I’m generally against imputing motives to political leaders. I don’t think we can know what they want; there are too many screens and interpreters between them and us. Motives don’t necessarily matter, because a leader can do the right thing for bad reasons, or the wrong thing with good intentions. Finally, looking for motives encourages us to rely on the wrong criteria of judgment. For instance, a change of position looks like a “flip-flop,” suggesting that the politician’s motive is to attract votes. Consistency over time looks like evidence of sincerity. But we should want leaders to change their minds as circumstances evolve, not show that foolish consistency which is the hobgoblin of small minds.

Although I generally resist inferring motives, it is a different matter to analyze the incentives that apply in a given situation. Once we understand the incentives, we may be able to change them. And changing the incentives is worthwhile, because over time, on average, all else being equal, institutions will act in accord with the incentives.

It has been widely noted that the Bush Administration has an incentive to prolong the Iraq war until the next administration, which will then take the heat for the withdrawal. This does not prove that George W. Bush wants to “run out the clock.” He may want to win and he may believe that some kind of victory is either possible or probable if we stay in Iraq. But the incentive structure probably influences and distorts administration policy in favor of staying the course.

Likewise, several commentators (e.g., Tom Friedman) argue that the United States should consistently and loudly denounce each major terrorist attack that kills Muslims, thereby contesting the false notion that we kill Muslim populations whom terrorists defend. But the incentive for the Bush Administration is to minimize all mass killings in Iraq, in order to argue that our troops are keeping the peace. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) says that civilians in Washington, D.C. are at “far greater risk” of violent death than “average civilian[s] in Iraq.” I don’t know why he and his colleagues say such things–maybe because they believe them. But the incentive for the administration and its allies is certainly to downplay mass killings in Iraq, even if the result is a lost opportunity for public relations.

Of course, the Democrats in Congress face incentives, too. If they do not shorten the war, there will be considerable disillusionment in the country, especially among new voters on the progressive side. But disillusionment by itself doesn’t cost incumbents elections. Prolonged war will be much worse for Republicans than for Democrats. Democrats will have an antiwar presidential ticket, and in most of their districts, their candidates (incumbents or challengers) will be less hawkish than the opponents. If the war continues unabated, turnout may be low because of disillusionment, but I suspect that the Democratic margin will be enormous–a landslide. On the other hand, seriously challenging the president and shortening the war carries all sorts of political risks for the Democrats, who then become responsible for what unfolds in Iraq.

More incentives: To borrow $1 trillion to fight the war and let our children pay it off later with interest. To push our volunteer forces to the limit without expanding their numbers with any kind of draft. To remain in a state of high fear and antagonism toward several foreign countries, justifying all kinds of expansions in federal power and spending. To import carbon fuels from some of those same countries to burn in the atmosphere.

In short, the incentives line up to promote disaster. Even if one imputes somewhat decent motives to some of our leaders, we are in trouble.

Americans may be bracing themselves for a replay of 1975, but the conclusion of the US war in Iraq will be quite unlike the debacle that ended our involvement in Vietnam.

Some in the Bush camp like to revive the specter of ’75 because it makes any withdraw from Iraq seem disastrous. Surely we cannot once again allow Americans to be airlifted off the roof of our last stronghold in a key country. If Democrats cause such a withdrawal, they can be blamed for the defeat–that is the implicit threat. For some opponents of the Administration, the idea of Vietnam redux also has appeal: it associates George W. Bush with the ultimate kind of failure, a battlefield defeat.

But it won’t be like that. In Vietnam, our sworn enemy–the Viet Cong–overran the whole country in which we had been fighting for more than a decade, established an effective but repressive central government, completely banished us and our allies, aligned the country with our global rival, and sent many of our former clients fleeing onto the high seas in tiny boats. This was a textbook example of the end of a war. We were the losers; they were the winners.

In Iraq, after major US combat operations cease, the flag will still fly over the US Embassy. The Embassy will probably remain one of the most important power centers in the country, disbursing billions in aid and coordinating various military operations for years to come. There will likely be whole brigades of US soldiers stationed “in country,” at least in the Kurdish north. The national government may lack effective control over its territory or may tilt to Iran, but in either case I’m sure it will keep lines open with the US and Europe. Meanwhile, our sworn enemy, al Qaida in Iraq, will face serious challenges. The Shiite majority will do its best to wipe al Qaida out–with the help of Iran and some ruthless Shiite militias. Most of al Qaida’s foreign jihadists will move on to countries where they can get an easier shot at the US, Europe, or Israel. Iraq may be in a desperate condition, but it will not be in the hands of our enemy.

If the US reduces its presence dramatically and a new administration directs its attention elsewhere, the Western press corps will pay diminished attention to the internecine conflict and humanitarian disaster that drags on in Iraq. That means that the domestic political consequences of withdrawing are smaller than people imagine–much smaller than the consequences of Vietnam. The moral stain of the War is enormous, but it won’t play out as a military defeat unless our politicians collude in portraying it that way.

Last week I posted what could be called a “conciliatory narrative” about Iraq (avoiding calling it either a “fiasco” or a “defeat.”) Over at Philosophy, et cetera, someone who writes as Dr. Pretorius replied:

The sentence “That conflict is morally our responsibility, because we might have been able to prevent it” [from my blog] is almost certainly false. In, say, Darfur we might have been able to prevent some of the atrocities, and we may or may not be responsible for that. In this case, though, it is morally our responsibility because we caused it, not because we failed to prevent it.

Saying this, or saying that “A civil war then broke out,” is just a cop out – the civil war didn’t just break out (as if it was a matter of bad luck). It was caused by, oh, the speedy overthrowing of a stable dictatorship without any significant planning for what to do afterwards.

I don’t want to evade or downplay US responsibility for the war in Iraq. I think it’s our fault. However, the philosophical issues are complicated. First, it’s problematic to draw a sharp distinction between sins of commission and sins of omission. As an exercise in comparing the two, consider our passivity during the Rwanda genocide versus our (alleged) killing of civilians during yesterday’s fighting in western Afghanistan. The number killed in the Rwanda genocide was much larger, and our motives were worse. Yet we directly and intentionally hurt no one in Rwanda, whereas it was American guns that fired yesterday in Herat. I think we did much worse in the Rwanda case.

Then there is the complexity of assigning moral responsibility when an event has many preconditions. Perhaps J. L. Mackie’s idea of an INUS condition applies to the Iraqi civil war. Our invasion was an insufficient condition, because the violence required not only our intervention, but also deliberate killings by various Iraqi factions. Our invasion was an unnecessary condition, because the civil war could have started another way, e.g., if Saddam had died of cancer or by an assassin’s hand. The invasion was nevertheless a necessary condition of a sufficient condition because Iraqi factions could not have killed each other without our invasion, and once Saddam was overthrown, a civil war was basically inevitable.

That means, it seems to me, that we have complete responsibility for the civil war, and yet Iraqi factions who kill one another also have complete responsibility for it. Moral responsibility is not like a pizza, such that if you get two more slices, I get two fewer. It’s more like a virus: you and I can both have it 100%. Which is about where we stand in Iraq.

(From the Avis car rental office at O’Hare Airport, Chicago) Here are two critical issues of terminology that affect our conduct of the Iraq war:

Whom are we fighting?

Our enemy cannot be defined as the Iraqi unsurgency. That’s a disparate collection of factions that are mainly fighting one another and will continue to do so after we leave. It cannot be “terrorism,” because (as many have noted) that’s a method, not a cause, an organization, or a movement. “Terrorism” cannot even be defined without courting controversy. But if we are automatically at war with any entity that uses terrorist tactics (as standardly understood), then we’d better prepare for combat in countries from Ireland to Sri Lanka–of which Sudan ought to be our top priority.

I certainly hope our enemy isn’t Islam, because that’s one of the world’s great religions, and millions of our own citizens are members. Al-Qaeda is an enemy, but it’s too loosely organized and small to define our long-term problem. If Al-Qaeda were wiped out, we would still have a struggle on our hands. The word “Islamofacism” has been criticized for causing offense. By itself, that objection wouldn’t necessarily bother me; but it does seem a misleading and sloppy term. Fascism, invented in Italy in the 1930s, was anticlerical, secular, regimented and militaristic, enthusiastic about engineering and mass media, and committed to social order. Osama bin Laden appears to be on the opposite side of most of those issues. We need a word that describes a particular form of reactionary, violent, antisemitic, patriarchal, authoritarian politics that draws from Sunni fundamentalism but also from reactionary European thought; that mimics clerical titles without engaging the traditional clergy; and that embraces decentralized, anarchic tactics despite its vision of a unified, hierarchical theocracy. That movement is probably not our biggest problem in Iraq, let alone the world; but it is worth fighting.

2) What should we call the inevitable US withdrawal from Iraq?

The White House wants to call it a “surrender” or a “defeat.” That’s a tactic to make congressional Democrats look bad for demanding an end to the combat. And perhaps the president really feels that we would win if we did not leave; thus pulling out is a “surrender.” However, the White House’s terminology will have terrible consequences for the country. When we do leave Iraq–as we will–calling our own departure a “surrender” will give our enemies an enormous propaganda victory. At home, it will fuel a debate about which party caused the defeat. (Was it Bush, by starting the war, or the Democrats, by ending it?) That debate will be deeply divisive, especially because Republicans and Democrats tend to be separated by geography, ethnicity, profession, and creed.

Many Democrats will be tempted to call the withdrawal the end of a fiasco or a debacle. That terminology will be tempting because it is at least partly true, plus it piles lots of blame and shame on the incumbent administration. The problems are: 1) It makes our troops’ sacrifices look completely pointless and hides the competent, ethical, and courageous soldiering that has occurred. 2) It gives Republicans–including those outside the administration–no incentive to compromise and help get the troops home. And 3) It fuels the same debate noted in the previous paragraph: not necessarily to the advantage of liberals.

I would therefore be tempted to take the following line: Whether or not we should have invaded Iraq in the first place, we succeeded in removing a hateful dictator and smashing a major army halfway around the world with hardly any casualties on our side. That is a sign of enormous strength. A civil war then broke out. That conflict is morally our responsibility, because we might have been able to prevent it. In any case, we are accountable for what happens to a population whose nation we chose to invade. Nevertheless, there is very little we can do to end the civil war. We lack the necessary skills and knowledge. More important, civil conflict is just not something that can be resolved by an outside force; it must be negotiated by the parties. Possibly, if we imposed an effective martial law for many years, the factions in the Iraqi domestic conflict would run out of energy and resources. But the odds favor disastrous results even from such an enormous investment of our resources. Therefore, it is past time to leave. This is a moral failure but not a military defeat, and it is certainly not a “surrender.”