A Failure of Strategy

Ilan Goldenberg's right to be troubled by this New York Times retrospective on Iraq. There are some good pieces in here, but it's striking that they're all focuses on the execution of the war and none treat the strategic issue of Iraq.

But Iraq has been, first and foremost, a strategic miscalculation based on a disastrously wrongheaded conception of the strategic challenge revealed on 9/11/01. The United States had a chance to implement a focused, disciplined effort to go after al-Qaeda and remove the threat but instead George W. Bush, aided and abetted by a wide swathe of elites, chose to go in for a broad-brush vision of a "war on terror" whose centerpiece would be the invasion and occupation of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and no meaningful relationship with al-Qaeda. The costs of that decision have been enormous, not just in terms of the tragedy that's played out for American soldiers and Iraqis of all stripes, but in terms of the opportunity cost of totally reorienting America's foreign policy and defense priorities away from useful things and toward Iraq instead.

Today, America faces not just political choices about the future of our Iraq policy, but also choices about whether future policy in other areas will continue to be guided by the strategic vision that led us into Iraq, or whether we'll return to something sounder. To just take the invasion for granted and argue about the handling of the occupation obscures much more than it reveals. Warren Strobel for McClatchy does a much better job of highlighting the big picture.

Comments

The United States had a chance to implement a focused, disciplined effort to go after al-Qaeda and remove the threat

It is, of course, complete BS that the Bush Administration could have "removed the threat" of al Qaeda. There's no reason to think that we could have done any more to al Qaeda than we've already done. It is telling that Matthew doesn't identify a single thing that Bush should have done against al Qaeda but didn't.

Indeed, there are a lot of things Bush has done to take out al Qaeda that Matthew has argued against - such as support the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, which unquestionably eliminated an al Qaeda safe haven in North Africa. And, of course, the harsh interrogations of people like KSM and others - something Matthew has argued against - has provided with valuable information to use in taking down al Qaeda, information that we would never have obtained had we used the left-wing's preferred interrogation method of "please tell us where the al Qaeda cells are... pretty please!"

Let's face it, if Bush had taken Matthew's advice (ignoring, for this purpose, that Matthew actually supported the Iraq war), we would have had less success against al Qaeda than we've actually had.

Posted by Al | March 16, 2008 3:48 PM

As long as I have been reading Yglesias pieces, he's been pushing the idea that it is useful, analytically, to recognize that the decision to go to war was bad, and therefore, the details of execution don't have to be considered.

It is a philosopher's argument: an argument for an economy of evidence and argument.

And, it is nonsense.

The truth is, we don't really know what the strategic reason for invading Iraq and occupying the country was, or is.

We cannot avoid examining the execution of the war policy over time, because we need more, not less information, to refine our interpretative critique. The decision to go to war is of a piece with the policy for conducting occupation and reconstruction, and that whole remains shrouded behind the lies and public relations manipulations of the principal strategic actor: that decider-in-chief and his Administration.

The hypothesis that Bush et alia have achieved their strategic objective can not be rejected, with certainty. We don't know that they have failed on their own terms, because we don't know what those terms are.

We are mired in confusion, because we cannot say, clearly, whether we have, or had, or have since acquired strategic objectives in Iraq.

Posted by Bruce Wilder | March 16, 2008 3:54 PM

A spot of imperial overreach with some Al Queda as cover, nothing more.

Try to read Pollack's short piece w/o barfing.

Posted by mike | March 16, 2008 3:57 PM

It is telling that Matthew doesn't identify a single thing that Bush should have done against al Qaeda but didn't.

Well, for one thing, Al, I missed the US v bin Laden trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. But apparently it was more important to prepare to invade Iraq than it was to capture bin Laden and the rest of the al Qaeda leadership at Tora Bora . . .

Posted by rea | March 16, 2008 4:00 PM

I can think of a few things off hand.
Keeping our special operations forces focused on Afghanistan. Keeping our intell assets focused on Afghanistan, or at least al-Qaeda. Third, being able to keep more troops of all kinds, civil affairs, combat, and engineers. While I don't know if we could have gotten Osama with these things, we certainly would have more progress to show in Afghanistan.

Posted by jon | March 16, 2008 4:01 PM

Analysts, politicians and the media all strain themselves, as quietly as they can, to avoid discussion of the STRATEGIC failure in Iraq.

The more it gets pasted over the uglier it will be when the country finally steps back and soaks it up.

Posted by Condor | March 16, 2008 4:02 PM

The war in Iraq had so little to do with WMD, and had nothing to do with Al Queda or 911. It was a strategic move; a gamble.

The administration took the view that Iraq would provide the best opportunity for the U.S. to establish its foothold in the region in order to promote and secure American interests.

Afghanistan was useful in obvious ways, but Iraq provided more value strategically. Most importantly, its geographic location made it more attractive for establishing permanant military bases.

The problem is, this gamble didn't pay off. The U.S. may get its bases, but its created more instability throughout the region at the same time. And these dynamics will continue to compete with one another...and continue...and continue...

Posted by AKBY | March 16, 2008 4:03 PM

Matt - not just the opportunity cost of re-orienting U.S. foreign policy, but also the lost opportunity to invest billions into the U.S. economy (or make better use of the money).

Posted by blah | March 16, 2008 4:14 PM

It is sort of humorous to use dignified language such as "strategy" in discussing the administration's reasoning for invading & occupying Iraq.

I mean, I could see someone among their boosters or columnists, etc. arguing that it was part of some deeply thought-out "strategy", but not the administration itself.

Posted by El Cid | March 16, 2008 4:24 PM

Wrong again, Flophouse boy.

The Bush administration is vilified for its foreign policy failures in 2003 through 2006, but very few are willing to concede the huge foreign policy learning that the adminstration undertook to set a new course toward victory. We are not done, as General David Petraeus said this week, but the level of violence in Iraq over the last year has dropped so dramatically that the conflict has all but disappeared from the front pages of the newspapers.

We're seeing a massive strategic breakthrough in the COIN. Defeating al-Qaeda and other Sunni insurgents, while pushing both Sunni and Shia militias in Iraq to cooperate, is an unheralded outcome of the Petraeus plan. The U.S. military will now emerge with established counterinsurgency powers across the region. This will be a defining element of the new era of international security.

While antiwar nihilists countinue to denounce both execution and strategy, as difficult as it's been, the consolidation of Iraqi democracy continues apace.

In the years ahead, President Bush will be not remembered for failing to go in heavy, or to plan for post-conflict stability. He'll be remembered for completely realigning the Middle East toward freedom, and he'll be credited for shifting American foreign policy away from the strategic blinders of pre-9/11 American period.

Posted by Americaneocon | March 16, 2008 4:41 PM

Haven't read the NYT pieces yet, but:

The United States had a chance to implement a focused, disciplined effort to go after al-Qaeda and remove the threat but instead George W. Bush, aided and abetted by a wide swathe of elites,

Cheap shot: Like you?
Counter to cheap shot: If I were an 'elite' I would have been an 'abetter' like you.

but it's striking that they're all focuses on the execution of the war and none treat the strategic issue of Iraq.

I think the focus on execution is appropriate, because the alternative (whether or not we should have gone in the first place) is in most ways a moot point.

A person can only take take one of two stands: either
a) Iraq was doomed to be a fiasco from the beginning, no matter what, so we shouldn't of been involved - the Obama position - or,
b) there was a possibility for success in Iraq, but the Bush admin neolithic incompetence got us to where we are today - sort of the McCain position.
(The Clinton position is, to me at least, a cognitively dissonant hybrid of these two positions)

Now, I am in general sympathetic toward the McCain position. I believe that 'victory' in Iraq was theoretically possible, but the Bush administration, in multiple and cumulative areas, bungled it badly.

But, where I can't support McCain (and thus support Obama) is the idea that 'doubling down' now will manage to reverse the fortunes there. Once the mistakes were made, we poisoned any opportunity of success for a generation. (Much like we can 'normalize' relations with Vietnam only now, over thirty years after the fact - and things there are getting better due to a positive feedback loop)

I think the initial gamble on Iraq was appropriate (in terms of a risk reward matrix) However, now, since we have so misplayed our cards, we need to withdraw from the hand, because the pot odds are no longer worth it.

Posted by Kolohe | March 16, 2008 4:46 PM

Why the War of Terror, rather than a War on al Qaeda?

That easy, the War on Terror (aka excuse for invading Iraq) gives Bush increased political power for an indefinite period of time, allows for hundreds of billions of dollars to flow through Bush's friends hands (halburtan, KBR, Blackwater etc.) and does the bidding of G W Bushes masters (aka the Saudi Royal Family) by removing a secular regional rival, increasing the price of oil, and covering the fact the US military was kicked out of Saudi Arabia.

ask Que Bono?

Posted by occam's comic | March 16, 2008 4:50 PM

Americaneocon

He'll be remembered for completely realigning the Middle East toward freedom

But not if it takes 100 years to accomplish "freedom" in the Middle East.

This is the problem with the framework of this debate. Victory has yet to be defined in specific ways.

If things are stable in Iraq, then we should be able to start bringing troops home.

Posted by AKBY | March 16, 2008 4:55 PM

The United States had a chance to implement a focused, disciplined effort to go after al-Qaeda and remove the threat

Matt and other Jews ignorant of warfare and military strategy default to the familiar - the Law Enforcement Approach and endless Talmudic due process debate. Which is akin to saying after Pearl Harbor, the problem was not fighting the Jap Military spread from near the Indian Border, in 60% of China, across half the Pacific and up to America's Aleutian Islands - the Jews recommend a strategy ignoring Japanese troops and fleets and intead focus on finding and prosecuting in the US v Jap Torpedo Bombers trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.(Thanks, rea! Are you another Jew who never served in the military??)

Al - As long as I have been reading Yglesias pieces, he's been pushing the idea that it is useful, analytically, to recognize that the decision to go to war was bad, and therefore, the details of execution don't have to be considered...And, it is nonsense.

Yes, it is nonsense! If AQ was just 6-8 surviving "criminals" in Paki and Afghan mountains and the only threat we worried about was their oppressing Afghan women, yes, then the REAL THREAT would be the 6-8 people ACLU Jews want to put on trial in NYC. But, other than Lefties, we quickly realized the radical Islamoid threat was diffuse, and it's highest threat potential was not "oppressing noble Afghanis" - but the threat to the Middle East, Europe, America, and non-Muslim Asians - because radical Islam was not just one terror group with 6-8 big leaders left from their original military command - but 60 terror groups with millions of hardcore believers that could care less about subjugating stone age Pashtuns but sought lethal action all along Islam's bloody borders.

As is, much of Bush's strategy to destroy and humiliate AQ at the Center of Gravity - the traditional home of the Caliphate was damaged bty the bad calls of Bush, Bremer, Franks, Rumsfeld. And the Jew Neocons and the asshole Sharansky. But whack the hell out of AQ we did - Iraq has been a complete disaster for the radical Islamoids that would otherwise be engaged elsewhere trying to kill Americans, Euroweenies, moderate Muslims.

El Cid - It is sort of humorous to use dignified language such as "strategy" in discussing the administration's reasoning for invading & occupying Iraq.

If I understand you, El Cid, you are another smug Lefty Jew who never served in the military, but knows all about netcentric military strategy. Correct?

Posted by chris ford | March 16, 2008 4:55 PM

If you want people to consider your views, then you should refrain from bigotry.

Posted by AKBY | March 16, 2008 5:05 PM

Matt, I really don't know why you have said that Iraq was a strategic miscalculation and then spent the whole time talking about AQ and the WOT. What on earth have these to do with strategy. Iraq was invaded for entirely strategic reasons the approaching peak of Oil and the political instability in M.E. countries with large US military bases.

The WOT is about domestic political management.

So that leaves the issue of what went wrong, strategically, with the Iraq invasion. Like the British 1914 invasion of Iraq and operation Barbarossa the answer is probably complicated.

Posted by Chris Dornan | March 16, 2008 5:19 PM

Chris Ford:

Yes indeed!!

In retaliation for the dastardly attack on Pearl Harbor, America should have immediately declared war against Soviet Russia and launched a massive invasion of frozen Siberia along the Alaskan Front.

Meanwhile, we should have simultaneously invaded and occupied Mexico so as to prevent any Jap saboteurs from sneaking across our thousand mile land border.

That would have shown all those dastardly Japs just how tough America was, and anyone who says otherwise is a Stalin-loving commie-pinko ACLU lawyer!

Posted by RKU | March 16, 2008 5:25 PM

The NYT limits its choices for the retrospective to its stable of friendly co-enablers: Richard Perle, Frederick Kagan, Danielle Pletka, Kenneth Pollack and Richard Perle. No apologies from this crowd, just more efforts to explain away their intellectual and moral failures.

Pletka: I was wrong, because there is no freedom gene, those silly brown people aren't really human.

Pollack: why rehearse the past? we have to go forward in the same tracks.

Perle, Bremer: hoocoodanode the Bush administration would be so incompetent?

The odious Kagan: the army sucked when we invaded, but look at what a wonderful counterinsurgency force it is now: maybe we could have another war.

Posted by masaccio | March 16, 2008 5:28 PM

But Iraq has been, first and foremost, a strategic miscalculation based on a disastrously wrongheaded conception of the strategic challenge revealed on 9/11/01.

No, first and foremost Iraq has been a wanton and barbaric criminal enterprise: an illegal and unprovoked attack on a country that was known to pose no real threat to the US, and that has killed hundreds of thousands of people; mutilated and permanently damaged hundreds of thousands of others; created four million refugees; devastated a large economy and its infrastructure; provoked a public health catastrophe; built a Kafkaesque madhouse of incarceration, torture and arbitrariness; destroyed a social order and plunged it into a nightmare of anarchic dysfunction and fear; decimated and disintegrated thousands of families; and blighted the lives and futures of an entire generation of Iraqis.

But the absurd and almost incomprehensible slaughter and mayhem has succeeded in pumping billions of dollars into the pockets of every Bush crony that could be found, including low-level nothings like the wet behind the ears college young Republicans who were sent to staff the occupation on the strength of their high-level training as envelope stuffers and phone bankers.

I fear people like Matt and Ilan, despite their best efforts to achieve some sort of clarity, have like most other people who insist on immersing themselves in the lunatic discourse of Washington policy elites, gone completely off their nutters. They are like characters from Heller or Vonnegut, rattling on about errors of "policy" and "strategy", in the midst of a riot of homicidal insanity. They show their aspirations to foreign policy seriousness and maturity by engaging with gibbering psychopaths over the question of whether the surge is "working", or whether we are "close to achieving our goals" in a smoldering Iraq that was long ago laid waste.

Iraq isn't a miscalculation; it's an apocalypse.

Posted by Dan Kervick | March 16, 2008 5:59 PM

Well, perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me, but I seem to remember that poor Matt first started expressing "strong reservations" about our crazy Iraq/Iran policy at exactly the time the Iran Extension Talk started heating up, and lots of people started speculating about the possibility of a Matt-age draft to send off lots of Matt-age people to occupy Iran.

I seem to recall Matt actually saying something like that he didn't particularly like the idea of being sent off to hold Tehran against fierce guerrilla resistance. And henceforth, he became much, much, MUCH less supportive of our crazy Iraq War.

At certain points, "wars of choice" switch from being Cable News graphics and videogames to something a bit more real. And those points are different for different people, depending on their particuluar circumstances.

As for Dan Kervick's analysis, I quite agree, and suggest wholesale (domestic) mass-executions in the DC/NYC area as a suitable means of "encouraging" future pundits and policy-makers to be somewhat more cautious in promulgating their policy-proposals.

Posted by RKU | March 16, 2008 6:18 PM

No, Chris Ford, you pathetic neo-Confederate reject. I am not Jewish, at least not beyond the fact that most people have Jewish relatives somewhere in the family tree. And I did serve in the military, not in the local re-enactment battalion. Nothing amazing, just did my duty.

And please, lay off your efforts to Wiki facts about military strategy or your subscription to "Teh Military Is AWSUM" monthly in order to pretend you're some sort of impressive insider about whom anyone gives the slightest degree of a morning sh*t about your sentiments on military tactics & strategy.

But unlike your and your ilk's pathetic efforts to tie each and every argument you disagree with with hords of stabby-back Jews sh*tting on the troops' graves, you didn't even respond to the comments I made.

I didn't say that the military, given a task, didn't pursue a strategy.

I said that the administration did not choose to invade & occupy Iraq based on any strategy.

I know, I know, you are convinced they did and you keep throwing your silly nonsense about how it was about stopping the Caliphate and all that.

But, please, don't try to think that you're going to fling your little chimp poo around for the notion that pointing out the Bush Jr idiot cowards' lack of giving a sh*t about a strategic foreign policy is the same thing as digging up our Normandy veterans' bones and f***ing them.

Posted by El Cid | March 16, 2008 6:18 PM

On the plus side, Chris Ford makes me laugh every time he says "Islamoid".

Posted by El Cid | March 16, 2008 6:22 PM

"We are not done, as General David Petraeus said this week, but the level of violence in Iraq over the last year has dropped so dramatically that the conflict has all but disappeared from the front pages of the newspapers.

"We're seeing a massive strategic breakthrough in the COIN. Defeating al-Qaeda and other Sunni insurgents, while pushing both Sunni and Shia militias in Iraq to cooperate, is an unheralded outcome of the Petraeus plan. The U.S. military will now emerge with established counterinsurgency powers across the region. This will be a defining element of the new era of international security.

"While antiwar nihilists countinue to denounce both execution and strategy, as difficult as it's been, the consolidation of Iraqi democracy continues apace."

Tell it to Anthony Cordesman, Americanneocon ( http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/02/the-truth-pleas.html ). For that matter, tell it to Petraeus, since he denies that "the consolidation of Iraqi democracy" is advancing significantly.

As for "defeating al-Qaida and other Sunni insurgents, while pushing both Sunni and Shia militias to cooperate":

(1) Al-Qaida in Iraq was always an absurdly (and deliberately) overstated danger by the Bush Administration (the Pentagon estimates that only 7% of its arrested Sunni insurgents in Iraq are a-Q); and its eviction from the Sunni regions proves only that the resident Sunnis wouldn't have stood for its presence even if we do pull out (except as emergency allies against the Shiites in the still-probable event of civil war). They have, however, brilliantly cooperated with the Bush Administration's continuing search for an alibi for the war, by promising to join us in the fight against a-Q if only we provide them with additional weapons which they can then use against the Shiites after we leave.

(2) There is extremely little evidence that Sunni and Shia militias are "cooperating" at all (or that the radically opposed factions within the Shia militia are doing so either). Why should they, when their only reason for existing is to oppose each other? What common enemy do they have, except for the minor flea of al-Qaida in Iraq? What they ARE doing, once again, is the obvious common-sense move of biding their time until we leave -- however long the latter takes.

It is, I suppose, possible that "Americaneocon" is a deliberate parody of the Perpetual Smiley Face neocons who got us unnecessarily into this mess in the first place. I fear, however, that he's actually sincere (and stupid).

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | March 16, 2008 6:28 PM

Occam c, I think you nailed it. The strategy of letting Osama bin Laden escape at Tora Bora - the refusal to guard the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan or bomb the back trails from the al qaeda complex even when the airforce drones were sensing heat (campfires) along that trail, was all about keeping a terrorist on tap. The one thing 9/11 didn't change was the sinister Bush white house outlook - before the attack, they were criminally negligent about terrorism, and after the attack, they've been criminally negligent about terrorism. Allowing a resurgent Taliban to synergize with Al Qaeda in Pakistan is a crime of which we will harvest the results in the next administration.

So, the GWOT is a hoax. The attack on Iraq, the death of 250-650 thousand Iraqis (you'll notice, that number just doesn't come up in the NYT Iraq retrospective. Burns just lies about it in his article, claiming tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties and one million, instead of 3 million - what a sick, warmongering fuck Burns is), the horrendous cost of the war, and the wonderful strangling sound that the American public will make as, next year, Congress has to consider spending another 200 billion dollars in Iraq - it all adds up to our first truly Neronian American presidency. It has been a fortunate empire so far, insofar as we have kept the lunatic and the pathological criminals from the emperor's throne. Bush is the first that has penetrated the barrier. One wonders who will be the next.

Posted by roger | March 16, 2008 6:34 PM

In this connection, note also Juan Cole's analysis of the situation in the light of petraeus' new comment -- and consider that Cole actually LIKES Petraeus, whom he describes as "a straight shooter of a sort that has been all too rare in the Iraq misadventure."

http://www.juancole.com/2008/03/reflections-on-petraeuss-comments-on.html :

"The first half of March has been disappointing with regard to casualties. There have been several big bombings in Baghdad, and over a dozen US troops have been killed in the past week. In fact a few weeks ago the Sunni Arab guerrillas blew up a meeting of the al-Anbar Awakening Council in Baghdad itself right under the nose of the US military. It is possible that the Sunni guerrillas had lain low during January, keeping their powder dry, with the intent of embarrassing Gen. Petraeus in his April congressional testimony. It is also possible that the various techniques the US military has deployed to reduce violence have reached their limit of effectiveness in the face of an ever-adapting enemy. And after all, the Sunni Arabs now have even more to avenge, since -- quite without meaning to -- the American surge somehow allowed a massive ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad, with about a million of them now penniless and homeless in Damascus.

"But despite these controversies about the military side, Gen. Petraeus has certainly had successes. And he is clearly frustrated that they have not been taken advantage of by the Iraqi political elite. And my strong suspicion is that the US officers in Iraq are also frustrated with the White House for not pushing the Iraqis harder on a political settlement. It is very hard to see what Bush's political strategy is in Iraq. The 'surge' was never meant to be the objective but rather the means.

"Gen. Petraeus isn't specific, but I can give some examples. The Sunni Arab Iraqi Accord Front withdrew from the al-Maliki 'national unity' government last summer. The IAF is a coalition of three parties. Two of them say they are uninterested in coming back into the government. The third, the Iraqi Islamic Party, led by vice president Tariq al-Hashimi, is said to be seriously considering returning. Nothing has happened so far. In other words, it is still the case that al-Maliki's government is LESS successful at reconciliation with the Sunnis now than it had been last year this time before the surge had made much of an impact.

"Sunni Arab provinces such as Diyala, Salahuddin and Mosul are still violent, and even al-Anbar, which has settled down, is not paradise. The Awakening Council model does not seem to have been successful outside al-Anbar and some Baghdad neighborhoods, and there is always the danger that the US is creating a powerful Sunni militia that despises Prime Minister al-Maliki as Iran's cat's paw.

"The Kurdish-Arab struggles in the north, the issue of Kirkuk, the terror activities of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK)-- based in Iraq but hitting NATO Turkish troops in eastern Turkey -- and the Turkish incursions into and bombings of Iraqi Kurdistan, signal that the north is a powder keg. The unresolved issue of oil-rich Kirkuk and whether it will accede to the Kurdistan Regional Government is the other shoe in the Iraq crisis, which has not yet dropped but could at any moment. I have been told that Gen. Petraeus deeply disagreed with Bush's decision to share real time intelligence on the PKK with the Turkish government and to allow a major Turkish incursion into and bombing of northern Iraq.

"Likewise, the Islamic Virtue Party (Fadhila) withdrew from the al-Maliki government last year. It controls the provincial administration of Basra. Its rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, staged a 5000-strong demonstration against the provincial government last week. Having bad relations between the federal center and the province of Basra is not good for Iraq, because Basra is the country's biggest export route, including for petroleum, which generates 90% of government revenues.

"So you could understand how Gen. Petraeus, having sacrificed so much to get some sort of social peace in Baghdad that would allow some major steps toward political reconciliation, is frustrated that no such major initiatives have been launched and that Iraqi politics just seems to be stuck.

"It is worthwhile mentioning that what Gen. Petraeus said about the lack of political progress is the opposite of what John McCain has been saying. I am not saying that the contradiction is intended to be a political statement. But I am saying that Petraeus has just revealed himself again to be a straight shooter of a sort that has been all too rare in the Iraq misadventure."

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | March 16, 2008 6:35 PM

Last but not least, consider the graph of casualties that accompanies Cole's article. It did indeed drop from 65 per day in Spring 2007 to only 20 per day this January -- but since then it's been very rapidly rising again, to 26 in February and fully 40 per day in the first half of this month. Obvious question: how much longer will it continue to rise again so fast?

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | March 16, 2008 6:40 PM

@Dan Kervick: Thank you.

This marks the fifth year in a row in which the NY Times' collection of opinion pieces marking the anniversary of the invasion fails to include a single opponent of the war.

I'd be happy to be shown that I'm wrong about that.

Posted by Nell | March 16, 2008 7:19 PM

Well, for one thing, Al, I missed the US v bin Laden trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. But apparently it was more important to prepare to invade Iraq than it was to capture bin Laden and the rest of the al Qaeda leadership at Tora Bora . . .

Well, rea, I realize that liberals think the military has a magical teleportation device that could magically teleport hundreds of thousands of troops directly to Tora Bora in a matter of seconds in order to capture OBL. However, in the real world (where it took 6 months to even get an inadequate force to Kuwait - where we already had a base and a port - to be able to invade Iraq), getting sufficient troops to Tora Bora in time to be able to capture OBL before he disappeared into Pakistan was a physical impossibility.

Posted by Al | March 16, 2008 8:25 PM

" . . . the level of violence in Iraq over the last year has dropped so dramatically that the conflict has all but disappeared from the front pages of the newspapers."

The level of housing foreclosures, the collapse of the dollar, record gas prices, and the impending Bush recession are what have pushed Iraq out of the headlines. For now. With the rising violence there, though, it is coming back.

Oh, and isn't it about time to ban the antisemetic troll "Chris Ford?"

Posted by Joel | March 16, 2008 9:00 PM

I second the ban on Chris Ford.

No constructive dialogue there.

Posted by AKBY | March 16, 2008 9:20 PM

" . . . the level of violence in Iraq over the last year has dropped so dramatically that the conflict has all but disappeared from the front pages of the newspapers."

The level of violence in Baghdad has risen four months in a row. Violence outside Baghdad is poorly covered by the media.

What made Iraq disappear from the front pages of newspapers was, I believe, the aftermath of the 2006 election. A new congressional class was elected in 2006, campaigning in large measure against the war and elected with a mandate to bring it to an end. When it became clear that Congress had no intention of ending the war, vigorous war opposition was dealt a fatal blow, and we have moved into a dispirited, moribund inertia-with-reservations pattern ever since.

And then once it became clear that the Democratic candidates were committed to cutting back on an American engagement, but preserving a long-term US presence in the country at some level, the media cooperated with the signals sent by the campaigns and de-emphasized the Iraq story.

Posted by Dan Kervick | March 16, 2008 9:24 PM

Actually, Al, Gary Berntsen -- the top CIA field commander in the anti-bin Laden effort -- says flatly in his book "Jawbreaker" that we DID screw up the capture of Bin Laden ( http://www.amazon.com/Jawbreaker-Attack-Personal-Account-Commander/dp/0307237400 ). John Lehman (you may remember him: Navy Secretary under Reagan; member of the 9/11 Commission) agrees in his review: "Berntsen recounts very credibly how he and others pleaded with Gen. Tommy Franks and the Pentagon brass to put in blocking forces so that bin Laden and the remnants of al Qaeda's leadership could not flee into Pakistan. But for reasons that remain unclear to Berntsen (and, indeed, to this reviewer), the Bush administration or Franks decided to depend instead on local Afghan warlords, rather than put U.S. forces on the ground to block bin Laden's escape. The CIA and Berntsen, who had many years of experience with these militiamen, warned that relying on them, with their many personal agendas and family and tribal ties, would mean letting al Qaeda's leader cross easily into Pakistan. Ignoring their counsel was a huge blunder -- one we continue to pay for as we are taunted by bin Laden, who remains alive and well, probably in the mountains of Pakistan, continuing to inspire jihadists worldwide and helping organize the increasing counterattacks on the fragile democratic government in Kabul. Berntsen did his best to try to get bin Laden; many in Washington have yet to do theirs."

What's particularly interesting about Berntsen's account is that -- at least when that book came out in early 2006 -- he was still a strong Bush supporter on balance, and much of the book is devoted to criticizing Clinton for weakening the CIA's covert capabilities. Which makes it rather difficult to say that he's saying this about Tora Bora because he's a biased Democrat. (But then, the whole Afghan War was bizarrely handled by Bush -- remember our refusal to even try to take Kabul, until the Northern Alliance got fed up and easily did it without us? One gets the definite impression that the Bushites didn't want to fight an Afghan War at all; they viewed it as an annoying distraction from the war they REALLY wanted -- the war against Saddam that would easily solve all our Mideast problems.)

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | March 16, 2008 10:35 PM

Bruce,
"Jawbreaker" also contained the interesting detail about the drones sensing heat - at 10,000 feet above sea level in December. So, the request was made to bomb the trail. You will recall that saturation bombing killed a lot of civilians in front of the Tora Bora network of caves. But - rather incredibly, unless you think the Bush administration wanted to send a signal to Osama bin Laden - the bombing request was turned down. The reason: because they were afraid they'd kill some shepherds.

Tora Bora wasn't a disaster because Rumsfeld was jealous of the CIA. It was a disaster because, for whatever reason, the highest echelon of the Bush administration wanted Osama bin Laden to escape.

Posted by roger | March 17, 2008 12:02 AM

Oh, and isn't it about time to ban the antisemetic troll "Chris Ford?"
Posted by Joel

Better a ban on anti-American sedition by Jews.

The nice thing is Jewish power as "influencers" is already well in decline in America - as well as globally - thanks to alternate media and American recognition that the Zionists and Jewish neocons and the Jews who were communist leaders in the past have taken us on a very bad ride.

********************
Dan Kervick - No, first and foremost Iraq has been a wanton and barbaric criminal enterprise: an illegal and unprovoked attack on a country that was known to pose no real threat to the US, and that has killed hundreds of thousands of people; mutilated and permanently damaged hundreds of thousands of others; created four million refugees; devastated a large economy and its infrastructure; provoked a public health catastrophe; built a Kafkaesque madhouse of incarceration, torture and arbitrariness; destroyed a social order and plunged it into a nightmare of anarchic dysfunction and fear; decimated and disintegrated thousands of families; and blighted the lives and futures of an entire generation of Iraqis.
But the absurd and almost incomprehensible slaughter and mayhem has succeeded in pumping billions of dollars into the pockets of every Bush crony that could be found...

Dan displays an almost female hysteria about a country with functioning hospitals, schools, electric power where most people are safe to fairly safe and the universities and markets are open. The economy is healthy and Iraq is sitting on tens of billions of oil revenue squabbling between factions on how it is to be spent. With refugees returning and life approaching normalicy, extant in 3/4ths of Iraq.

This is low-level warfare. Nothing like the 2nd Algerian Civil War where 700,000 were killed by radical Islamists, or Darfur where Arab Muslims have killed about the same number.
And America has been very careful of avoiding civilian casualties. We killed more innocent civilian French in one day's bombing to prep Britany for D-Day than we have done to Iraqis in the whole war. Most the killing has been radical Muslims whacking other Muslims, or US whacking and maiming radical Muslims and over 10,000 Al Qaeda fanatics.

Posted by chris ford | March 17, 2008 12:23 AM

Surrendering Afghanistan to al Qaeda and the Taliban was a monumental mistake, and it shouldn't take so many words to say so.

McCain was wrong to vote to divert resources away from destroying the group that attacked us, and now nuclear-power Pakistan is being destablizied because of it. Making a little progress after handing Iraq over to al Qaeda and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is no consolation.

Posted by Owen | March 17, 2008 12:44 AM

Better a ban on anti-American sedition by Jews.

All right! And Chris Ford can be on the rules committee! And the rules listing poster can have a Confederate Flag and an Eagle crying over Ground Zero!

But first he'll have to work very hard at determining the anti-American sedition by not-Jews from anti-American sedition by Jews without knowing the identity of the seditionist.

This may make him temporarily re-shelve his Time-Life histories of famous battles, but it will be worth it.

Posted by El Cid | March 17, 2008 12:46 AM

The article by Danielle Pletka does address the strategic issue, but it's a pretty pathetic piece. Pletka admits that he was wrong to believe that democracy would spring up in Iraq as soon as we overthrew Saddam, and suggests that we need to start thinking about how to promote democracy.

What he hasn't noticed, or at least won't admit, is that people have been thinking about this issue in the United States ever since World War II. The most influential paper on this topic written from a conservative perspective is probably "Dictatorships and Double Standards" by Jeane Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick wrote:

In the relatively few places where they exist, democratic governments have come into being slowly, after extended prior experience with more limited forms of participation during which leaders have reluctantly grown accustomed to tolerating dissent and opposition, opponents have accepted the notion that they may defeat but not destroy incumbents, and people have become aware of government's effects on their lives and of their own possible effects on government. Decades, if not centuries, are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. In Britain, the road from the Magna Carta to the Act of Settlement, to the great Reform Bills of 1832, 1867, and 1885, took seven centuries to traverse....

So maybe Pletka didn't read Kirkpatrick because he isn't interested in American foreign policy. But anyone who has more than a passing knowledge of Lebanon's troubled history doesn't need Kirkpatrick to tell them that in the Middle East, at least, democracy is not easy.

If Pletka doesn't know much of anything about American foreign policy, and doesn't know much of anything about the Middle East, why did the New York Times ask him to comment on the Iraq War?

Posted by Kenneth Almquist | March 17, 2008 12:57 AM

Dan Kervick:

Thankyou.

The United States republic is now only an intellectual, emotional, and moral construct. Its life is the life we give it in books, articles, marginal political movements, and forums such as this.

We give the republic life right now primarily by recognizing that the Iraq war is fundamentally an illegal act of aggression committed by one soveriegn upon another. In the moral sphere, it is also, by extention, an act of unprovoked violence by one set of people upon another. Democratically, the war is a fraud and thus the moral equivalent of treason: again, only if you think and speak as a genuine republican.

We also give the republic life by noting that acts of torture and domestic spying have been and are primarily illegal. Thus, as with the Iraq war, discussion of these acts' strategic or executive failures only becomes relevant once the rule of law in a self-governing republic is reestablished.

The rule of law amidst the governed is no mark of republican rule. It is the rule of law upon the governing that is perhaps the distinguishing feature of republicanism. Unless the rule of law upon the governing is given precedence in discussing these things, the State will continue to evolve in its present trajectory.

-dedicated to Chalmers Johnson

Posted by tom f | March 17, 2008 1:40 AM

"According to the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington, 949 suicide bombers killed 10,119 people and wounded 22,995 from the beginning of 2004 until now. Data compiled by the AP through its own reporting found that between April 28, 2005 and March 13, 2008 there were 708 incidents involving suicide bombings, with a total of 14,633 Iraqis wounded and 7,098 killed.

According to data tracked by author Mohammed Hafez in his own separate study, "Suicide Bombers in Iraq," there have been 1,800 suicide attacks worldwide since the phenomenon began in the early 1980s. Of those, more than half have taken place in Iraq.

"There have been more than 900 suicide attacks in Iraq ... certainly the phenomenon is growing," said Hafez, a political science professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

U.S. Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, the spokesman for Multinational Forces in Iraq, said the overwhelming majority of suicide attackers are foreigners. 41% are from Saudi Arabia, another 40% from North Africa, mainly Tunisia and Morocco.

"Iraqis are religiously and socially opposed to suicide, requiring al-Qaida to recruit foreigners to carry out their terror. Approximately 90 percent of the suicide attacks in Iraq are carried out by foreigners," he said.

Mustafa Alani, director of security and terrorism studies at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, said al-Qaida prefers to use suicide bombers instead of other weapons because they are "easy, cheap."

Yet for Lefties, the "real problem" is not radical Islam and the 11 million people it has killed in 40+ countries since 1948 - it is 6 guys in hiding in Pakistan, Who, if only captured and given ACLU lawyers and a civilian trial - will "end the misguided conflict that was started by Bush after 9/11".

Posted by chris ford | March 17, 2008 1:46 AM

The clearly insane chris ford fails to mention the number killed by suicide bombers in Iraq between 1980 and 2003. Perhaps this is because suicide bombings only started there once Americans set the stage by planting bombs all over the nation of Iraq. That he fails to back up his outrageous 11 million figure is mere icing on his lunatic cake.

Posted by Circus Freak | March 17, 2008 2:10 AM

I am surprised but pleased to note that a significant number of posters here seem to recognize that the use of "strategic" is inappropriate by kids like Matt, who clearly don't have a clue as to what it means. Even if ones historical grasp only goes back to 2002, the idea that we should have been attempting to replicate the Soviet strategy in Afghanistan rather than dealing with an overt enemy state sitting on the fulcrum of the world economy is bizarre. Operation Anaconda was clearly a fiasco, of the sort that frequently happen in all wars. But to extrapolate from that some dark plot to foster AQ, or that capturing OBL is simply a matter of sending more soldiers into the Hindu Kush, is at best ignorance.

Blame-America-first hysterics should note that we went to war in Iraq in 1991, and that in spite of twelve years of more or less continuous combat operations enforcing an embargo that killed perhaps a million innocent Iraqis while enhancing the regime's grip on power and enriching its collaborators, we were far from a satisfactory conclusion in 2002. We know the down sides of what we did, but not of what we didn't do. However, an objective look at the facts can help.

We know that Saddam's regime killed about ten times the number of people who have died in Iraq due to the invasion, with no end in sight. We know that the sanctions regime had almost completely unraveled--Baghdad had already signed a multi-billion dollar deal with Total/Fina/Elf to develop a third of Iraq's oil reserves, and Lukoil was coming on board. Given Saddam's track record of wmd development (and USE), access to resources of that sort made it clear that failing regime change fairly soon, Iraq would become practically impossible to deal with. Things there are not wonderful, but they are getting better. Minus the invasion, we'd probably be looking at a nuclear arms race between (at least) Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and a Persian Gulf region at the center of a growing anti-Western juggernaut.

Posted by Robert Powell | March 17, 2008 3:12 AM

"We know that Saddam's regime killed about ten times the number of people who have died in Iraq due to the invasion, with no end in sight."

We know no such thing. What we know is that the claims of the number of deaths under Saddam and the number of deaths since the US invasion and occupation are highly variable, and that trolls like Powell just choose numbers that fit their argument.

"We know that the sanctions regime had almost completely unraveled--Baghdad had already signed a multi-billion dollar deal with Total/Fina/Elf to develop a third of Iraq's oil reserves, and Lukoil was coming on board."

We know that the sanctions worked to cause Saddam to abandon his WMD programs.

"Things there are not wonderful, but they are getting better."

Uh, no. Things are bad and getting worse. Even Petraeus admits that the "surge" failed in its objective, to stabilize a government of national unity.

"Minus the invasion, we'd probably be looking at a nuclear arms race between (at least) Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and a Persian Gulf region at the center of a growing anti-Western juggernaut."

Actually, because of the invasion, the US has incentivized a nuclear arms race. Google "North Korea Nuclear Weapons."

Posted by Joel | March 17, 2008 6:33 AM

Joel--

The numbers are indeed "highly variable". I pick the ones that don't vere off in any extreme directions, seem controled for political bias at least to the extent this is possible these days, and are credibly documentable using accepted methodology. And I keep up with the literature. So sue me.

We know that sanctions worked to cause Saddam to shelve his WMD programs. We certainly didn't know that in 2003, rather the reverse, and then we were looking forward into a future that didn't happen, while we are now looking backward with a perspective of what did happen.

Posted by Robert Powell | March 17, 2008 7:48 AM

"So sue me."

Nah. You've already discredited yourself.

"We know that sanctions worked to cause Saddam to shelve his WMD programs."

Indeed. So this comment "Minus the invasion, we'd probably be looking at a nuclear arms race between (at least) Iraq . . ." is discredited. Minus the invasion, Iraq still didn't have nuclear arms or even the means to make them.

"We certainly didn't know that in 2003, rather the reverse . . . "

Uh, no. We didn't "know" the reverse, we were *told* the reverse by an administration that knew the evidence was not actionable, but chose to lie about it.

" . . . and then we were looking forward into a future that didn't happen, while we are now looking backward with a perspective of what did happen."

And those of us who tried to stand against this rush to militarism and yell "STOP" were swept aside by the radicals in the Bush administration who had no respect for evidence, honesty, the law, or the future of this great nation.

Sue you? Who are you and why should we care what you think after you've been so thoroughly fisked by history?

Posted by Joel | March 17, 2008 8:23 AM

"We know that sanctions worked to cause Saddam to shelve his WMD programs. We certainly didn't know that in 2003"

We did know that, there were weapons inspectors on the ground who found no evidence of a current WMD program. Unfortunately, we decided to rely on satellite pictures and somebody who was exiled from Iraq for our intelligence instead of the people on the ground doing the inspecting. Many of the "suspicious" sites Powell mentioned had been recently inspected and camera's etc. left behind to monitor any future activity. We knew there was no WMD program, lied that we thought there was one and then invaded.

Posted by JordanT | March 17, 2008 10:44 AM

According to the authoritative Duelfer Report, Iraq was "six months away" from operational wmd's with the knowledge and infrastructure on hand in 2003 the minute the sanctions were off. For nukes, it would take a bit longer. But in the environment of a collapsed UN process and massive funding from already inked oil deals, minus the invasion we'd likely have got just what I said by now.

The administration, Jacques Chirac, the Russians, Iraqi generals, and perhaps Saddam himself thought Iraq had wmd capability in 2003. We went into battle in chem suits, and captured Iraqi officers carried antidote kits because they expected them too. Hans Blix confirmed in his final report that Iraq remained uncooperative, and consequently was in manifest material breech of it's "final opportunity" obligations.

Anyway, the idea implied here that Iraq's Chapter VII obligations concerning wmd's was the only factor in the decision to invade in 2003 seems to me pretty narrow. To the extent that it incurred legality, it is an important factor, but not the only one under consideration at the time.

I don't care much what those unfamiliar with the facts may consider creditable. Personalities should be irrelevant in discussions like this, and things stated as facts should be verifiable. If you or anyone else can provide evidence that something I've written here is substantially incorrect, I'll apologize and retract immediately.

Posted by Robert Powell | March 17, 2008 11:34 AM

The sanction regime weakened Saddam to the point where it was relatively easy to get rid of him. Plus, of course, he had no WMDs and there's no evidence whatsoever he was making them a priority. In fact, the WMD issue was a comedy. Here the man was looking at not even being able to use his army to regain a huge swathe of lost territory - Northern Iraq - and he was gonna attack the U.S.? That was so looney tunes that the big lie had to tie Saddam to Osama, because otherwise the Bush administration contentions would just be humorous.

So, what could have been done? The alternative to invasion, the one that wasn't discussed, would have gone like this: jettison the double sanctions policy and immediately negotiate with Iran, headed at that time by a moderate party, leading to recognition of Iran. That step would have sent a cannonball over the decks of the Iraqi elite - and, as we know, Saddam's main concern until his last days in power was Iran. Second, we could have doubled our economic aid to Northern Iraq. This would have had a nice multiplier effect - the Iraqi people, who were already very, very disgruntled, would have seen exactly what it would mean to get rid of Saddam - and they wouldn't have seen it in a context of all sticks. Carrots like that would have been invaluable.

In fact, the problem wasn't really that Saddam was going to remain and threaten the U.S., the problem was how long would Saddam remain before his fall left a vaccuum. Those two steps would have created the framework in which his fall would have been "manageable", from the U.S. standpoint.

The idiocy of responding with hyperaggresion as the first step U.S. foreign policy has been amply proven to be an utter humanitarian and political failure. We could easily have saved hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives pursuing a much more rational policy. And we could have turned to the small problem we really had - a small paramilitary group based in Afghanistan willing to nurture attacks against the U.S. - and wiped it out.

Posted by roger | March 17, 2008 12:12 PM

chris ford writes: Dan displays an almost female hysteria about a country with functioning hospitals, schools, electric power where most people are safe to fairly safe and the universities and markets are open. The economy is healthy and Iraq is sitting on tens of billions of oil revenue squabbling between factions on how it is to be spent. With refugees returning and life approaching normalicy, extant in 3/4ths of Iraq."

for those of you interested in what "normalicy" really looks like, click here:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/30316.html

Posted by dj spellchecks | March 17, 2008 12:55 PM

Re dj spellchecks: But, but, are they "almost female" worms in the water? Or are they Jew worms?

Posted by El Cid | March 17, 2008 12:58 PM

the red cross pipes up on the subject of how "normalicy" in iraq looks like five years in.
[don't miss the part about how well the hospitals are "working."]
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2008/03/red_cross_says_iraqis_lack_bas.php

Posted by dj spellchecks | March 17, 2008 1:17 PM

roger, you are exactly right about the preferred "go to Teheran" strategy. We had a fantastic opportunity when Khomeini was still alive if we had exploited Iraq's vulnerability in terms of launching the I/I war in general, and in using wmd's in particular. The fact that we are unjustly identified in the minds of many with having instigated and/or materially supported Iraq's aggression in the '80's remains a major obstacle to this day.

The next big blown opportunity apparently came in 2003. Currently, I'm encouraged by the cordial relations between Iran and our allies in Iraq. Eventually we're going to have to deal with Iran like grownups.

In real life 2003, Saddam's defiance of the UN's attempts to confront the threat Iraq presented for the post-Cold War security architecture had to do with a lot more than the exact state of its wmd inventory. For those who only saw the threat as nerve gas in the subway or Republican Guard T-80's on Fifth Avenue, there was of course no threat. But you are right to point out the requirement then to look ahead to Saddam's decline, including presumably the succession to his sons Itchy and Scratchy. We could have done other things than what we did, but none of them were obvious at the time, and we didn't. We still need a reasonable conclusion, and we won't get it by running away.

Posted by Robert Powell | March 17, 2008 2:06 PM

Actually, Mr. Powell, let's review what the Authoritative Duelfer report really did say. New Republic ("Slam Dunk"), 10-25-04):

"In its report released on October 7, Charles Duelfer's Iraq Survey Group declared that it had 'not found evidence that Saddam Hussein possessed WMD stocks in 2003.' That dealt a final blow to George W. Bush's long-standing claim that the United States faced 'a serious and growing threat' from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But, with his reelection at stake, the president last week refused to acknowledge he had invaded Iraq for the wrong reason. Instead, Bush claimed the Duelfer report strengthened his administration's case for war by showing that Saddam had 'the intent of restarting his weapons program once the world looked away.' Saddam, Bush said, 'retained the knowledge, the materials, the means, and the intent to produce weapons of mass destruction, and could have passed this knowledge to our terrorist enemies.' But there's little evidence of 'materials and means.' The Duelfer report says that 'Iraq's ability to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program progressively decayed' after 1991. It says that its 'equipment and laboratories [for biological weapons] were destroyed under U.N. supervision in 1996.' And Duelfer's group 'did not discover chemical process or production units configured to produce key precursors or [chemical weapon] agents.'

"What about Saddam's 'intent'? In its initial summary, the Duelfer report says that 'Saddam wanted to recreate Iraq's WMD capability -- which was essentially destroyed in 1991 -- after sanctions were removed and Iraq's economy stabilized.' But Duelfer's actual findings, detailed in over 900 pages, don't bear out such a definite conclusion. Saddam's former science adviser thought that Saddam 'would reconstitute all WMD disciplines when sanctions were lifted' but 'cautioned that he never heard Saddam say this explicitly.' Saddam's former minister of military industrialization 'recalled no discussions among Regime members about how to preserve WMD expertise per se.' The report concludes, 'While he may have said he had the desire, no source has claimed that Saddam had an explicit strategy or program for the development or use of WMD during the sanctions period' (emphasis added). Moreover, the report cites two officials who recall hearing Saddam entertain the possibility of not resuming WMD production.

"Duelfer's report also makes clear that, insofar as Saddam hoped to restart WMD production, it was not to create nuclear weapons to attack the United States but rather to create chemical weapons to meet the threat from Iran. 'Saddam believed that WMD was necessary to counter Iran,' the report states. 'He saw Iran as Iraq's abiding enemy and he sought to keep it in check.' According to the report, former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz believed that Saddam 'did not consider the United States a natural adversary, as he did Iran and Israel, and he hoped that Iraq might again enjoy improved relations with the United States.'

"Iraq's 'intention' to produce WMD, as described by the Duelfer report, was considerably weaker than that of Iran or North Korea -- and far more subject to international restraint. Up until March 2003, after all, Iraq's ambitions had been held in check through a combination of sanctions, inspections, and surgical strikes. As the report recounts, Saddam was determined to end sanctions by using the U.N. oil-for-food program to bribe France, Russia, and other countries on the Security Council. But, as Duelfer notes, 'Baghdad made little overall progress in lifting sanctions between December 1998 and November 2002.' In November 2002, the United States, benefiting from worldwide support after September 11, won unanimous Security Council support for Resolution 1441, demanding that Iraq readmit inspectors. And, if the inspectors had eventually declared Iraq free of WMD (as we now know it was), the United Nations would still have been authorized under the original 1991 resolutions to continue intrusive inspections and import controls on strategic materials. The Duelfer report, former U.N. Chief Inspector Rolf Ekeus said, showed 'that the inspections worked.' And, had America remained vigilant, there is every indication that they would have continued to work.

"The Bush administration's resorting to Saddam's 'intentions' to justify the invasion of Iraq shows just how discredited its strategy of preemption has become. A policy that once could have been a necessary and useful tool in America's arsenal -- a doctrine we might have had to evoke to confront far graver threats than Saddam -- may now have been rendered virtually useless. When a president says we need to take preemptive action to prevent a genuine threat from acquiring nuclear weapons, will the American people ever again give their assent?"

Which, of course, is a problem we are indeed now facing in regard to that other country whose name begins with "I". As for "running away", the fact that we may still need the US military to deal with Iran -- and that we may very well also need it at a moment's notice to cope with any crises produced by the fact that Pakistan and North Korea already have the Bomb -- is, as it has always been, the strongest argument of all for bailing the hell out of Iraq, fast. Anything we might conceivably gain by staying stuck in there for 5 or 10 years -- quite apart from the fact that it's doubtful we would gain anything whatsoever even then -- is trivial compared to that other need. (I can hardly wait for President McCain to demand a draft so we can do both at once. After that, they'll picking up what's left of the GOP with a pair of tweezers.)

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | March 17, 2008 8:58 PM

Bruce:
The reason I recommend Duelfer's report is because it's pretty objective--lots of the things in it clearly shoot holes in lots of Administration statements. But I heard the "six months to operational wmd's" directly from Duelfer's own mouth. Any objective review of the state of sanctions in 2003, combined with Iraq's developing plans with especially France, Russia, and China, indicates a problem that would inevitably get much worse as detailed by Duelfer. Let's not cherry-pick individual points, okay?

What Duelfer doesn't touch on is the impact on our ongoing ability to maintain some kind of structure for enforcing generally agreed upon international norms following a surrender to Saddam. If, given the unprecedented record of Ba'athist Iraq, they could just ride this thing out and essentially get away with launching wars of aggression, genocide, support for terrorism, and the development and use of wmd's to kill tens of thousands, it's hard to see how we could seriously consider any action against any state for any reason.

Finally, if we need to get out of Iraq quickly so that we will be able to launch wars with Iran and North Korea, this looks to me like perhaps the best argument yet for staying in Iraq indefinitely. There is no, zero, rational military option in either of these cases (Iran and North Korea). Launching strikes against either would result in a catastrophe that would make Iraq look like Grenada, and in neither case would there be anywhere near the legal justification or international support we had in Iraq.

Posted by Robert Powell | March 18, 2008 3:27 AM