Matthew Yglesias writes:
Of all the errors and miscalculations of the war and the occupation, I think this one is by far the least forgivable. Intelligence is always uncertain, planning is always hard, etc. But "don't trust the advice of exiles" has been part of the political folk wisdom since at least Machiavelli's time. In the particular case of Chalabi, evidence that he should not be trusted was widely available, and widely reported, for several years before the whole march to war ever began. It would have been easy -- very easy -- to get this right.Yglesias can go even further back if he wants: Thucydides has a few choice lessons about exiles too. I don't think there's anything wrong with what Yglesias has written, especially since he stresses the fact that the rap against Chalabi didn't exactly come from an a priori analysis of the concept "exile".
But Yglesias reminds me that I'm very worried that our political discourse is about to be overtaken by some fairly crass over-generalizations about exiles. It's true that exiles - and especially organized groups of exiles - often have an agenda and that those agendas need to be very carefully weighed in the balance when hearing their stories. But the vast majority of exiles in the world are fleeing serious oppression. They have gone through hell. I'm thinking especially now of North Koreans who have survived - just barely - to tell harrowing tales, but you can supply your own favourite examples. It would be both a moral and an epistemological failure to disregard these stories simply because these exiles are connected, via the concept "exile", by a chain of association with Chalabi, his cronies, and the mischief they've done.
Posted by Chris at August 8, 2004 07:21 PM