Was Straussianism responsible for the Iraq War?

[Sol]

Well?

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Honestly not a bad question, although I don't have an immediate answer to it.

[Brother Jonathan]

I ultimately do not think so. In the end, you can make the case that neoconservatism was to some extent influenced by Strauss, and Straussians more generally, but I'm not sure how much farther you can go. I'll admit I am not all that familiar with the basic thrust of this claim (other than that Straussian is often used to refer to anyone right of center who reads and isn't Catholic) but I'd be interested in hearing a fuller account. I know Adam Curtis discusses it in The Power of Nightmares, but I didn't think his accounting of it really made much of an effort to actually engage with Strauss and was more focused on his neoconservative students who are probably not the best way to try and understand Strauss second hand. To read people like Stanley Rosen, Thomas Pangle, and Werner Dannhauser (let alone Strauss himself) and see the blueprint for Iraq seems a bit of a stretch, though I'd be interested to hear the case put. I see places where it could come from, but those are also places I don't think most people who expound this view go because it would require casting Strauss and Straussians as assertive liberals of one strip or another. The question of Strauss's views on liberalism is more complicated (and the subject of a great deal of inter-Straussian debate), and I think that stands somewhat off to the side of this question.

On that point, "Straussianism" is about as unitary as any "ism," which is to say not very. When both Robert Howse (an international law professor and recently a staunch and vocal critic of Israel) and Michael Anton (the "Flight 93 Election" guy) can be considered Struassians of some stripe, you have to admit it is a pretty big (some might say too big) tent.

[Electric Circus]

We can't rule out that it influenced the thinking of people within the administration. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are prime suspects. That's as far as I would go.

The invasion of Iraq seems more like a classic groupthink situation. The more you read about it, the more it seems like it wasn't a decision at all.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

I think it's been sort of memory holed how widespread support for regime change in Iraq was before 2004. Not just neocons, but most realists and liberal interventionists in the US foreign policy establishment were supportive of deposing Saddam after 9/11. Remember Bill Clinton had bombed Iraq over weapons inspections and signed the Iraq Liberation Act 1998 that made regime change official US policy. In the late 90s and early 00s invading Iraq wasn't some out-there notion that only a cabal of Straussians were pushing.

[All Along The Watchtower]

The invasion of Iraq seems more like a classic groupthink situation. The more you read about it, the more it seems like it wasn't a decision at all.

Robert Draper’s book To Start a War is eye-opening in this regard. All throughout the career civil service within the national security establishment, the assumption was that the US would invade Iraq after Afghanistan and so there was little pushback. You get the sense that there was widespread resignation to the inevitability of war against Iraq, so most people got with the program accordingly.

This was certainly true at the highest levels—note the “good soldier” Colin Powell and the man who was desperate to keep his job George Tenet. Both men clashed with the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld, and had deep reservations about the invasion, yet that didn’t stop either from helping the Bush administration sell it.

[Dan the Roman]

The problem with assigning influence to academics on those they never met is that someone like Wolfowitz is likely to be attracted to an ideology that gives his innate arrogance an intellectual veneer, so he may have been a Straussian for the same reason he pushed an invasion of Iraq while ignoring arguments to the contrary.

In turn, I would suggest that teachers/Professors can have an enormous influence on students they mentor. However, it is rare for their ideas to reach anyone who is not already inclined to be receptive to them.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

This has always struck me as one of those Democratic Underground conspiracy theories that probably didn't have much basis in reality.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

A major theme of Strauss & Straussians is how difficult it is to set up and sustain a good regime.  Given that, it's surprising that Straussians became associated with support for such a nation-building project as Iraq.

[HillGoose]

if it was, then that means Straussianism must be based as F and I need to read more about it