Iraqi sanctions and voting for Nader

Matthew Yglesias responded to this post of mine back in February. I was discussing the one reason I came close to favoring our invasion of Iraq (and still the outcome I most hope for): that the sanctions, and their accompanying humanitarian disaster (350,000 children under age 5 killed, etc), will be ended.

Matthew argued that I should favor the war, since of the politically viable options, having a war and ending sanctions is better than no war and neverending sanctions. He then went on to comment:

It’s curious that Matthew connects the sanctions question to the 2000 election. I wonder if it’s occurred to Matthew that, from the perspective of “consequentialism” and sanctions (and with hindsight’s benefit), the candidate I should have voted for in 2000 was George Bush?

After all, in Matthew’s opinion, a war on Iraq does less harm to innocent Iraqis than continued sanctions do. Doesn’t that mean that Bill Clinton’s policies (sanctions) were worse for Iraqi innocents than George Bush’s policies?

Before 9/11, you’ll recall, some Bush administration officials – mainly State department types – were pushing to reform the sanctions policy (aka “smart sanctions”). President Gore couldn’t have allowed that, because he (or any Democrat) would have faced relentless right-wing criticism for being soft on Saddam. (Republicans, who are perceived as tougher in foreign policy, have more leeway; aka “only Nixon could go to China”).

More recently, of course, Bush has declared war on Iraq – and, horrible as that is, it seems likely to end the sanctions policy. I doubt that we would now be at war with Iraq if Gore were president; therefore, had Gore been President, the sanctions would continue.

No matter how you look at it, the best chance of ending the sanctions in 2000 was George Bush winning the election. So, according to Matthew’s logic, my mistake in 2000 was not voting for George Bush.

Maybe. But I’m not a consequentialist. Or, rather, I am a consequentialist, in that the main thing I care about is outcomes; but I’m not a fortune-teller. In 2000, I was faced with major-party candidates who both seemed certain to continue Iraqi sanctions, and no crystal ball to tell me about the forthcoming Iraq invasion.

Faced with a system in which all viable candidates favor mass murder of Iraqi children, what is the reasonable response?

I don’t think that’s a simple, or easy, question. One answer – I suppose consequentialism’s answer – would be to give up on ending the Iraqi sanctions. Those children are as good as dead already, and nothing the American voter does will change that. A policy option of non-genocide towards Iraqi children is not on the table. Therefore, to care about Iraqi children at all while voting is mistaken.

The other answer is that when tragedy is extreme enough, taking a long shot is better than taking no shot at all. Do I think that a long-term Green campaign to reform the Democrats from without – and by “long-term,” I’m thinking 20 or 30 years – is likely to put better, more humane policies on the table? Is it likely to create a political reality in which being against the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians is a realistic policy option?

No, I don’t think it’s especially likely. But I think it offers better odds than simply giving up opposing genocide as politically unviable, which is what “consequentialism” seems to call for. When the problems one faces are extreme enough, going for the long-shot solution is better than giving up altogether.

Matthew might call this another example of my favoring “personal ideological integrity over the suffering of others.” (How voting for Al Gore, who favored the sanctions, is an example of caring about the suffering of Iraqis is beyond me.) But I think Matthew’s reading of me is not only unkind but inaccurate.

In 2000, I saw two bad options. In one case, I could vote for the “lesser evil” Gore. The advantage of this is that, although I’m giving up on most of my long-term goals (ending sanctions, promoting fair trade practices, electoral reform, etc), I might gain short-term advantage on some goals that seem less important to me, but are still very important (tax policy, etc). Then again, I might not; I could vote for Gore and he might nonetheless lose the election, or I could vote for Gore and find that Gore supported policies I abhor.

In the other case, I could vote for Nader. This had the advantage of at least presenting a possibility of long-term reform in many important issues; not through winning the election (that won’t happen), but through – ideally – forcing the Democrats to co-opt some Green positions over the course of the next two or three decades. But it had the disadvantage of making it more likely that Bush will win the election, which could lead to all sorts of bad outcomes (and did).

In neither case is my goal seeking “personal ideological integrity.” Like Matthew, I want to reduce suffering; but unlike Matthew, I’m not sure which strategy will best accomplish that goal. In the short term, I think the best way to reduce the “suffering of others” is supporting lesser evils like Gore; but in the long term, failing to work on reforming the system – failing to put “opposing killing Iraqi children” on the table of viable policy options – causes far more suffering than four or eight years of President Bush can.

I reluctantly decided it was better to work on long-term strategy than to resign myself to a lifetime of lesser-evilism. Am I certain I made the right choice? No. As I said, I have no crystal ball. (And when I think I have a crystal ball, I’m frequently mistaken. In 2000, I honestly thought that if Bush won the election, at least the Democrats would do well in the 2002 elections.)

But I’m not certain I made the wrong choice, either. Bush is awful, but I don’t know that he’s worse than Gore would have been (if, as Matthew seems to think, Bush’s war will end the sanctions, then that alone may make Bush better than Gore). When you’re contemplating a long-term movement for substantive change, I don’t think it’s useful to try and judge success or failure based on just a handful of years.

I do think that a system which puts forward two candidates who agree on a policy as horrible as the Iraqi sanctions is awful beyond measure. In 2000, I voted for Nader because fighting that system was, for me, a higher priority than fighting George Bush. If I had it to do over, I’d probably vote the same way, and with as little certainty.

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