An interesting conversation occurred this week between the bloggers at Crooked Timber and at Marginal Revolution about what is responsible for the "Fiasco” (to use the title of Thomas Ricks' excellent book) that is the Iraq war. Alex Tabarrok argued that the culprit is big government, that wars “are full of incompetence, mendacity, fear, and lie,” and that “we can at least be thankful that the scale of death and destruction has been smaller.” Henry Farrell responded by writing that, “to say that the incompetence with which the Iraq war was conducted was simply business as usual is not only to get Rumsfeld et al. off the hook for the quite specifically personal incompetence that they displayed and are still displaying. It’s to make a general claim that can’t be supported using the evidence that you claim is supporting it.” Mr. Taborrok then gave more background for his argument that the war in Iraq was a failure of Government. I agree with Henry Farrell for I believe that those who planned this war made it a failure by refusing stubbornly to listen to people who didn't support with zealotry their plan to invade Iraq. Tom Friedman wrote yesterday that it was time for a plan B in Iraq. I agree with him. However, the problem is that the architects of this war were so sure of its success that they never thought of a plan B and that we are going to have to improvise and to take the uncertainty and instability come with improvisation.
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