Why We Went To Iraq
By FOUAD AJAMI - WSJ:
Of all that has been written about the play of things in Iraq, nothing that I have seen approximates the truth of what our ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, recently said of this war: “In the end, how we leave and what we leave behind will be more important than how we came.”
It is odd, then, that critics have launched a new attack on the origins of the war at precisely the time a new order in Iraq is taking hold. But American liberal opinion is obsessive today. Scott McClellan can’t be accused of strategic thinking, but he has been anointed a peer of Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft. A witness and a presumed insider – a “Texas loyalist” –has “flipped.”
Mr. McClellan wades into the deep question of whether this war was a war of “necessity” or a war of “choice.” He does so in the sixth year of the war, at a time when many have forgotten what was thought and said before its onset. The nation was gripped by legitimate concern over gathering dangers in the aftermath of 9/11. Kabul and the war against the Taliban had not sufficed, for those were Arabs who struck America on 9/11. A war of deterrence had to be waged against Arab radicalism, and Saddam Hussein had drawn the short straw. He had not ducked, he had not scurried for cover. He openly mocked America’s grief, taunted its power.
We don’t need to overwork the stereotype that Arabs understand and respond to the logic of force, but this is a region sensitive to the wind, and to the will of outside powers. Before America struck into Iraq, a mere 18 months after 9/11, there had been glee in the Arab world, a sense that America had gotten its comeuppance. There were regimes hunkering down, feigning friendship with America while aiding and abetting the forces of terror.
Liberal opinion in America and Europe may have scoffed when President Bush drew a strict moral line between order and radicalism – he even inserted into the political vocabulary the unfashionable notion of evil – but this sort of clarity is in the nature of things in that Greater Middle East. It is in categories of good and evil that men and women in those lands describe their world. The unyielding campaign waged by this president made a deep impression on them.
Nowadays, we hear many who have never had a kind word to say about the Iraq War pronounce on the retreat of the jihadists. It is as though the Islamists had gone back to their texts and returned with second thoughts about their violent utopia. It is as though the financiers and the “charities” that aided the terror had reconsidered their loyalties and opted out of that sly, cynical trade. Nothing could be further from the truth. If Islamism is on the ropes, if the regimes in the saddle in key Arab states now show greater resolve in taking on the forces of radicalism, no small credit ought to be given to this American project in Iraq.
We should give the “theorists” of terror their due and read them with some discernment. To a man, they have told us that they have been bloodied in Iraq, that they have been surprised by the stoicism of the Americans, by the staying power of the Bush administration.
There is no way of convincing a certain segment of opinion that there are indeed wars of “necessity.” A case can always be made that an aggressor ought to be given what he seeks, that the costs of war are prohibitively high when measured against the murky ways of peace and of daily life.
“Wars are not self-starting,” the noted philosopher Michael Walzer wrote in his seminal book, “Just and Unjust Wars.” “They may ‘break out,’ like an accidental fire, under conditions difficult to analyze and where the attribution of responsibility seems impossible. But usually they are more like arson than accident: war has human agents as well as human victims.”
Fair enough. In the narrow sense of command and power, this war in Iraq is Mr. Bush’s war. But it is an evasion of responsibility to leave this war at his doorstep. This was a war fought with congressional authorization, with the warrant of popular acceptance, and the sanction of United Nations resolutions which called for Iraq’s disarmament. It is the political good fortune (in the world of Democratic Party activists) that Sen. Barack Obama was spared the burden of a vote in the United States Senate to authorize the war. By his telling, he would have us believe that he would have cast a vote against it. But there is no sure way of knowing whether he would have stood up to the wind.
With the luxury of hindsight, the critics of the war now depict the arguments made for it as a case of manipulation and deceit. This is odd and misplaced: The claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were to prove incorrect, but they were made in good faith.
It is also obtuse and willful to depict in dark colors the effort made to “sell” the war. Wars can’t be waged in stealth, and making the moral case for them is an obligation incumbent on the leaders who launch them. If anything, there were stretches of time, and critical turning points, when the administration abdicated the fight for public opinion.
Nor is there anything unprecedented, or particularly dishonest, about the way the rationale for the war shifted when the hunt for weapons of mass destruction had run aground. True, the goal of a democratic Iraq – and the broader agenda of the war as a spearhead of “reform” in Arab and Muslim lands – emerged a year or so after the onset of the war. But the aims of practically every war always shift with the course of combat, and with historical circumstances. Need we recall that the abolition of slavery had not been an “original” war aim, and that the Emancipation Proclamation was, by Lincoln’s own admission, a product of circumstances? A war for the Union had become a victory for abolitionism.
America had not been prepared for nation-building in Iraq; we had not known Iraq and Iraqis or understood the depth of Iraq’s breakdown. But there was nothing so startling or unusual about the connection George W. Bush made between American security and the “reform” of the Arab condition. As America’s pact with the Arab autocrats had hatched a monster, it was logical and prudent to look for a new way.
“When a calf falls, a thousand knives flash,” goes an Arabic proverb. The authority of this administration is ebbing away, the war in Iraq is unloved, and even the “loyalists” now see these years of panic and peril as a time of exaggerated fear.
It is not easy to tell people of threats and dangers they have been spared. The war put on notice regimes and conspirators who had harbored dark thoughts about America and who, in the course of the 1990s, were led to believe that terrible deeds against America would go unpunished. A different lesson was taught in Iraq. Nowadays, the burden of the war, in blood and treasure, is easy to see, while the gains, subtle and real, are harder to demonstrate. Last month, American casualties in Iraq were at their lowest since 2003. The Sunnis also have broken with al Qaeda, and the Shiite-led government has taken the war to the Mahdi Army: Is it any wonder that the critics have returned to the origins of the war?
Five months from now, the American public will vote on this war, in the most dramatic and definitive of ways. There will be people who heed Ambassador Crocker’s admonition. And there will be others keen on retelling how we made our way to Iraq.
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In the course of time the benefits of this war will be obvious even to liberals. For now, it is beyond rational argument that if this war had not been fought Saddam today would still be operating his terrorist training camps and would have again pursued nuclear weapons the moment sanctions ended.
June 4th, 2008 at 5:20 amI don’t want to come back on the real raisons for Irak War, though I must say it was the burst of getting a counscieness of the threat from AQ, also among the muslim world : that will make it question what should be sorted out from islam as religion and as tribal tradition, then it’s a progress.
We used to say in Europe that wars bring progresses, medecine, culture, technology… the melting of advanced people with rustic traditions forces changes of mentalities
So, this war, as unpopular it might be, will remain in history as a new developpement for the arab world
June 4th, 2008 at 5:30 amI keep coming back to the money, especially American dollars, Saddam had … How much our troops were able to uncover … and how much was hualed out by Saddam’s family and operatives when they fled the country before and during our initial invasion.
Biological, nuke, chemical WMDs … they were there and he had more than enough time to move them out too.
But the biggest WMD IS money … and for all the pointing out about how in the Iran/Iraq war Saddam used chemical weapons on his own people decades ago … Saddam Hussein was actively funding terrorism (in Israel) with his money all the way until we invaded his country. Saddam Hussein WAS the WMD in Iraq.
If certain people cannot see that as a legitimate threat to not only our allies in the region, and have the foresight to see it as a major threat of terrorism to us (when it did not take much money at all to plan and implement 9-11-01 and Saddam was damned impressed with the results) then such ‘certain people’ had better NEVER be in a position of power where using one’s judgement and acting on a threat is in their hands.
I won’t mention any names, but am whistling and looking toward a certain democrat nominee for POTUS …
June 4th, 2008 at 5:47 amWe used to say in Europe that wars bring progresses, medecine, culture, technology… the melting of advanced people with rustic traditions forces changes of mentalities
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Yes, war does have a way of doing that. As a matter of fact a couple years ago there was a slanted news report lamenting the survival rate of American troops who would have typically died from their wounds in past wars …
Instead of seeing this as a great accomplishment and advances in military ER and medical technology the report was disjointed at the fact the survivors were not allowed to join the body count.
And yes, I am with you … Hopefully we are/will see a major change in mentality in that region as not only a result of this war … but as stated in the opinion piece “they have been surprised by the stoicism of the Americans, by the staying power of the Bush administration” … and realize you don’t fuck with the USA or our interests (which, BTW, do include France).
June 4th, 2008 at 5:55 am***
“…and realize you don’t fuck with the USA or our interests (which, BTW, do include France).”
***
I don’t think your particular “Interests” had something to do, but more civilisation as a whole, and development in a “global world”
as far France is concerned, don’t you know that Koucher went to Irak last week ? that the president there asked him to sell “modern arms” (uh, what’s for ?) to whom Koucher replied (and I was surprised that he became a diplomat in the occurence) “the arms manufacturers are private and are entitled to choose themselves to which country they’ll sell their stuff”… now, it was question of “Reconstruction”… may-be also of UN peace-keepers… there, ” vas savoir ”
June 4th, 2008 at 6:10 amfranchie … keep the fucking UN out of Iraq.
June 4th, 2008 at 6:14 amAnd to the point about war bringing new technology and progress, World War 1 even, brought out the technology of building big powerful trucks and even the diesel engine which has helped countries build things including the Hoover Dam and ship much needed supplies all across the world in a timely fashion. just one example.
As for the threat Saddam posed pre-war. I think Saddam himself was a weapon of Mass destruction. encouraging and then paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers around 1500 US dollars for their loved one blowing themselves up in Israel. or the Anfal Campaign where Saddam destroyed 4,000 villages and gassed and killed somewhere between 100,000-200,000 of his own people.
I could go on and on with examples. but the short story is that this fucker needed to meet his maker, the devil, and we needed to arrange the meeting.
I supported this war from day one and will continue to do so until our brave troops are back on US soil
June 4th, 2008 at 6:27 amAmen!
I see you survived the shit-storms last night down there …
BTW, did you get my email the other day?
June 4th, 2008 at 6:37 amI sure did. didnt even see that email.
it has been hell down here seriously, we have had a tornado watch or warning for the last 48 hours straight. thats unheard of. i just emailed you back
June 4th, 2008 at 7:33 amI finally watched “Charlie Wilson’s War,” and it seems this time, we may have learned from history. A million dollars for schools may have been a bargain in stopping the wars a long time before they began. Let’s finish the job this time.
June 4th, 2008 at 9:13 am
SlimReed
June 4th, 2008 at 12:21 pmRead the book, much better. The movie left out many key points.