On March 5th, C. Sullentrop finally made a point in his column in Slate that I’ve been waiting to see for some time: That Pollack’s book The Threatening Storm has been miscited and misunderstood by people who clearly haven’t read it. Pollack’s book, based on an earlier article for Foreign Affairs, might even be read (against the author’s intentions, of course) as a sort of anti-war (anti-this-war, I mean) book, since it imposes some really substantial qualifications on his case for war. Sullentrop focuses on the time frame (Pollack suggests that a war is necessary only after AQ has been weakened), and coalition building. Pollack had dealt with some of these concerns in an interview with Josh Marshall, but he has now responded to Sullentrop’s article directly.

Pollack is evidently surprised and dismayed by the way things have gone so far (though he also approves of some of the Admin’s actions), and it is natural for him to want to point to his earlier qualifications in case things go really badly. Yet Pollack’s positon is still that, however, badly things are going, it would be disasterous to back off at such a late stage in the game. The problem for Pollack is that many of the complications the Admin is facing now were predictable at the time he wrote his book. Pollack wasn’t making the recommendation that some U.S. president should move into Iraq and install a democracy. He was recommending that this president, and his team, do this. Enough evidence was available at the time he wrote his book that this president, leading this team, didn’t have what it takes.

Pollack’s book can be read as an anti-war tract so long as one interprets him as making his acceptance of military action conditional on certain other aspects of US policy. But each new failure of the Admin to follow Pollack’s prescriptions drives home the fact that these weren’t conditions at all. They were more like hopeful recommendations. All of this has made me wonder if there are any conditions in Pollack’s book at all. And it’s brought home to me how irresponsible it is to make policy recommendations without thinking carefully about how likely the rest of what you say is to be followed.

Here’s one more question for Pollack. Pollack waxes elloquent about the virtues of a democratic Iraq in his book, and the appeal of the picture is part of what makes the book seem so reasonable. But nowhere does Pollack consider the question of how likely this is to happen. It’s important to distinguish two questions here. The first queston is whether democracy in Iraq ia possible as the result of a foreign invasion. The second is how likely the current Admin is to actualy be able to install it. I do think it would be possible, given enormous time and effort, to install a democracy in Iraq. And Pollack agrees. But the second question is the one the ought to guide our policy recommendatons, when we’re not the ones making the policy. And part of my resistance to the war is based on my sense that the second question merits a gloomy answer.

Pollack’s book gets what persuasive value it has precisely from the scenario he describes-coalition building, dealing first with AQ, etc. As the current scenario comes less and less to resemble the scenario presented in Pollack’s book, the book loses more and more of effect.