapsed their army so quickly and toppled their country in a month. And things didn’t start getting bad for months after, and things didn’t get truly awful until Bush’s second term. Heck, the Second Battle for Fallujah only started in November 2004.
And so, in late summer 2004, telling the American people that you didn’t support the people who were fighting the war we’d chosen to fight, the war that was supposed to get us vengeance and make us feel safe again—it was just not possible. You weren’t able to point to that much evidence that the war itself was a fundamentally bad idea, other than that some Europeans were mad at us, and we were fucking tired of listening to Europe. (Yes, I know this makes no sense, they were fighting and dying alongside us in Afghanistan. We were insane.)
Second: Kerry very nearly won—indeed, early on in election night 2004, it looked like he was going to! That’s part of why him losing was such a body blow to the Dems and, frankly, part of what opened up a lane for Obama in 2008. Perhaps part of why he ran it so close was that he avoided taking a stronger stance, honestly.
I’m one of those here that remember seeing the news loop of the plane hitting the tower and the building collapsing.
It was a defining moment and I think fixed in everyone’s mind the required response (other than it wasn’t quite clear who the target should be), just a Pearl Harbor was with WWII.
To some extent the “lies about WMD” is a bit of a misdirection/political spin. It is true that no stockpiles of biologic, chemical or development of nuclear weapons were ever found. Very likely never existed. But we can say the same about Iran today. At one point we could have said the same about North Korea. We do know that Iraq developed, stockpiled and used chemical (and I think some biological) weapons in the Iraq-Iran war. We also know they had a nuclear program (which I don’t think was monitored by the UN until after the war and Iraq was forced to dismantle it). So I think concerns about WMD were quite legitimate even if not quite current state reality.
And yes, Kerry nearly won and the whole “where are the WMD” (including using the old Wendy’s commercial “Where’s the beaf?” line) was frequently mentioned after the war and in the campaigns.
I’m not entirely sure what to make of the potential for some emergence of AI related policy stances with regard to any AI moment of realization as it were (something hits the AI fan). On that I might be more inclined to point to Higg’s Crisis and Leviathan line of thinking. Yes, we’ll see certain policy positions elevated but how beneficial that ultimate proves I’m less sure.
The admin claimed that the evidence in favor of WMD presence was much stronger than it actually was. This was partially because they were confused/groupthinky, and partially because they were aiming to persuade. I agree that it was reasonable to think Iraq had WMDs on priors.
Yes, the 80s would have been when the Iraq-Iran war happened, which I mention, so I don’t quite understand the link to the wiki. Maybe you’re emphasizing the “Very likely never existed.” but that was more about the claims used for the invasion that Iraq currently had large and dangerous stockpiles on hand at the time. None were found so either they didn’t really exist then or were well hidden/could be quickly dismantled without a trace. I suspect the former would be more likely—though there is a lot of empty space and finding needles in haystacks is hard.
I’m, I hate to say it, an old man among these parts in many senses; I voted in 2004, and a nontrivial percentage of the Lesswrong crowd wasn’t even alive then, and many more certainly not old enough to remember what it was like. The past is a different country, and 2004 especially so.
First: For whatever reason, it felt really really impossible for Democrats in 2004 to say that they were against the war, or that the administration had lied about WMDs. At the time, the standard reason why was that you’d get blamed for “not supporting the troops.” But with the light of hindsight, I think what was really going on was that we had gone collectively somewhat insane after 9/11 -- we saw mass civilian death on our TV screens happen in real time; the towers collapsing was just a gut punch. We thought for several hours on that day that several tens of thousands of people had died in the Twin Towers, before we learned just how many lives had been saved in the evacuation thanks to the sacrifice of so many emergency responders and ordinary people to get most people out.
And we wanted revenge. We just did. We lied to ourselves about WMDs and theories of regime change and democracy promotion, but the honest answer was that we’d missed getting bin Laden in Afghanistan (and the early days of that were actually looking quite good!), we already hated Saddam Hussein (who, to be clear, was a monstrous dictator), and we couldn’t invade the Saudis without collapsing our own economy. As Thomas Friedman put it, the message to the Arab world was “Suck on this.” And then we invaded Iraq, and collapsed their army so quickly and toppled their country in a month. And things didn’t start getting bad for months after, and things didn’t get truly awful until Bush’s second term. Heck, the Second Battle for Fallujah only started in November 2004.
And so, in late summer 2004, telling the American people that you didn’t support the people who were fighting the war we’d chosen to fight, the war that was supposed to get us vengeance and make us feel safe again—it was just not possible. You weren’t able to point to that much evidence that the war itself was a fundamentally bad idea, other than that some Europeans were mad at us, and we were fucking tired of listening to Europe. (Yes, I know this makes no sense, they were fighting and dying alongside us in Afghanistan. We were insane.)
Second: Kerry very nearly won—indeed, early on in election night 2004, it looked like he was going to! That’s part of why him losing was such a body blow to the Dems and, frankly, part of what opened up a lane for Obama in 2008. Perhaps part of why he ran it so close was that he avoided taking a stronger stance, honestly.
I’m one of those here that remember seeing the news loop of the plane hitting the tower and the building collapsing.
It was a defining moment and I think fixed in everyone’s mind the required response (other than it wasn’t quite clear who the target should be), just a Pearl Harbor was with WWII.
To some extent the “lies about WMD” is a bit of a misdirection/political spin. It is true that no stockpiles of biologic, chemical or development of nuclear weapons were ever found. Very likely never existed. But we can say the same about Iran today. At one point we could have said the same about North Korea. We do know that Iraq developed, stockpiled and used chemical (and I think some biological) weapons in the Iraq-Iran war. We also know they had a nuclear program (which I don’t think was monitored by the UN until after the war and Iraq was forced to dismantle it). So I think concerns about WMD were quite legitimate even if not quite current state reality.
And yes, Kerry nearly won and the whole “where are the WMD” (including using the old Wendy’s commercial “Where’s the beaf?” line) was frequently mentioned after the war and in the campaigns.
I’m not entirely sure what to make of the potential for some emergence of AI related policy stances with regard to any AI moment of realization as it were (something hits the AI fan). On that I might be more inclined to point to Higg’s Crisis and Leviathan line of thinking. Yes, we’ll see certain policy positions elevated but how beneficial that ultimate proves I’m less sure.
My understanding is:
The admin claimed that the evidence in favor of WMD presence was much stronger than it actually was. This was partially because they were confused/groupthinky, and partially because they were aiming to persuade. I agree that it was reasonable to think Iraq had WMDs on priors.
Iraq had and used chemical weapons in the eighties.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_program
Yes, the 80s would have been when the Iraq-Iran war happened, which I mention, so I don’t quite understand the link to the wiki. Maybe you’re emphasizing the “Very likely never existed.” but that was more about the claims used for the invasion that Iraq currently had large and dangerous stockpiles on hand at the time. None were found so either they didn’t really exist then or were well hidden/could be quickly dismantled without a trace. I suspect the former would be more likely—though there is a lot of empty space and finding needles in haystacks is hard.