It has been ten years since George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell and others took America into a war on false pretenses, a war in Iraq that turned out to be the worst foreign policy disaster in American history.
It was a war of choice, based on faulty intelligence, but backed by many major newspapers and by Democratic political leaders, as well as Republicans.
The Iraq War prevented America from winning the Afghanistan War, as it diverted our attention from the war against Al Qaeda..
It led to about 4,500 dead American soldiers and about 32,500 wounded. And the involvement was the longest war in American history, except for the ongoing war in Afghanistan.
The question is whether the United States has learned anything, and will not allow itself to be fooled and misled about intelligence in the future, as we face possible threats of war with Iran, ironically the more dangerous nation than Iraq, and emboldened by our war there to build up its nuclear potential.
When focusing on what was lost, we tend lose sight of what was won. To start with the obvious, Saddam Hussein is gone. That’s no small thing. It’s not just that Saddam was one of the most vicious mass murderers of his era — though it’s important to remember that he was, and that the horror of the past decade in Iraq still hasn’t matched his totalitarian regime’s body count — it’s that his unpredictability made him especially dangerous.That’s the flipside to the intelligence failures in the run-up to the war: If it was so hard to tell that Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction program was on its deathbed, it would have been just as hard to predict his behavior had he been left in power for the past decade, enriched by the failure of the sanctions regime (remember the bad joke that was Oil-for-Food?) and rising oil prices driven by Chinese and Indian demand. Restarting his WMD program, funding international terrorism, further military adventurism — one could never tell with Saddam. A murderous anti-American loose cannon like Saddam was never an ideal ingredient for a stable balance of power. And because the current government of Iraq isn’t an international pariah, oil production is higher now than it has been since before the first Gulf War; with less Iraqi oil on the market, sanctions on Iran would be a much tougher sell in Europe. Iraq is still a violent place; the Iraqi government is dysfunctional and has grown less genuinely democratic. Elections in Iraq did, as President Bush envisioned, change the politics of the region, but the illiberalism of the people who’ve thrived at the ballot box has created new challenges. But none of this should make anyone nostalgic for Saddam Hussein. But the war wasn’t just about Saddam Hussein. Iraq became the central front in the war against al Qaeda, and it was the ideal place to open that front. Iraq loomed large in Osama bin Laden’s 1998 declaration of war. His first grievance was that “the United States is occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of its territories, Arabia†— that is, he objected to the Saudis hosting U.S. troops, the linchpin of the policy of containment toward Saddam. Bin Laden’s second grievance was that the U.S. had gone to war with Iraq and might do so again. It was natural that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s branch of al Qaeda would meet the U.S. on the battlefield in Iraq. As with the other factions that emerged after the invasion, American policymakers weren’t really prepared for this, but, with the course correction that was the surge, eventually managed to deal with it. There have been numerous foiled terror plots since 9/11, but the successful major attack that most of us were expecting never came; credit a mixture of good counterterrorism and good luck, but also credit the men and women who lost friends, limbs, and lives taking the fight against al Qaeda to Iraq for making the pool of terrorist recruits smaller and a successful attack less likely. In other words: Yes, the Iraq War made us safer. The cost in blood, treasure, and U.S. credibility was greater than anyone anticipated. The mistakes along the way were nearly catastrophic. The Iraq War was, no doubt, a Pyrrhic victory. But it was a victory nonetheless.
Juan, actually, I have to say that I agree with much of what you have said. You have made a very good case for what GOOD came out of the Iraq War. I just wish we had not been misled in the way we were by the Bush Administration, but I will give you credit for some excellent points!
You can say whatever you want about the results, but the origins and motives for the war did not lie with the Bush administration.
Hoopster, who is responsible for the origins and motives then? Are you saying Bill Clinton or George H W Bush? Please explain!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323393304578358691247678454.html
Excellent post Professor