Matthew Yglesias on Michael Ignatieff as Not-too-Bright Student

Matthew Yglesias writes:

Matthew Yglesias: I found Michael Ignatieff's reflective essay on getting things wrong about Iraq to be somehow pleasantly soothing. But then someone pointed out to me that the whole thing is founded on the absurd premise that his errors in judgment have something to do with the mindset of academia versus the mindset of practical politics.

This is, when you think about it, totally wrong. Academics in the field of Middle East studies were overwhelmingly opposed to the war. Similarly, international relations scholars opposed the war by a very large margin. The war's foci of intellectual support were in the institutions of the conservative movement, and in the DC think tanks and the punditocracy where the war had a lot of non-conservative support. People with relevant academic expertise -- notably people who weren't really on the left politically -- were massively opposed to the war. To imply the reverse is to substantially obscure one of the main lessons of the war, namely that we should pay more attention to what regional experts think and give substantially less credence to the idea that think tankers are really "independent" of political machinations.

Here is Michael Ignatieff:

Getting Iraq Wrong: The unfolding catastrophe in Iraq has condemned the political judgment of a president. But it has also condemned the judgment of many others, myself included, who as commentators supported the invasion. Many of us believed, as an Iraqi exile friend told me the night the war started, that it was the only chance the members of his generation would have to live in freedom in their own country. How distant a dream that now seems.

Having left an academic post at Harvard in 2005 and returned home to Canada to enter political life, I keep revisiting the Iraq debacle, trying to understand exactly how the judgments I now have to make in the political arena need to improve on the ones I used to offer from the sidelines. I’ve learned that acquiring good judgment in politics starts with knowing when to admit your mistakes.

The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once said that the trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true. Politicians... can’t afford the luxury of entertaining ideas that are merely interesting.... In academic life, false ideas are merely false and useless ones can be fun to play with. In political life, false ideas can ruin the lives of millions and useless ones can waste precious resources....

I’ve learned that good judgment in politics looks different from good judgment in intellectual life. Among intellectuals, judgment is about generalizing and interpreting particular facts as instances of some big idea. In politics, everything is what it is and not another thing. Specifics matter more than generalities. Theory gets in the way....

As a former denizen of Harvard, I’ve had to learn that a sense of reality doesn’t always flourish in elite institutions.... The only way any of us can improve our grasp of reality is to confront the world every day and learn, mostly from our mistakes, what works and what doesn’t. Yet even lengthy experience can fail us....

A sense of reality is not just a sense of the world as it is, but as it might be. Like great artists, great politicians see possibilities others cannot and then seek to turn them into realities. To bring the new into being, a politician needs a sense of timing, of when to leap and when to remain still. Bismarck famously remarked that political judgment was the ability to hear, before anyone else, the distant hoofbeats of the horse of history....

Benchmarks for progress in Iraq can help to decide how long America should stay there. But in the end, no one knows — because no one can know — what exactly America can still do to create stability in Iraq.

The decision facing the United States over Iraq is paradigmatic of political judgment at its most difficult. Staying and leaving each have huge costs. One thing is clear: The costs of staying will be borne by Americans, while the cost of leaving will be mostly borne by Iraqis. That in itself suggests how American leaders are likely to decide the question....

We might test judgment by asking, on the issue of Iraq, who best anticipated how events turned out. But many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong.

The people who truly showed good judgment on Iraq predicted the consequences that actually ensued but also rightly evaluated the motives that led to the action.... They labored, as everyone did, with the same faulty intelligence and lack of knowledge of Iraq’s fissured sectarian history. What they didn’t do was... suppose, as President Bush did, that because they believed in the integrity of their own motives everyone else in the region would believe in it, too. They didn’t suppose that a free state could arise on the foundations of 35 years of police terror. They didn’t suppose that America had the power to shape political outcomes in a faraway country of which most Americans knew little. They didn’t believe that because America defended human rights and freedom in Bosnia and Kosovo it had to be doing so in Iraq. They avoided all these mistakes.

I made some of these mistakes and then a few of my own.... I let emotion carry me past the hard questions, like: Can Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites hold together in peace what Saddam Hussein held together by terror? I should have known that emotions in politics, as in life, tend to be self-justifying.... People with good judgment listen to warning bells within. Prudent leaders force themselves to listen equally to advocates and opponents of the course of action they are thinking of pursuing. They do not suppose that their own good intentions will guarantee good results. They do not suppose they know all they need to know....

[P]rudent leaders will not inspire a democracy to give its best. Democratic peoples should always be looking for something more than prudence... daring, vision and — what goes with both — a willingness to risk failure...

Not everybody labored with the same faulty intelligence. Not everybody labored with the same ignorance of Iraq's fissured sectarian history.

I think Ignatieff has it wrong when he contrasts realistic politicans with academic visionaries. The academics I know and respect labor under three ethical prime directives:

• Learn as much as possible about the issue.
• Fairly present all points of view that have significant support.
• Always remember that the world is a complex and surprising place, and that our theories, models, and data are limited: the map is not the territory.

The academics I know and respect don't make mistakes like those Michael Ignatieff attributes to an academic mode of thought: they don't believe that the ideas they play with are ultimately useless, and they desperately want to think thoughts that are true rather than thoughts that are false.

I think what Michael Ignatieff is talking about is not an academic mode of thought but a student mode of thought--a not-too-bright-student mode of thought. A not-too-bright student achieves success by (a) figuring out which book on the syllabus is favored by the instructor, (b) taking that book to be the gospel, and (c) regurgitating large chunks of that book on the exams and in the papers.

It surprises me that Michael Ignatieff thinks that opining about a situation while knowing that one is massively ignorant about it is an academic mode of thought.

Comments

[andres]

Sorry I'm in nasty bashing mode, but I'm still out of sorts with the snippet from Brad's Fear of Finance column. Here's Brad on Ignatieff:

"It surprises me that Michael Ignatieff thinks that opining about a situation while knowing that one is massively ignorant about it is an academic mode of thought."

And here's Brad on the history of economic thought:

"Eighteenth-century physiocrats believed that only the farmer was productive, and that everyone else was somehow cheating the farmers out of their fair share. Twentieth-century Marxists thought the same thing about factory workers. Both were wrong."

Unless Brad has recently read Quesnay and volume III of Marx's capital (in which case his reading is totally different from mine) he is engaging in exactly the academic mode of thought that Ignatieff criticizes. Heal thyself, physician.

[And your interpretation of Turgot's "France needs more farmers" and GOSPLAN's focus on total factory-plus-farm output is?]

[andres]

Brad, did you read my earlier comment on the Fear of Finance thread? And your interpretation is?

I have not read Turgot and I have never waded through one of GOSPLAN's five-year plan directives. But you started talking about historical economic theories, not supposed attempts to apply them.

Turgot did not, as far as I know, self-identify as a Physiocrat, though he was influenced by them. And I imagine that his pamphlet was directed by what he saw as a very real need for France to reinvest in its decaying agriculture, not because he believed some silly argument (wrong even for the Physiocrats) that farmers were directly cheated by manufacturers and shopkeepers as opposed to being systematically disadvantaged by government policies intended to artificially benefit manufacturers and shopkeepers at the expense of farmers.

And GOSPLAN was directly concerned with the problem of running a modern economy by way of central planning (a problem on a par with squaring the circle or trisecting an angle with only a compass and straightedge). They couldn't have cared less about Marx's theory of exploitation. And that they focused only on farm and factory labor also means that they didn't fully understand Marx's writings on productive and unproductive labor, if they had ever read them.

The point is that (a) you shouldn't make straw men out of historic economic theories you are not expert about (incidentally giving rhetorical ammunition to Ignatieff and co.) and (b) you shouldn't conflate economic theories with practical policies followed by ministers who do not self-identify with such theories.

[Barry]

I think that the lesson is that these people are stone cold liars, and will be unless they knock on your door, after God blinded them on the road.

Any reassessment will be a lie, unless the person actually makes a sincere confession of error - and blaming it on the wrong people is not sincere.

[Auto]

I read his stuff about academic modes of thinking as a straw man attack on how lefties in the academic humanities, especially the lit-crit types, are supposed to argue.

You know, where facts and intention are all in the eye of the beholder.

As opposed to more practical types who live in a world of actions and consequences and responsibilities.

He's setting up a cage match between Winston Churchill and Stlanley Fish. Or maybe Ward Churchill. And Winston wins. Imagine that.

His piece was a snooze-fest. Kinda like slipping into a warm bath.

[Nan]

Michael Ignatieff mentions Thomas Jefferson as visionary. Jefferson never advocated launching illegal wars to invade and occupy third world countries in order to spread democracy. He talked about spread of ideas but not through bloodshed.

Michael Ignatieff piece sounds reasonable until you start unpacking it and then it makes no sense. He mentions Reagan in the Jefferson column. But Reagan did mostly talking about spreading democracy. He didn't launch a war to liberate eastern europe.

There is a difference between lofty rhetoric about spreading democracy and launching ruinous wars leading to the deaths of tens of thousands.

[anne]

Michael Ignatieff's essay bothered me for quite a different reason than Brad DeLong was bothered. I found the case the Iraqi was a threat to America, absurdly and obviously wrong, and as such I found no moral justification for going to war. Also, I found a lack of ability to understand the consequences of war completely discouraging. As for occupation, military occupation of Iraq I was even more opposed, since a violent occupation was conceived as justified when I could find no justification.

What then was Michael Ignatieff thinking, and why could simply reading the New York Times not have been enough to understand how unjust war and occupation would be and how insanely destructive for Iraqis?

I am much discouraged by such an apology after all this time for reflection.

[anne]

Reading the essay again there is a distancing from war and occupation that showes a lack of moral imagination by Michael Ignatieff who has otherwise written of the abstraction of modern war for spectators. War was a spectacle for Ignatieff, of no personal concern, so why be emotionally involved? The shocking and awing was entirely for other people. This is the amorality of modern war for Ignatieff, while forever distanced from the victims.

[anne]

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/print/2334/Tomgram%253A%2520%2520Andrew%2520Bacevich%2520on%2520the%2520New%2520American%2520Militarism

April 20, 2005

The Normalization of War
By Andrew J. Bacevich

But by the turn of the twenty-first century, a new image of war had emerged, if not fully displacing the old one at least serving as a counterweight. To many observers, events of the 1990s suggested that war's very nature was undergoing a profound change. The era of mass armies, going back to the time of Napoleon, and of mechanized warfare, an offshoot of industrialization, was coming to an end. A new era of high-tech warfare, waged by highly skilled professionals equipped with "smart" weapons, had commenced. Describing the result inspired the creation of a new lexicon of military terms: war was becoming surgical, frictionless, postmodern, even abstract or virtual. It was "coercive diplomacy" -- the object of the exercise no longer to kill but to persuade. By the end of the twentieth century, Michael Ignatieff of Harvard University concluded, war had become "a spectacle." It had transformed itself into a kind of "spectator sport," one offering "the added thrill that it is real for someone, but not, happily, for the spectator." Even for the participants, fighting no longer implied the prospect of dying for some abstract cause, since the very notion of "sacrifice in battle had become implausible or ironic."

Combat in the information age promised to overturn all of "the hoary dictums about the fog and friction" that had traditionally made warfare such a chancy proposition....

[John Emerson]

I keep saying this, but the conspiracy-theory explanation of this is far more plausible than the "shit happens" theory.

The conspiracy theory explanation is that management manages, and that management prefers stupid dishonest center-right or right political writers. Some people are hired for stupid, dishonest rightism (Jonah Goldberg is only the tip of the iceberg, but boy! what a tip!), whereas those naturally non-stupid are encouraged to move in that direction. Stubborn non-stupids are fired.

The "shit happens" theory is.... what? Something like transsubstantiation, the three persons of god, the virgin birth, and the immaculate conception, I guess.

Just no expaining it. Damn! How did we end up in such a mess? No one will ever know! It's beyond all human understanding.

[anne]

Michael Ignatieff:

"The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once said that the trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true."

The philosopher William James however often said that the truth of an idea resides in the difference the idea makes in our lives, which Berlin understood fully but of which Ignatieff had not the least understanding or cencern. To slough off an imagination of what what war is, is shameful.

[Lee A. Arnold]

Ignatieff: "But many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong."

--That is self-exculpatory and false. There were lots of people who love America and FOR THAT REASON had a gut sense that it was the wrong thing to do: I seem to remember that in late summer of 2002 opinion polls showed that around 70% of the U.S. public was AGAINST a war, before the Administration started banging the drums about WMD's. (We are back to that approx. percentage in opposition now.)

[venky]

The article is not all bad. Isiah Berlin's quote is quite apt: have you looked at the Table of Contents of Econometrica lately?

[anne]

Michael Ignatieff:

"But many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology. They opposed the invasion because they believed the president was only after the oil or because they believed America is always and in every situation wrong."

-- That is self-exculpatory and false.

-- Thanks, Lee Arnold.

[anne]

http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2003/ebsp2003n006.shtml

March 7, 2003

The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq
By Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei - Director General IAEA *

United Nations Security Council

Inspection Activities

When I reported last to the Council, on 14 February, I explained that the Agency's inspection activities had moved well beyond the "reconnaissance phase" - that is, re-establishing our knowledge base regarding Iraq's nuclear capabilities - into the "investigative phase", which focuses on the central question before the IAEA relevant to disarmament: whether Iraq has revived or attempted to revive its defunct nuclear weapons programme over the last four years.

At the outset, let me state one general observation: namely, that during the past four years, at the majority of Iraqi sites, industrial capacity has deteriorated substantially, due to the departure of the foreign support that was often present in the late 1980s, the departure of large numbers of skilled Iraqi personnel in the past decade, and the lack of consistent maintenance by Iraq of sophisticated equipment. At only a few inspected sites involved in industrial research, development and manufacturing have the facilities been improved and new personnel been taken on. This overall deterioration in industrial capacity is naturally of direct relevance to Iraq's capability for resuming a nuclear weapons programme.

Inspections

The IAEA has now conducted a total of 218 nuclear inspections at 141 sites, including 21 that had not been inspected before. In addition, IAEA experts have taken part in many joint UNMOVIC-IAEA * inspections....

Conclusion

In conclusion, I am able to report today that, in the area of nuclear weapons - the most lethal weapons of mass destruction - inspections in Iraq are moving forward. Since the resumption of inspections a little over three months ago - and particularly during the three weeks since my last oral report to the Council - the IAEA has made important progress in identifying what nuclear-related capabilities remain in Iraq, and in its assessment of whether Iraq has made any efforts to revive its past nuclear programme during the intervening four years since inspections were brought to a halt. At this stage, the following can be stated:

There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites.

There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.

There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminium tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuges out of the aluminium tubes in question.

Although we are still reviewing issues related to magnets and magnet production, there is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in a centrifuge enrichment programme.

As I stated above, the IAEA will continue further to scrutinize and investigate all of the above issues.

After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq. We intend to continue our inspection activities, making use of all the additional rights granted to us by resolution 1441 and all additional tools that might be available to us, including reconnaissance platforms and all relevant technologies. We also hope to continue to receive from States actionable information relevant to our mandate. I should note that, in the past three weeks, possibly as a result of ever-increasing pressure by the international community, Iraq has been forthcoming in its co-operation, particularly with regard to the conduct of private interviews and in making available evidence that could contribute to the resolution of matters of IAEA concern. I do hope that Iraq will continue to expand the scope and accelerate the pace of its co-operation.

* International Atomic Energy Agency & United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission

[anne]

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F30B1EFB3F550C7B8DDDAA0894DB404482

March 18, 2003

War in the Ruins of Diplomacy

America is on its way to war. President Bush has told Saddam Hussein to depart or face attack. For Mr. Hussein, getting rid of weapons of mass destruction is no longer an option. Diplomacy has been dismissed. Arms inspectors, journalists and other civilians have been advised to leave Iraq.

The country now stands at a decisive turning point, not just in regard to the Iraq crisis, but in how it means to define its role in the post-cold-war world. President Bush's father and then Bill Clinton worked hard to infuse that role with America's traditions of idealism, internationalism and multilateralism. Under George W. Bush, however, Washington has charted a very different course. Allies have been devalued and military force overvalued.

Now that logic is playing out in a war waged without the compulsion of necessity, the endorsement of the United Nations or the company of traditional allies....

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/18/opinion/18KRUG.html

March 18, 2003

Things to Come
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Of course we'll win on the battlefield, probably with ease. I'm not a military expert, but I can do the numbers: the most recent U.S. military budget was $400 billion, while Iraq spent only $1.4 billion.

What frightens me is the aftermath — and I'm not just talking about the problems of postwar occupation. I'm worried about what will happen beyond Iraq — in the world at large, and here at home.

The members of the Bush team don't seem bothered by the enormous ill will they have generated in the rest of the world. They seem to believe that other countries will change their minds once they see cheering Iraqis welcome our troops, or that our bombs will shock and awe the whole world (not just the Iraqis) or that what the world thinks doesn't matter. They're wrong on all counts....

[anne]

"The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once said that the trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true."

Venky reminds me to stress that Berlin was being critical, still the problem does not excuse a distancing from truth measured by the effects that ideas have on our lives.

[Junius Brutus]

I got bored and fell asleep about half way through Ignatieff's attempt to justify his intellectual and moral failings.

Did he ever end up getting to the part where he simply admitted being a poor interpreter of evidence who undervalues human life and is a credulous dupe?

[BillCross]

By the end of the twentieth century, Michael Ignatieff of Harvard University concluded, war had become "a spectacle." It had transformed itself into a kind of "spectator sport," one offering "the added thrill that it is real for someone, but not, happily, for the spectator."

Much like in 1861 when the Washington elite travelled out to Manassas Creek to watch what became the First Battle of Bull Run?

[anne]

Bill Cross:

"Much like in 1861 when the Washington elite travelled out to Manassas Creek to watch what became the First Battle of Bull Run?"

A telling remembrance. The entire point about war being that we need to make it entirely and grossly abnomal.

[DILBERT DOGBERT]

Thanks all for the can of whoop ass.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

Brad writes "A not-too-bright student achieves success by (a) figuring out which book on the syllabus is favored by the instructor, (b) taking that book to be the gospel, and (c) regurgitating large chunks of that book on the exams and in the papers."

You seem to know Michael awfully well, Brad.

To anne, note that Ignatieff's remark about war having become a "spectator sport" is insane in the extreme.

It was possible in the past for spectators to draw up in carriages to watch Napoleon in Italy or Lee at Gettysburg. In the 20th and 21st centuries, by contrast, wars sweep across whole countries and continents, slaughtering millions both by purpose and at random.

In other words, Ignatieff is off by only 180 degrees.

[walkingtheline]

Ignatieff lost the leadership race for the Canadian Liberal Party exactly because of his support for the Iraq War. This essay is simply intended to soften his image in Canada: it is a puff of air.

Lee Arnold pointed out the glaring absence of any references to WMD or actual facts. Ignatieff is less interested in explaining himself than insinuating that those who disagreed with him were somehow idiots.

[calscientist]

Beautiful comment. The dismissive paragraph about those who were correct in their judgement is enough to send hundreds of thousands of us over the edge here.

[knzn]

I dunno. From where I’m sitting, that line about “many of those who correctly anticipated catastrophe did so not by exercising judgment but by indulging in ideology” kind of rings true. All the sensible people who were strongly pro-American but against the war, somehow none of them managed to catch my ear for even a split second back in early 2003. They’re kind of like the millions of moderates who somehow turned out, a year or two after the 1972 election, to have voted for McGovern in his landslide loss. In 2003, I was hearing nonsense arguments from the left, and the best arguments I could find to be against the war came from the Bush administration, which effectively argued against its own position by saying things that were equally nonsensical. Was there some kind of media conspiracy requiring that only silly arguments be manifested to the general public?

[Entropy at Work]

If Ignatieff gets in a few apposite quotes, this is mainly an exercise in excusing himself for his errors in analysis and judgement by blaming it on context - academic habits of mind, etc. And style is message - so facile is he with the erudite references, he must be a true member of the intellectual elite (not to mention that he was at a professor at Harvard!).

The more I read, the less interesting it was.

[P.M.Lawrence]

The assertion "They didn’t believe that because America defended human rights and freedom in Bosnia and Kosovo it had to be doing so in Iraq" isn't even true, not if you are - as he is - contrasting actual defending with intentions. It was well documented at the time, e.g. in articles in the Spectator (was it Laughland? some name like that). Anyhow, it was pointed out that the main beneficiaries were the Albanian gangs/terrorists, and the main sufferers were the local Serb populations.