Iraq
Then and Now
or:
Why invading Iraq was the wrong war in the wrong place at
the wrong time, but, once the U.S. is there, trying to win may be
the best among bad choices.
In
the current presidential campaign, Senator Kerry has been criticized
for being inconsistent or flip-flopping because he supposedly supported
the war and now criticizes it. This little essay is an attempt by
a non-specialist, writing from very much an American perspective,
to summarize the merits of the case.
Dick
Cheney and George Bush say we had to invade Iraq to protect ourselves
against terrorism. That shows they totally misunderstood the enemy.
The
Wrong Enemy
The
U.S. was attacked by Al Qaeda, not Saddam Hussein. That’s
a truism, though apparently unrecognized by the Vice President.
The larger context is that Al Qaeda is part of a Sunni fundamentalist
movement that, for lack of an agreed term, I’ll call the jihadis.
This movement believes the Arab world would be restored to greatness
if it was governed by a medieval vision of Islam. It has tried to
seize power in many countries across the Arab and Muslim worlds.
But it had been defeated everywhere except Afghanistan – partly
because of repression by regimes allied with the U.S., and partly
because, though many people in those countries hate their governments,
they also did not want such an extreme Islamic government.
So
Osama bin Laden decided to change the subject. By attacking the
U.S., he wanted to turn widespread resentment of the U.S., a feeling
of humiliation by the westerners, into a reason to support the broader
jihadist agenda. His message was that fundamentalists were standing
up to the western infidels, so all good Muslims should support them.
Saddam
Hussein had nothing to do with that. Saddam Hussein is a Baathist,
an Arab Nationalist. Osama bin Laden called Saddam an “infidel”
and Saddam brutally repressed the Sunni fundamentalists, along with
everyone else. Saddam was one of a bunch of people in the Middle
East who didn’t like us but didn’t like Al Qaeda either.
The Iranian Mullahs, for example, are Shiite fundamentalists. Sunni
extremists like Osama view the Shia as heretics or schismatics.
It’s much like how Catholics viewed Protestants during the
Reformation – which led to over a century of religious wars
in Europe. Even in Iraq some of the bombings have been Sunnis blowing
up Shia.
So attacking Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with attacking Osama.
In fact, it was exactly what Osama would want. First, it got rid
of one of his enemies in the Arab world. More important, the American
invasion of Iraq gave him an opportunity to get allies in the Arab
and Muslim worlds.
Before
we invaded Iraq, we were fighting Sunni jihadis. Lots of other people
didn’t like us, for all sorts of reasons, but were not trying
to kill Americans. Now, in Iraq, the Al Qaeda types are joined by
Baathist Arab nationalists; by the radical Shia led by Muqtada al-Sadr;
by Iraqi nationalists who don’t like having the U.S. occupying
their country; and by tribal groups that just don’t like having
any foreigners around, and who feel they have to take revenge if
any of their members are killed. The rest of the Arab world sees
the conflict on Al-Jazeera, where brutality based on a medieval
distortion of Islam is presented as the way to overcome humiliation,
be strong, and drive out the infidels. So by invading Iraq, Bush
and Cheney took our conflict with jihadis into the worst possible
conditions. Definitely the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong
time. It would have been much better, for example, to put more effort
into catching Bin Laden and turning Afghanistan into a decent place
to live.
How
Could They Get It So Wrong?
There’s
a lot of theories, but one thing is clear: Bush and Cheney were
not focused on Al Qaeda and the larger jihadist movement at all.
Look
at what Cheney said on August 26, 2002, when he made the case for
invading Iraq to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Nashville:
“We
now know Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons…
Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop
10 percent of the world’s oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could
then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take
control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies,
directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region,
and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.”
(New York Times October 3, 2004, p17)
Ignore
the fact that Cheney and the rest of the administration vastly exaggerated
Saddam’s nuclear threat, badly distorting the facts. Cheney’s
rationale has nothing to do with Al Qaeda. As Bob Woodward’s
book, Plan of Attack, makes clear, Cheney and others in the administration
wanted to eliminate Saddam Hussein before 9-11 happened. The very
first National Security Council meeting of Bush’s Presidency,
on January 30, focused on Iraq. As Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill
recalled, Condi Rice said the main agenda item was “How Iraq
is destabilizing” (her words) the Middle East, and argued
that, in O’Neill’s summary, “Iraq might be the
key to reshaping the entire region.” (Ron Suskind, The Price
of Loyalty, 72). As many other sources, such as Richard Clarke’s
book and reporting in The New Yorker show, this administration paid
little attention to Al Qaeda before 9-11, and President Bush immediately
focused on Iraq after 9-11.
If
you were worried about Muslim radicals getting The Bomb, you would
worry more about the prospect of radicals taking over Pakistan.
After all, those radicals are a lot stronger in Pakistan than they
were in Iraq, and Pakistan already has The Bomb. So people who seriously
worried about Osama’s brand of radical Islam would at least
ask whether invading Iraq might destabilize Pakistan. But there
is no evidence in Plan of Attack that Bush and Cheney considered
those kinds of issues at all.
Some
people in the administration, known as the “neocons”
(neoconservatives), believed that we could create a democracy in
Iraq, and that the example of that democracy would transform the
Muslim (especially Arab) world, and so defuse the threat from Muslim
fundamentalist movements. President Bush makes that his main argument
now. Even George F. Will calls the idea that we can build democracy
in other countries a “lethal idea” (Newsweek, Sept 27
2004) based on fantasy. At a minimum, we should expect our leaders
to think about what could go wrong if we tried. But Bush and Cheney
appear to have paid no attention at all to the risks. Instead, they
sold the idea of the war on false data about “weapons of mass
destruction,” especially nuclear weapons. In Thursday’s
debate President Bush said:
“My
opponent says we didn’t have any allies in this war. What’s
he say to Tony Blair? What’s he say to Alexander Kwasniewski
of Poland?”
But
even Kwasniewski, asked about weapons of mass destruction in March,
said:
“They
deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that’s
true. We were taken for a ride.” (taken from the Newsweek
website Sunday, October 03, 2004)
The
facts are obvious. This administration came into office determined
to overthrow Saddam Hussein. That was a goal long before 9/11. Attacking
Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda and nothing to do with radical
Sunni fundamentalism. Cheney wanted to attack Iraq because he thought
Saddam would dominate the Middle East with nuclear weapons that
Saddam did not have. The administration grossly distorted intelligence
to make that case. What attacking Iraq did do was play directly
into Osama bin Laden’s hands. Bush and Cheney show no signs
of even understanding the issue.
Now
What?
But
now the U.S. is occupying Iraq. Actually, “occupying Iraq”
may be a bit too positive a term; part of the problem in terms of
security is that the U.S. is not doing much of a job of occupying
significant portions of the country. What should be done now?
Senator
Kerry’s position is that, once there, the U.S. can’t
afford to lose. Ignore for the moment what “lose” and
“win” might mean. An outcome that would be viewed as
defeat for the U.S. would be seen by the Arab world and much of
the Muslim world as a victory for jihadi’sts. Bush and Cheney
turned Iraq into a giant recruiting poster for Al Qaeda. But it
will be much worse if the fundamentalists can say they won, so that
Iraq is proof that their approach can restore the pride and power
of Arab and Muslim peoples.
The question then is whether Senator Kerry has a better chance of
avoiding such a loss than President Bush does. That gets translated
politically into whether Kerry has a better “plan” than
Bush, but demanding a “plan” is plain dumb. Iraq is
past the opportunity for planning. Kerry can’t possibly know
what the situation on the ground will be on January 20, so what
he will do then, should he be elected. Instead, Kerry can legitimately
argue that he offers a more promising approach.
His
first argument would be that Bush has already shown that he doesn’t
deserve trust on the issue. Bush has had lots of “plans”
for Iraq, all of which have failed. At a minimum, Kerry can and
has said that you can’t solve a problem if you aren’t
willing to figure out what it is, or even to acknowledge it. So
one advantage of Kerry’s approach would be realism.
But
what then? Kerry can’t legitimately promise that he will get
a lot of help from allies and international organizations. They
must calculate their own national interests and domestic politics
(or, for international organizations, where they’ll get staff
willing to risk going to Iraq), and the costs may exceed the benefits.
What Kerry can argue is that he has a better chance of getting help
from allies and international organizations than Bush does. Consider
the situation of the French:
The
French government opposed invading Iraq for very good reasons: that
invading Iraq was a diversion from the real task, fighting jihadis,
and that Saddam could be kept in a box by inspections. They were
right. But, as noted above, now Iraq IS a front in a conflict with
jihadis. There is a French interest in avoiding jihadist victory
in Iraq, because, expanded beyond Iraq, the movement is highly likely
to have nasty effects on French interests. But it has to be very
hard for the French to turn around and support the U.S. with Bush
as president: partly because of personal feelings among leaders
and partly because Bush has proven that his judgment in operational
decisions cannot be trusted. There is a further problem, to which
Kerry had referred. The Bush administration has been so focused
on keeping contracts for American corporations, using contract decisions
to punish the French and others, that it would be very hard for
any French government to cooperate unless it could show that the
French were no longer being discriminated against in economic terms.
I suspect that the material value of contracts in the short run
is not the major issue. After all, the average French contractor,
like all others, must have serious doubts about sending their staff
to Iraq at the moment. But the French must care about both the principle
and the long run, whether there would be any business prospects
if Iraq is ever stabilized. So Kerry makes a good substantive point
when he talks about contracts.
Hence
Kerry can offer realism, some practical measures to enlist others,
and simply the advantage of not being Bush, so making a fresh start.
Beyond that, however, he and Bush would face much the same constraints.
Everybody is for training more Iraqi soldiers and policemen; the
challenge is to ensure they’re competent and don’t go
over to the other side(s). Kerry is more likely than Bush to admit
a need for more force, and has called for a larger Army. But it’s
not clear where the extra volunteers could be found under current
conditions, and the political constraints against deploying more
troops in Iraq are strong. Neither Kerry nor Bush has evident ways
to make the Shia trust the Sunnis, or the Turks accept Kurdish autonomy.
Kerry may be seen in most of the world as very different from Bush,
so have a better chance of winning cooperation from forces outside
Iraq. Unfortunately, it is not at all clear that the contending
forces inside Iraq will make the distinction between Kerry and Bush.
If Kerry wins he has a better chance of some sort of “success”
than Bush does, but it’s still going to be very difficult.
A
Note on the Politics
Readers
will note that everything I’ve said here is compatible with
the substance of Senator Kerry’s campaign positions, but somewhat
different from what he has said.
The
Bush campaign charges it is inconsistent to say Iraq was the wrong
war in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet still say we need
to win. Their position ignores the fact that the conflict in Iraq
is now far wider than a conflict with Saddam Hussein.
The
Bush campaign also says Kerry “backed” the war when
he voted for the resolution giving Bush authority. As an observer,
I find it fair to say that many Democrats made a political calculation
to back that resolution. They knew they could be blamed for opposing
it, and surely assumed that, if there were a war, and it turned
out badly, Bush would get more of the blame than they would. But
Kerry does have a substantive point. Bush and Cheney and their advisers
greatly exaggerated the evidence about the potential threat from
Saddam. Yet most outsiders thought Saddam had some sort of WMD,
and thought he harbored aggressive intent. Under these conditions
it made sense to resume inspections, and it is highly unlikely that
Saddam would have allowed the inspections without the threat of
an invasion. It is reasonable for a Senator to expect a normal President
to threaten force, when that is useful, yet use force only when
necessary. We now know better – that Bush meant to invade
Iraq all along. But Kerry could not, and even if he did, he could
not have proved it at the time.
Bush also says Kerry does not “support our troops.”
That charge has two components. One is Kerry’s series of votes
on the famed $87 billion supplemental appropriation. Anyone who
knows Congress knows that votes are framed as packages, amendments
are offered, and sometimes a legislator wants one version but not
another, so votes against the final version of legislation. Kerry
may have made a mistaken political calculation (in this case, to
object to how the reconstruction of Iraq would be financed), but
to say he did not “support our troops” is a distortion
(though one Kerry made possible). A more fundamental part is Bush’s
argument that, in order to support the troops, you have to support
the war.
Many
liberals or peace advocates find Bush’s position incomprehensible.
The best thing that could happen to the troops would be to come
home, unharmed. If opposing the war means ending the war, then it
would get the troops out of Iraq, giving them the help they need
most. Bush’s argument has a lot of political resonance because
“support” in this case means emotional support. If you
were stuck in Iraq, you would want to believe you were there for
a good reason. It’s hard enough to be in a hellhole, having
to kill or be killed, continually wondering who just wants to be
your friend and who wants to blow you up, without suspecting that
you shouldn’t be there in the first place.
Kerry
can give three answers to this criticism. One would be that at least
some of who the troops are fighting are the right enemy, even if
they should not have been fighting on this ground. A second would
be that having a leader who recognizes reality makes it more likely
that their efforts will make us more secure. Finally, he can argue
that we just should not lie to soldiers; that they can recognize
the truth for themselves, and being lied to just makes them feel
their government is selling them out.
Kerry
can make the final argument from experience. That is how he felt
in Vietnam. Yet a whole lot of other soldiers – the kind whose
views are represented in the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth”
– felt very differently. Their need to feel their sacrifices
were justified is so great that even 30 years later they can’t
let go.
The
average voter understands the feelings of soldiers who need to believe
what they’re doing is worthwhile. Perhaps that explains why
Kerry can’t make some other points as strongly as an analyst
would wish.
Joseph White, Ph.D.
Luxenberg Family Professor and Chair
Department of Political Science
Director, Center for Policy Studies
Case Western Reserve University
Mather House 111
11201 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland OH 44106-7109
joseph.white _a_t_ case d o t edu
