The ten-year anniversary of the Iraq War has brought out its
critics, in force. Many, but not all of them were against the war from the
beginning. Some are against almost all wars; others are especially opposed to
American wars.
The latter cohort sees America as a great sinner. Lacking in moral stature
America does not have a right to defend itself, except perhaps under the most
extreme circumstances. If any of its troops participate in morally dubious
enterprises the loss of moral stature makes its military efforts even more
unworthy of support.
It is fair to say that none of them, had they been around at the time would have been whining about how America lost the moral high ground by incinerating three cities during World War II.
They would agree, however, that if America atones for its moral faults by
electing an African-American president it regains moral stature and has the
right to send killer drones around the world.
To those who believe that America is a nation in
need of a good moral cleanse, it all makes perfect sense.
When the Iraq War started anti-warriors were especially
agitated because the war was being conducted by a Republican president. They believed
that military success would be a political boon for Republicans. They would win
more and more elections. Before you knew it the Supreme Court would be a
subsidiary of News Corp.
Worst yet, a successful war validates martial and therefore
manly virtues. Those who believe that America should be radically feminized
feared for their position in the ongoing culture war.
Today, ten years on, precious few people see the Iraq War as
a success. Peggy Noonan correctly sees it as an albatross that is dragging down
the Republican Party.
The sad truth is that a political party that prides itself
on being strong in foreign affairs and that supports and defends the military has
led the nation to something other than a military victory.
You can parse as you wish, but in the matter of warfare
there is a bottom line: you win or you lose. Or else, you win or you don’t win.
The Bush administration, Noonan animadverts: “… started a
war and didn’t win it.”
However invalid the criticisms of the Bush administration,
however distorted the charges of lying and of hubris, it led us into a war and didn’t win it.
The rest is static.
Clearly, the press and the Democrats have been playing the
Iraq War card with reckless abandon. Yet, if America had emerged victorious; if
the policy had been unambiguously successful; they would all be congratulating
themselves for having supported it from the beginning.
In the case of Iraq, the mud sticks because there is no Teflon.
The war was mismanaged and mishandled. Blame
it on whom you wish; the people in charge were responsible.
Unless you believe that the Bush administration possessed intelligence
that demonstrated that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, the
charge that it lied is bogus. Yet, the charge sticks because the Bush administration did
not keep its word on so many other issues.
Noonan continues:
[The
Iraq War] was longer and costlier by every measure than the Bush administration
said it would be.
Before
Iraq, the GOP's primary calling card was that it was the party you could trust
in foreign affairs. For half a century, throughout the Cold War, they were serious
about the Soviet Union, its moves, feints and threats. Republicans were not
ambivalent about the need for and uses of American power, as the Democrats were
in the 1970s and 1980s, but neither were they wild. After Iraq it was the
Republicans who seemed at best the party of historical romantics or,
alternatively, the worst kind of cynic, which is an incompetent one. Iraq
marked a departure in mood and tone from past conservatism.
That is how the war is playing politically; it is not all just propaganda.
Of course, more sober and better-informed people have also
been trying to put it all into perspective.
Dexter Filkins covered the war for the New York Times. Today
he writes for the New Yorker. In a recent piece he explained that for many
Iraqis the new order is vastly superior to the old order. For Iraqi Kurds
things are much better now than they were in Saddam’s time.
In Filkins’ words:
Today,
in 2013—a decade later—it’s not fashionable to suggest that the American
invasion of Iraq served any useful purpose. It was a catastrophe, born of
original sin—of lies and exaggeration and trumped-up intelligence. How many
times have you heard that this week? There are a hundred thousand dead Iraqis,
more than four thousand Americans killed, and a bill for a trillion dollars.
Indeed, the near-universal certainty that America’s war in Iraq was nothing but
bad is as widespread and unbreachable as the notion, in 2003, that Saddam had
to go.
But
what are we to make of Iraqis like Al-Musawi? Or of torture chambers like Al
Hakemiya? Where do we place them in our memories? And, more important, how
should they shape our judgment of the war we waged?
I’d
say: Ask the Iraqis—that is, if anyone, in this moment of American
navel-gazing, can be bothered to do so. My guess is that the answers would be
richer and more surprising than the one-dimensional debate we are engaging in
at home.
Mark Steyn offers a cautionary note to those who believe that the war’s outcome proves that they were right. They ought, he adds, consider that they do not know what would have happened if Saddam Hussein had remained in power:
And so
a genuinely reformed Middle East remains, like the speculative scenarios
outlined at the top, in the realm of "alternative history."
Unfortunately, Steyn continues, America has fallen into the habit of conducting wars that it is not winning. Echoing Noonan’s remark, he says that when you get into a war, you can win it or lose it.
Nevertheless,
in the grim two-thirds-of-a-century roll-call of America's unwon wars, Iraq
today is less unwon than Korea, Vietnam or Afghanistan, and that is not
nothing. The war dead of America and its few real allies died in an honorable
cause. But armies don't wage wars; nations do. And, back on the home front, a
vast percentage of fair-weather hawks who decided that it was all too
complicated, or a bit of a downer, or Bush lied, or where's the remote,
revealed America as profoundly unserious . A senator who votes for war and then
decides he'd rather it had never started is also engaging in "alternative
history" – albeit of the kind in which Pam Ewing steps into the shower at
Southfork and writes off the previous season of "Dallas" as a bad
dream. In nonalternative history, in the only reality there is, once you've
started a war, you have two choices: to win it or to lose it. Withdrawing one's
"support" for a war you're already in advertises nothing more than a
kind of geopolitical ADHD.
Shortly
after Gulf War One, when the world's superpower assembled a mighty coalition to
fight half-a-war to an inconclusive halt at the gates of Baghdad, Washington
declined to get mixed up in the disintegrating Balkans. Colin Powell offered
the following rationale: "We do deserts. We don't do mountains."
Across a decade in Iraq, America told the world we don't really do deserts,
either.
Steyn is right to suggest that armies do not wage wars;
nations do. He would have been more right to add that political parties do not
wage war; nations do. The Iraq War was not a Republican war; it was an American
war.
The Republican Party was not the only loser; America lost
too.
Failing to win a war demoralizes a nation. It will pull back
from its commitments to nurse its wounds. Governments around the world will
lose respect for it. Then, it will lose confidence in itself and its people
will lose confidence in themselves. It will happen to all, Republican or Democrat.
Those who are congratulating themselves on being right are missing the point and ignoring their own loss.
There was a large contingent which protested and complained from about day 2. Not enough international support! This! That! The other! Something else! With the support of the Big-Time media. (Remember the "Big-Time" comment kerfuffle?)
ReplyDeleteThe ancient Greek was correct. Fear/Greed/Honor are the 3 reasons for war. Afghan was US Fear & Honor. Iraq was US Fear and Bush 2's Honor.
ReplyDeleteI fought VN, and still consider it right, in Cold War context. I consider SKorea similar. But we didn't "nation build" it. SKoreans did that themselves.
World politics & war is amoral. POTUS should Only expend his nation's Blood & Treasure for National Interest.
IMHO: In Afghan, we should have Butchered & Bolted. Iraq same, at Most.
Islam is a distinct Civ. US leaders still don't seem to understand that. -- Rich Lara
I'd agree with that last statement.
ReplyDeleteFirst time I had the capcha change before my eyes.
I agree to some extent. But in what way did this war benefit the United States? Removing Saddam did, he was a major source of funding for terrorism. But beyond that what is the point? We should have shot him in that spider hole and left. The various factions in Iraq could work out their own fate.
ReplyDelete