Iraq: Lessons for Human Nature and American Government

As we get closer to the 4 year anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, it is compelling to note the different liberal and conservative reactions to the invasion and its aftermath. The liberal reaction is based on the lies and fraudulent methods used to get the U.S. to go to war. For Frank Rich, the lesson of Iraq is that Bush has empowered Iran while simultaneously trying to push the U.S. into attacking Iran. The problem is that Bush has lost the ability to control the lies. David Brooks draws a much bigger lesson from Iraq. Brooks writes from the context of movement conservatism, which denigrated the benefits of government, arguing instead that humans did not need government to spontaneously organize. Thus, Brooks concludes that Iraq proves human nature is inherently violent and tribal.

It's almost sad to see Brooks renouncing key parts of conservative doctrine. I also have libertarian tendencies, and I sympathize with conservative economic arguments that that state is inherently oppressive, while individual humans are a constant wellspring of creative innovation as long as the state does not intervene. However, Iraq is a special case because it was never possible for Iraq to be a testing ground for conservative ideals. From the beginning, Bush had a singular vision of Iraq as a vibrant capitalist democracy that simply needed to have Saddam Hussein removed as its dictator. Thus, as Thomas Friedman always says, the central question about Iraq has been whether Iraq fits one of two descriptions. The first description, which can be called "good Iraq", says that Iraq is filled with good, creative, generous people who simply need to be relieved of Saddam Hussein's oppressive rule in order to express their natural goodness. The second description, or "bad Iraq", says that Iraq is filled with greedy, unscrupulous, murderous, tribal, sectarian people who will kill each other without a moment's notice if they aren't separated or oppressed by a dictator.
In short, did Iraq need Saddam Hussein to maintain order, or not? Brooks concludes that Iraq needed Saddam Hussein to maintain order, and he extends this conclusion to all aspects of society: human nature is cruel, and without order we will kill each other. Humans need structure and order in education, parenting, and society in general.

The problem with this perspective is that Brooks makes a conclusion from a false test case. If I were going to test human nature, I would not do it with inmates in a maximum security prison where the inmates have simply learned how to be cruel to each other. Brooks' conceptual flaw is thinking that Iraqi human nature can be separated from the effects of Saddam Hussein's tenure. It's the same flaw as thinking that a person is somehow rehabilitated by serving 30 years for murder. Instead, the person merely learns to become a better killer.

Conservatives have a strong tendency to ignore the effects of one's environment, assuming instead that all human behavior is determined by human nature, or some sort of fixed internal mechanism. They blame liberals for going to the other extreme in thinking that the environment is responsible for all human behavior and that there is no such thing as personal responsibility. In reality, human behavior is the product of the interaction between individual intentions and environmental context. The general term for this view is "situation ethics", but the reality is that one must know the details of the environment in order to understand the effects of human intentions on that environment. One cannot be separated from the other.