Chait’s defense of liberal hawks

Re “A liberal hawk strikes back,” Opinion, Sept. 17

Jonathan Chait, citing my book as critical of liberal hawks like him, makes an unwarranted leap in his argument. The number of troops needed to pacify Iraq was probably close to 500,000, which politically was not feasible, rendering the war an immoral choice. Even with such numbers, knowing what we do about the origins of political violence and insurgency -- namely, that violence begets violence in an enormous feedback loop -- we may not have avoided a very ugly mess with a high mortality. As the human costs become known, the exceptionally poor judgment of the liberal hawks becomes clearer.

JOHN TIRMAN

Cambridge, Mass.

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While defending liberal hawks, Chait does many of the same things the right is so famous for when it rationalizes its agenda.

The entire premise that the Iraq war would be justified if it had gone better is a straw man. It is a given that the economy would be better and violence would be less had there been actual planning and oversight and less corruption.

But the execution of a war cannot be its justification. The rationale for war has certain legal and moral hurdles, put forth in the U.N. Charter and the Geneva Convention. If a country has been attacked or is in imminent danger of being attacked, then there are moral and legal grounds for war. The only other exception is humanitarian reasons. The Iraq war had none of those.

Also, Chait labels and categorizes people who oppose this war as doves, which is intellectually dishonest and does not allow for people to make arguments based on a particular situation. Reference the fact that most people against the Iraq war supported the war in Afghanistan.

JOHN MATHIEU

San Pedro

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Chait raises the issue of internal bloodbaths and infighting in the Democratic Party and compares it to the unified Republican Party. Is he not aware that democracy is messy and that it survives because of various opinions and consensus rather than an arrogance of power?

FRANK KNUTSON

Redlands