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He pushed for the invasion of Iraq on his blog in 2002 and 2003. When France and Germany tried to prevent the war, he demonized them and contemplated war with t

He pushed for the invasion of Iraq on his blog in 2002 and 2003. When France and Germany tried to prevent the war, he demonized them and contemplated war with them.[1][2] In July 2003, when the weapons of mass distruction had failed to materialize and it was hard to find defenders of the war, he was even published in the Wall Street Journal[3], where he dismissed the importance of the WMDs and asserted: "In fact, the real reason we went into Iraq was precisely to 'nation build': to create a secularized, liberated, cosmopolitan society in a core Arab nation. To create a place where Arabs were free and safe and unafraid and happy and successful and not ruled by corrupt monarchs or brutal dictators. This would demonstrate to the other people in the Arab and Muslim worlds that they can succeed, but only if they abandon those political, cultural and religious chains that are holding them back." His readers objected, saying "Any time the American public is called upon to expend their national treasure and send their troops into battle they deserve a completely honest accounting of the reasons why." Den Beste replied "No, I'm afraid they don't. They don't need to know, and can't be trusted to know."[4] In short, he helped and defended the government lying to its own people in support of an illegal war of aggression. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20030207031028/http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/01/Supposetherewastreachery.shtml https://web.archive.org/web/20030207031028/http://denbeste.n... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20030401203113/http://denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2003/03/Itsthewaiting.shtml https://web.archive.org/web/20030401203113/http://denbeste.n... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20030803115140/http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110003786 https://web.archive.org/web/20030803115140/http://www.opinio... [4] https://erbosoft.com/ussclueless/cd_log_entries/2003/07/Tellingthetruth-2.htm https://erbosoft.com/ussclueless/cd_log_entries/2003/07/Tell...

hga 10y ago
I double checked your last cited claim, and it's indeed correct, e.g.: "And so it is in this case. If there were a way that the President could have revealed the true strategy for the war to us all without negative consequences, I would agree that he would have had an obligation to do so. But that's not the case; for the government to come out and frankly state that the purpose of this war was to bring about broad political and cultural reforms in the entire Arab/Islamic world would have guaranteed that the war would be much more costly to us, and raise a substantial risk that we would not succeed." Which he justifies by how much harder it would have been to win the war part of it without starting from the ground on Kuwait. Which is an utterly bogus calculus. Although I don't remember it being such a big secret what we were really trying to accomplish, but it's been too long to remember the sequence of events. I also think that this doomed goal was necessary for us to try, if/when we have to implement a nuclear Final Solution to the Muslim Problem (in response to getting nuked, of course, see things like Wretchard's Three Conjectures for more discussion of this terrible calculus). But for such a terribly difficult and unlikely to succeed endeavor as nation building, for that to be the main goal, to not get buy-in from the nation, was indescribably irresponsible. And helped to ensure its failure, even the middle of "Democracy, Whisky, Sexy" just got spiked in a middle of the night law passed by the Iraqi legislature....
- emmelaich 10y ago
  >> If there were a way that the President could have revealed the true strategy ... > Which he justifies by how much harder it would have been to win the war part of it without starting from the ground on Kuwait. Governments lie by omission all the time. > But for such a terribly difficult and unlikely to succeed endeavor as nation building... I dunno, many countries that USA helped or fought successfully against have done quite well (Germany, Japan, South Korea) especially compared to some of the ones they didn't (North Korea, Vietnam).
  - hga 10y ago
    But this is not being framed as a lie by omission, rather, a bunch of good reasons (that I support) were made, when the real reason was nation building. Or so is the claim, which DenBeste is acknowledging in the cited item. And nation building is a very different sort of task, although I'll note we actually were successful at "re-building" the leadership, officer corps, and general relationship with the US in South Vietnam ... before we cut them off at the knees during the North's 2nd massive armored invasion (the first the ARVN with US air support destroyed, 40,000 out of the 150,000 NVA committed managing to make it back north without their equipment, the latter detail BTW helping to bankrupt the USSR). But we didn't try to change the nature of that society, and I don't think we did with Japan, there we just tried to suppress a few specific things that weren't integral to it and the way it functioned, and encourage some others, many of which were reasonably aligned with Japanese mores. Germany doesn't even count in this list as far as I'm concerned, and South Korea, that would mostly be by example and nudging, given that both of us are still in an official state of war with the DPRK, something the latter reminds us of with fire and blood fairly often. Whereas trying to make a Muslim Arab country essentially neither? Yeah, right, especially with the sectarian issues, e.g. Shia majority, Sunni once and hope to be future rulers, and the Kurds to the north. And it's not at all clear Bush and many of his advisers ever had a clear and/or correct view of all this ("Islam is a religion of peace"), and that's before the fumbles. You have to, among other things, factor in that Bremer was no MacArthur, wasn't even the LBJ/Nixon types who retrieved the situation from JFK's "Best and Brightest", and couldn't operate with the same freedom of action, especially compared to the WWII examples, for both the circumstances, and the media and political situation changed. E.g. "Vietnam was the first war broadcast on TV".
pjc50 10y ago
I wasn't going to slam the guy quite that badly on his obituary, but you're correct.

hga 10y ago

I double checked your last cited claim, and it's indeed correct, e.g.: "And so it is in this case. If there were a way that the President could have revealed the true strategy for the war to us all without negative consequences, I would agree that he would have had an obligation to do so. But that's not the case; for the government to come out and frankly state that the purpose of this war was to bring about broad political and cultural reforms in the entire Arab/Islamic world would have guaranteed that the war would be much more costly to us, and raise a substantial risk that we would not succeed." Which he justifies by how much harder it would have been to win the war part of it without starting from the ground on Kuwait. Which is an utterly bogus calculus. Although I don't remember it being such a big secret what we were really trying to accomplish, but it's been too long to remember the sequence of events. I also think that this doomed goal was necessary for us to try, if/when we have to implement a nuclear Final Solution to the Muslim Problem (in response to getting nuked, of course, see things like Wretchard's Three Conjectures for more discussion of this terrible calculus). But for such a terribly difficult and unlikely to succeed endeavor as nation building, for that to be the main goal, to not get buy-in from the nation, was indescribably irresponsible. And helped to ensure its failure, even the middle of "Democracy, Whisky, Sexy" just got spiked in a middle of the night law passed by the Iraqi legislature....

emmelaich 10y ago
>> If there were a way that the President could have revealed the true strategy ... > Which he justifies by how much harder it would have been to win the war part of it without starting from the ground on Kuwait. Governments lie by omission all the time. > But for such a terribly difficult and unlikely to succeed endeavor as nation building... I dunno, many countries that USA helped or fought successfully against have done quite well (Germany, Japan, South Korea) especially compared to some of the ones they didn't (North Korea, Vietnam).
- hga 10y ago
  But this is not being framed as a lie by omission, rather, a bunch of good reasons (that I support) were made, when the real reason was nation building. Or so is the claim, which DenBeste is acknowledging in the cited item. And nation building is a very different sort of task, although I'll note we actually were successful at "re-building" the leadership, officer corps, and general relationship with the US in South Vietnam ... before we cut them off at the knees during the North's 2nd massive armored invasion (the first the ARVN with US air support destroyed, 40,000 out of the 150,000 NVA committed managing to make it back north without their equipment, the latter detail BTW helping to bankrupt the USSR). But we didn't try to change the nature of that society, and I don't think we did with Japan, there we just tried to suppress a few specific things that weren't integral to it and the way it functioned, and encourage some others, many of which were reasonably aligned with Japanese mores. Germany doesn't even count in this list as far as I'm concerned, and South Korea, that would mostly be by example and nudging, given that both of us are still in an official state of war with the DPRK, something the latter reminds us of with fire and blood fairly often. Whereas trying to make a Muslim Arab country essentially neither? Yeah, right, especially with the sectarian issues, e.g. Shia majority, Sunni once and hope to be future rulers, and the Kurds to the north. And it's not at all clear Bush and many of his advisers ever had a clear and/or correct view of all this ("Islam is a religion of peace"), and that's before the fumbles. You have to, among other things, factor in that Bremer was no MacArthur, wasn't even the LBJ/Nixon types who retrieved the situation from JFK's "Best and Brightest", and couldn't operate with the same freedom of action, especially compared to the WWII examples, for both the circumstances, and the media and political situation changed. E.g. "Vietnam was the first war broadcast on TV".

pjc50 10y ago

I wasn't going to slam the guy quite that badly on his obituary, but you're correct.