Jeffrey Goldberg retails the Bobbit Fallacy

Is Jeffrey Goldberg, in an attempt to expose a fallacy, falling victim to a fallacy? Goldberg relays a report by Steven Coll of a John Kerry dinner party where Brent Scowcroft assered, "Saddam, in fact, was quite well contained. And we had a big problem following 9/11 in dealing with this greater threat of terrorism." Goldberg demurs:

It is an open question, however, whether Saddam was in fact "contained." The sanctions regime was crumbling; the world was tired of keeping Saddam in a box. And as John Kerry himself said in October of 2002, "It would be naive to the point of grave danger not to believe that left to his own devices, Saddam Hussein will provoke, misjudge, or stumble into a future, more dangerous confrontation with the civilized world. He has as much as promised it."

But let's assume it was true that Saddam was actually contained in early 2003. Does this mean that he would have remained contained in 2004? Here, Scowcroft falls victim to Parmenide's Fallacy, which occurs when a policymaker considers the merits of a particular proposal by judging it against its current context, rather than by what might occur in the future if the proposal isn't acted upon. In the words of Phillip Bobbitt, "indefinitely extending the present is never a realistic option." Just because Saddam was contained in 2003 (assuming he was) has no bearing on whether he would have been contained in 2004 or 2005.

Is it true that "indefinitely extending the present is never a realistic option"? Depends, I guess, on what your definition of "present" is. The U.S. contained Soviet expansion for forty years until the Soviet Union imploded, relatively peacefully; conditions, tasks and tactics changed many times within that space. Saddam had maybe five-fifteen years to go. And "containment" does not necessarily mean "indefinitely extending the present." The pressure Bush applied to Saddam and to the world in fall 2002 was effective; renewing invasive inspections was a terrific idea. But the case against "indefinitely extending the present" does not amount to a case for invading every country where we consider the status quo unsustainable.