The problem with the Pottery Barn argument

You break it, you bought it, right? By that rationale our leaders can simply go around breaking things they want to own. There's a Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin breaks his dad's binoculars--his dad's response after scolding him is to give him binoculars of his own. Calvin reacts by saying "now let's break some of his power tools to see if we can get some of those!" And that's the problem--you reward Bush and the oil companies for breaking Iraq by ensuring they reap the spoils for years and years to come. The message sent--break things, and you get to keep them. This isn't only about American troops staying or leaving, it's about natural resources and who gets at them, and if you think it's going to be Iraqi companies with command and control you are a fool. Who's "interim" Oil Minister right now, for example? The Pentagon's perrennial favorite, Chalabi.

Worse, the Pottery Barn argument is just as valid if Iraq remains "broken" ten years from now and we've lost tens of thousands of lives on our side and hundreds of thousands on the Iraqi side. By this argument, we would never have left Vietnam, since it was "broken" for as many years as we were there. And then we have the polls that say most Iraqis want us out--are we to say that they don't know what's best for their own nation? That only we, the alien occupiers, can truly know what Iraq needs as a country and the native populace must bow to our superior knowledge of what's best for them? This doesn't sound right to me.

It appears to me that we have not just 'stirred up a hornets nest', but we actually invaded a hornets nest and inserted 150,000 americans into the hornets nest, many of whom have little bunkers built inside the hornets nest who keep getting stung anyway.

Nothing we do inside the hornets nest is going to make the hornets happy....they won't calm down until we leave....even if we run around painting their little hornet classrooms and 'fixing' the thing we blew up...while we try to steal their honey (okay, that's bees, but wtf)

The lid is off the genie's bottle and I don't think anyone has a clue as to how to put it back in the bottle, and its a wicked genie that no one knows what consequences will emerge from this crazed stunt.

enough mixed metaphors. Its a world class clusterfuck that only the chimpanzee could have manufactured. I wonder who will have to do the dirty work of 'losing the war' in 2015?

that we haven't just broken something in the Pottery Barn, we are blazing through the entire shop breaking & destroying every darned thing in sight!

on Iraq 5 years before they invaded. (or ten years). Cheney, Rumsfield, Wolfowitz et all had already decided that democracy in the ME was not a good thing and Kirkpatrick wrote articles to state this in the late 1970s.. which they all followed. And they were as money hungry as big oil.

It was a continuation of neo-colonialism that was ended elsewhere in the world. And they said: "Ahhhh - these oil countries.. they are not ready for democracy so we can keep encouraging strongmen and elites.. democracy will be bad for this place".

So they had already realized the error of their failed policy from the 1980s. They realized it was creating tribalism (Islamism) in the ME. It was creating uber-rich in the ME who then funding tribalism (elites always do that because it stops democracy and keeps the 'masses' busy with infighting and following customary law rather than civil law). The ME Elites (Saudis) were also messing up American finances by buying up the USA and skewing the credit problems.

So the neocons themselves.. the very same ones as we have now..had already broken the middle east by not supporting democracy. So they had to step in and fix the mess and stop Saddam from making suicide bombing in Israel a lucrative business for the families of the bombers. They needed something (democracy) to dial down the power of the uber ME elites. They needed something (democracy) to undo the Islamist movement.

So when Powell said:" you broke it you fix it" Bush & the neocons were already there... having broken it already. And not wanting to go down in history for having helped create the great Islamist nations of Greater Arabia that would control all the ME oil and give that money to fundamentalist Islamic leaders and cover every woman with a burka... they had to do something. To fix their own legacy.

So when Powell said: "you broke it you fix it" ... Bush and all the others were hearing already "we broke it". Because they had messed it up.

Liberals everywhere (and the middle easterners themselves) had been screaming for democracy.

a psychopath gets into power and starts with the genocide of murders.

So I hoped that the UN would go into Iraq right after the genocide of Kurdish villages. I was very happy the UN (or Nato..anyone really) went in after Milosevic.

I wished that the the UN had go into Iraq after the first war. Instead the genocides continued.

I would have been for an invasion of Iraq if the UN had voted for it and gone in for human rights reasons (thousands of kids were starving during Oil for Food). But the UN never faced that. They never did anything about that.

I am against the war that was fought on the basis of a new precedent that Bush wanted to be created (this country could be a threat to us some day). And it was a war that Rumsfield planned horribly. He keeps blaming the Turks but in reality Rumsfield took the Iraq war plan and pared it down from 400,000 soldiers needed to 150,000 soldiers needed. So they did not win the peace. Rumsfield was vain and thought America could win it using minimal troops and smart bombs. And he forgot about terrorism. He is a monster and an asshole. His assumptions were wrong. They would have had the 400,000 troops if they had pushed the UN equally hard to go after Saddam on his continued human rights violations and genocides.

I think the UN should go into Darfur. I think the UN should have gone into Rwanda. They should have gone after Pol Pot sooner.

I am for war if a genocide is occurring.

In fact, I think that a body like the UN should have world judicial authority to go in and MRI any new leader/strongman and kick them out if they do not pass the humanity test. Especially if they start with the tribal wars and persecution. As soon as the early stage of genocides start.. the clock should start ticking. The clock should also start ticking on Utopians who get into power and start using coercion to make their dreamy dreams come true. They are drinking their own ****. After the 20th Century, both Utopians and sociopaths should be coerced into not seeking power.

I am very glad Saddam is gone. I am very upset that the Bushites did it in a way that was vain, a lie, utopian, delusional, badly planned, selfish, creepy, incompetent, heartless for civilians, didn't allow for UN procurement laws (which would have seen markets develop left right and centre among Iraqis themselves with Oil Companies the world over rushing in a throwing money all over the place.. and trust me.. the bad guys would be following the money now or hiring people to follow the money rather than car-bombing) and didn't set a proper precedent for going in for human rights violations and take 200,000 extra international troops with them and shut the insurgency down at the get go.

I am glad that there seems to be a chance at peace in Palestine & Israel. I am glad that the Lebanese have taken the mantle away from the Syrians. Bush was responsible for none of this (unless he wants to take responsibility for the deaths of two leaders).

I am glad that the Taliban lost power in Afghanistan. That was a justified war.

I wish we (UN) would go into Darfur.

have the cajones to admit that this was a big mistake and that we must leave Iraq, especially the repubs who are always willing to lend a hand to the Halliburton's of the world....so...the only way to get us out of Iraq is to elect a real progessive, someone like Kucinich or at least someone who is willing to co-opt his ideas and be a real opposition party. Just say no to triangulation!

This twist may have already been done, but I serendipitously came up with an inversion on the Pottery Barn argument last weekend.

I was in a Homegoods with my wife and 18-month-old. He was going from rack to rack and I was having to tell him "no touch! no no!". And to his credit, he was obeying without throwing a fit.

But after a few minutes of this, I suggested to my wife that we'd better get going, after all, "It's the Iraq Rule: you break it, you own it!"

No one ever reports Saddam was our plant
in Iraq....just like it's rarely mentioned
that we supported the Taliban against the
Soviets in Afghanistan.

One man's terrorist is another man's secret
operative.

i started a thread on this exact same topic a few days ago ... the arguments you made against the pottery barn theory are excellent ... here's an additional one i'd like to add ...

the pottery barn justification argues that we should remain in Iraq until certain noble goals, e.g. stability, democracy, repaired infrastructure, are achieved ... the goals are fine ... using them as a justification to allow a military under bush and cheney's control to achieve these goals is not fine at all ... bush is doing all he can to prolong the "war" ... infrastructure dollars, billions of dollars, have either disappeared entirely or have just not been spent ... bush failed to get the results he sought from the Iraqi elections and is not going to accept anything short of a puppet government there ... installing Chalabi as the oil czar was easy ... the rest won't be and it could take many, many years ...

the pottery barn theory should not be dismissed as an absolute evil ... given a US government that respected the international rule of law, perhaps in some narrow circumstances it could be a valid justification to acknowledge the US obligation to Iraq ... but with bush and cheney in control, it does nothing but enable their evil plans for the Middle East and Iraq ...

what the hell is the Democratic Party thinking going along with this garbage ...

you'll notice, btw, that all the Dean and Kerry suck-ups rarely contribute to threads on this subject ... all they want to do is defend their candidates ... what they don't seem to offer is any defense whatsoever of the position their candidates take on this critical issue ... the right-wing pottery barn Democrats are out to lunch ...

But I don't think we should abandon the country and let it turn into the next Afghanistan.

However, as long as Bush is running things, the possiblity of getting our troops out and rebuilding the country from the mess we've created is slim to none.

Bush fucked us either way.

They have announced this a number of times, but people keep putting their name to the idea of the US staying in Iraq.