by Jack Lee
We’re into the war over 5 years now and prior to the invasion, many of us, myself included, had real concerns about a protracted involvement where we wear out our welcome and we turn from an army of liberation into an army of occupation.
Remember, before we started this war we were about to attack a nation that had not attacked us first. Except for Cuba (Spanish-American war), that was a first. At least back then we thought Cuba had attacked our naval ship the Maine, but we knew Iraq had not attacked us and that was troubling to me.
I can’t deny that Saddam’s regime had done a number of bad things to provoke us and it almost seemed like he was trying to start something. Anyone could make a pretty good case for a war given his actions. Look at the UN treaty violations and all those aggressive actions taken with UN inspectors. Several times our military recon flights over Iraq had been fired at and that’s a very serious provocation. These things were all violations of the UN brokered peace agreement. There was also enough UN resolutions calling on Saddam for better cooperation that could have filled a large garage can. UN sanctions to gain Saddam’s cooperation obviously were not working, but they were starving some of his people and that was a mistake. The UN sanctions were only hurting the people we wanted to help.
These things and many more (like a multitude of human rights abuses by Saddam) were ALL serious issues that called for a strong, affirmative response, but not necessarily war.
A full scale, regime toppling war is fraught with unintended consequences. Therefore this should be the option of last resort, one that deserves our full consideration before we commit to it, because once we do we could be stuck…for years and it could cost of thousands of lives and billions of dollars. Were we really prepared to do that?
Another concern I had back in 2003 was the lack of international cooperation like we had 1991. The President told us he had a coalition, but these were token forces, save for the British. Many people, both liberal and conservative, wondered if a delay and a search for an alternative to war might be the better direction or at least a delay until the UN inspections had been completed or totally ended by Saddam Hussein. This could have meant delaying the war for up to a year, however, in hindsight that delay might have been just what we needed to fully assess the situation before we got in too deep.
However, we were told by President Bush, who had full access to information we did not have, that there was an urgency to act. This was affirmed by an informed Congress and even our trusted allies, all of whom knew more about the situation than us citizens.
Everyone in government leadership was dead certain that Saddam Hussein had begun rebuilding his WMD arsenal and worse, that he was now plotting with Al Qaeda.
Despite some good circumstantial evidence to support these alarming claims, much was still left to us to take it on trust…but, we didn’t know how much the government was trusting in their sources and that those sources were of questionable reliability. If we had only known that we might have never allowed our soldiers to go to war.
We had too fill in the missing dots and trust because we knew our President and the good men and women advising him knew far more than we ever would or could. Our President assured the nation we DID have the evidence and the WMD’s were there. Our national security was at stake and the next 9-11 style attack could be in L.A., San Francisco or even closer to home,. The absurd security precautions at Chico Airport underscored the idea that an attack could happen anywhere and anytime and that was just plain old BS.
We were told that and we believed it because it appeared there was an imminent threat due to the nature of WMDs like Sarin gas or weapon’s grade anthrax. This all played on our fears, reinforced by visions of 9-11 still fresh in our mind. We were building momentum…for war!
Sure, we had a lot to consider before invading Iraq, but we had to weigh that against the urgency to prevent an attack by Iraqi agents or by Al Qaeda terrorists using a WMD in a major city or two here. But, if we did invade Iraq there was this risk that we might appear to world as a conquering force for oil and occupiers a country.
There was also the high cost of rebuilding an Iraq, ruined by decades of Husein’s corrupt leadership. Did we really have the time and resources to do that? War was a gamble, but nobody in the Bush administration believed it would take too long or cost too many American lives than we could justify by this dire WMD threat. Most of the Bush administration seemed to think we would be welcomed with open arms by Iraqi’s tired of being brutalized by Saddam Hussein. We also thought that a democratic government would be quickly formed and we could soon leave with the eternal gratitude of the Iraqi people for their liberation.
The war planners greatly under-estimated the job of fixing Iraq after Saddam.
Our intel was lacking on Iraq from day one, in part due to previous administrations that had gutted our CIA, but mostly we got it wrong because this was a closed society for Westerners, like Iran or North Korea where everything is a state secret.
Prior to the war, we had a lot to consider and we should have. We should have seen all the complexities from ethnic strife to terrorist zealots. If we did then we didn’t seem to care enough to delay the invasion. We acted like the clock was ticking away and we had to act.
In any global crisis there is always a sense of urgency to solve it. This is human nature. Sometimes adrenalin displaces introspection. This makes us rush to much and we prepare for war as we leap from one event to the next as the momentum builds. If we had not let momentum sweep us along so quickly maybe we would have seen through Saddam’s little charade? Maybe we could have seen that if we go into Iraq, we could be there for a long bloody time? That latter reason should have compelled us to build a real coalition if we absolutely had to invade Iraq. Even if that meant playing along with the frivolous UN requests to see what that additional cooperation with them might buy us.
This is not to say we should ever trust OUR national security to the UN, no not at all. However, to go to war more or less alone, against the popular opinion of the free world, and to go in too quickly without a really good plan for peace keeping, well all needed sorting out first. It was important to consider everything and all options and we didn’t. This could turn out badly for Iraq and for us in the long run.
While few would deny now that we’ve made too many major mistakes in this war, fewer will admit it was due to a rush to invade and that is wrong.
I think it’s healthy for us to come to terms with that, because I’m sure we let that “momentum” compromise our judgement. There were too many poor decisions made and too many things overlooked that shouldn’t have happened. It all goes back that time when a delay to invade in 2003 would have given us the opportunity to improve the outcome of many future events.
For instance, we wanted to open a northern front using Turkey. 60,000 soldiers from USAREUR headed from Germany, but in the final hours they were denied to land. Access through Turkey was denied. As it turned out, we didn’t need them to defeat Saddam’s Army, but we did need them to help keep the peace. That large force could have been used to control the borders and limit the insurgency and that would have helped us speed up the reconstruction dramatically. This brings up another major mistake by our war planners. From the beginning we had too few forces on the ground to adequately control the population. Nobody in the military wanted to admit, they were tasked to the job and that was as far as it went. At home our leaders were overly concerned about keeping a low numbers for appearances that they consistently underestimated the numbers needed to control the situation. The idea of the “SURGE” arrived about 4 years too late.
This war has also involved more media and more lawyers than any other war in history. How this came to be ought to be reconsidered, because if this is to be a trend, then we might as well run up a white flag right now and be done with it! I can’t believe the number of our soldiers that have been put on trial for fighting a war basically the same way soldiers in contact with a deadly enemy have always fought! It was not just wrong to do this, it was stupid.
Our leadership grossly underestimated the enemy and greatly overestimated the contributions by the Iraqi people. We employed too many rules of engagement and tried to be too politically correct in order to gain Iraq cooperation and it got just the opposite. It made us look weak and indecisive and Iraqi’s who wanted to help were restrained because they couldn’t trust us to deal with their enemies effectively as Hussein s regime had once done. We began to look more like occupiers of their land and this began to erode our moral authority as months turned into years.
Winning hearts and minds is often just as important as winning battles, sometimes more so and what we didn’t know about the various cultures represented in Iraq was stunning.
Now consider that one of the corner stones for invading Iraq quickly was the reported imminent threat presented by Hussein’s new WMD program. When can argue about what people believed, but the fact remains that Hussein was scamming us and we didn’t figure it out and we should have. Saddam was gambling with a big bluff about WMD’s to keep his enemies in check and status among his peers. Further, the allegations of an Iraq- Al Qaeda connection were far more distant and less threatening than originally believed. That may have come out if we had the time to investigate this properly, but we will never know, because we didn’t wait to find out.
Iraq has a complex social structure that is easily inflamed via old tribal feuds, competing religious sects and ancient ethnic differences. A number of stories have come out since those early days that analysts in the CIA recognized this was a serious problem and could threaten to destabilize any peacekeeping efforts, but as this information worked its way up the chain of command, it was dismissed or minimized because of this “urgency” to act.
In addition to underestimating the culture differences, it could be said that in general the Iraqi people are acclimated to a strong central government control, to the point they are almost unable to function without one. The sudden transition to a democratic form was a lot to expect on nothing more than faith and hope.
Iraq has a porous border that is difficult to control and we did not plan well to control it. Iraq has enormous wealth in oil that encourages many plots from within and from without and we seemed naive about what this could lead to. There were all part of what you might say was our “due diligence” to consider BEFORE going in and without doing so, it adds up to a huge problem for a new Iraq government and for us as the occupying force.
It’s not a leap of faith to think that without the Iraq invasion Al Qaeda would most likely have gravitated toward Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a far better battleground for our forces to fight the Al Qaeda. It’s a difficult place for the enemy for many reasons, its a remote, underdeveloped region with mountains on its borders, the rural valleys are lightly populated and overall it is simply far less hospitable place for a foreign enemy like Al Qaeda to operate effectively. We did not give enough weight to an Al Qaeda strategy being played out better in Afghanistan, than Iraq….wouldda, shouldda, couldda…perhaps, but these are all relevant points we seeming glossed over in the rush to invade Iraq.
The last 5 years in Iraq has cost us of hundreds of billions (and not money all that well spent either) and over 4000 American lives. The civilian gains we have made for society building are probably no more permanent than a house of cards. Almost everyone agrees that a sudden withdrawal of US forces now could easily undue everything we’ve accomplished and hope to accomplish and would lead to a slaughter of civilians of Biblical proportions. In the end and after this bloody chaos, Iranian and Iraqi Shia Muslims could wind up controlling the worlds riches oil field, a nightmarish possibility.
The Iraqi government is unprepared to go it alone. After 5 years of sacrificing to get them up to speed, we still can’t leave. Our benchmarks for demonstrating their autonomy are just that….our bench marks. The Iraqi’s seem to have their own schedule and goals keep getting pushed further and further out. We should have seen this one coming too, because the corruption in Iraq is among the worst in the world.
Contrary to what President Bush said, we will not be there for ‘however long it takes”. We don’t have the money, time or will to be there “however long it takes”. This “limited time” factor is a big problem and the solution is unclear, but there is still reason for SOME hope and by no means am I saying Iraq is a lost cause. However, the question before us now is, what price are the American people willing to pay to see a good outcome in Iraq? We’ve been very patient so far, but 5 years of sacrifice is nothing when contrasted the thousands of years of social problems within that culture. I think all good things have their limits and our limit in Iraq is fast approaching.
Digressing back to post war 2003, there is a quote that was very relevant then and now, “A good plan, violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.” Gen. Geo. S. Patton. Well, we didn’t do either and that sums up our Iraq policy.
President Bush went to war too fast and he may have done it for reasons best known only to himself, but I suspect those reasons may not have centered entirely on our national security. Again, that’s just my opinion, but I suspect it and I don’t say this lightly.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad Hussein is gone! We did the world a favor when we took him out and put an end to the mass graves for political opponents. Without the war we could be facing another 40 years under Husein’s crazy sons too. The invasion of Iraq might have been inevitable, however, I would have hoped by that time we would have done it under far better conditions, with better planning and in a declared war, declared for all the right reasons! A declared war gives a lot more leverage to minimize the very things that have been dragging out this war in Iraq. A declared war gives us the authority to deal effectively with the kind of anti-war rhetoric that is killing our soldiers and undermining our will and our morale! In the future we should either fight a [declared] war to [win]…or we don’t go!
The prosecution of the war in Iraq has been so poor that it has hurt our image and our future national security, but only time will tell how much. I hope I’m wrong, but it’s looking more and more like history will say we acted in haste, without sufficient cause or evidence. .
The bottom line: We can’t learn from our mistakes (or correct them) unless we first acknowledge them.
Why don’t you go a little further back? So we can all read again your facile acceptance of Bushco’s face-saving, godawful, piously hypocritical embrace of “human rights” and “democracy” when the “WMD” justification for the war was proved a crock, a farce and a lie. (And I told you it was.)
Six months, one year, eighteen months, three years from now, when the Iraqi Sunnis have been genocided, Iraq has annexed itself to Iran (minus Kurdistan), and we’ve lost control of the oil again … I am soooooo going to rub your noses into it.
Quentin, alright, if you want me to go back before the war then I’ll have to paraphrase my position because I am unable to retrieve my old editorials…too long ago, no blog records other than some random saved essays on the subject on CD.
Before the war in 2003 I had a genuine concern that we were moving to war too fast. I said at the time we needed to go the extra distance to insure we really had it right on our intel and that UN inspections had every opportunity to find out the truth…I wanted a delay and I also expressed my personal belief that if we invaded too early and without world support we would be seen as an army of occupation and that would not work out well for us.
On the other side we, the American people, were repeatedly assured:
1. Iraq did have a functioning WMD program and that once it was viable it would be in the hands of an unstable regime that would definitely use them or they would send them to Al Qaeda to use.
2. Time therefore was of the essence. We were told we needed to invade now (2003) because: The searing heat of the Iraqi summer would be almost incapacitating. We needed to invade now (March 20th 2003) or we would lose a window of opportunity that could delay us one full year and that would allow Iraq more time to build up defenses and we would incur more causalities. And if we delayed there was a good chance it could prove catastrophic… because another 9/11 event would likely happen on US soil or elsewhere with an ally and then thousands of lives could be lost. We believed this and we saw a duty to act ASAP and we had all the cause we needed to act.
3. Evidence was produced by England, UN inspections, a key Iraqi defector and US Intel services to confirm Iraq was indeed making WMD’s… again! Worse, they were also pursuing a nuclear weapon (yellow cake event) just as they had done prior to 1990 when Israel took out the reactor. We were told this is why they were willing to starve their people, despite the UN sanctions. They had an agenda to meet with WMD’s, they had to keep the UN inspectors at bay until the weapons were ready, we were all told.
Even the most ardent skeptic for war, Gen. Colin Powell was so convinced that he put his reputation on the line in a proclamation before the UN that Iraq and said flatly Iraq did indeed resurrect their WMD program.
4. Saddam Hussein, was a better bully than a clever leader and this proved his undoing. He made the greatest mistake of his life when he tried to bluff the UN and the USA into thinking he had a WMD program. And this was done the sake of his monumental ego that simply could not and would not accept being subjected to the peace accord of Gulf War I. It was intolerable for him and he felt he needed to show audacity and strength to keep his many enemies at a distance. He was a ruthless fool where his bluff led to war and his demise.
Quentin, it’s a FACT that neither you or I knew anymore than Gen. Colin Powell…only the great Libby with her infinite wisdom knew what us 250,000,000 Americans didn’t know. She’s such a gifted clairvoyant.
Powell bought into the bluff and the President absolutely assured us we had the evidence on Iraq – what were we citizens to think?
We had to make a decision based on what was stated as evidence verses our skepticism. Skepticism based on what? Our backdrop was Gulf I! and a strict UN treaty Iraq was obligated too and now breaking. Our backdrop said Saddam Hussein DID use WMD’s in war before in the 1980’s-90s. He was a threat to peace to in the mid-East. He was a threat to US interests and indirectly… our national security. We had seen was Arab threats could do in 9/11. 2003 was not that long after we lost 3000 innocent people on American soil for God’s sake!
Our leaders were fooled, that meant we were tricked into a war by a vicious dictators bluff, by Iraqs flagrant failure to comply with the UN peace agreement and we were misled by weak lntel from multiple sources. Should we as humble citizens known better? NO! NO! NO! HOW IN THE HOLY HELL COULD WE HAVE KNOWN BETTER AND STOPPED THIS MOMENTUM towards war at that time and given the circumstances? We couldn’t and we didn’t.
We had no {{{{{{rational}}}}} basis for denying the facts at the time for war with Iraq, many of which were absolutely 100% true and have stood the test of time. Remember – Iraq broke their word in the peace accord! Right there would have enough that should have invoked a global UN response as was done in 1991.
So don’t you sanctimoniously come here and lecture us how you knew the truth and we were just fools. You didn’t know SHI#!!! You were being your contrarian self and that’s all.
You thought you knew based on paranoia of gov but without any real facts and you lucked out. Now you think you’re smarter than everyone else in the room. Well, hate to break it to you, but you’re not. You’re being suckered on a 100 other issues right now starting with OWS. We Americans were semi-suckered on this one event – but when you go back to 2003 I really did have honest reservations and I said so. At least I had a mostly factual argument…. I said back then I thought we better wait to sort it out better. I said so Quentin and don’t you try to take that away from me. Okay, I wasn’t against going to war, that’s true, but I was firmly against the timing. I was for delaying it another year to be sure we had it right and I was willing to take a calculated risk that NO AMERICAN cities would suffer from an Iraqi sponsored WMD attack. In hindsight that was reasonable. It may or may not have saved us from war, but it was a damned site more reasonable than anything you and your far leftists were saying back then!!!
Remember…. “NO BLOOD FOR OIL” that was a total invention of the far left!!!! That was more pure fantasy than anything the Bush Administration ever said about Saddam Hussein or any of our real intentions for going to war.
The leftist argument that the USA was an IMPERIALIST POWER was more BS – Imperialism had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE GULF WAR!!!!!!
IMPERIALISM AND OIL were the foundation for arguments that your side made and you were proven wrong. Get over it. And you too Libby…you’re really no more clairvoyant than my cat.
Jack your opinions and appraisals are appreciated. You look at this as an observer eager to learn from the past and willing to honestly assess decisions and circumstances from the point of view of one who supports better decisions and efforts in future. My remarks below are not meant as disagreement with you or your assessment but are meant to add perspective.
There are many elements to this long story some of which have yet to come to pass.
The most obvious is the position taken by pascifists and those who think decisions were made for cash. Just as happened during the Vietnam war, those in our country who would not support war in any circumstance, turned on Bush at the first hint of trouble and began to signal to our enemies and the world, including many supportive Iraqis, that Bush didn’t have the will of the people behind him. Many in the media were eager to support this view. People like this were willing to use any means to undermine the effort. (The full page NYT ad “General Betrayus” said it all.) It’s difficult to measure the extent to which these idiots lengthened the war, made conduicting it more difficult, and endangered out troops but I have no doubt that it did. The NYT leaking of top secret information surely did!
View any war through the rear view mirror and you will find things we “should have known” and mistakes and errors in judgement. Somehow for many this view vindicates the position that the mission was not only wrong but a waste of money and precious lives. I will not join the ranks of those who take this view…the story continues and part of the continuing story is that the American people also elected a weak, uninterested president to follow the Bush administration. We elected a man who never missed a chance to berate his predecessor publically while continuing and extending or expanding the very policies of the man he criticized.
We will never know what might have happened in Iraq, and indeed the entire region, had we elected a strong leader instead of Obama. Obama is a reluctant leader eager to step forward and take credit for spectacular victories performed by our troops but otherwise uninvolved, uninterested and willing to let the peacenick generation surrounding him manage the aftermath of the Bush years. They have managed it poorly! In Iraq Obama virtually announced emotional abandonment from day one. He signalled further disinterest when he turned his back on Israel and our allies and warmly embraced or encouraged radical elements across the region.
I don’t buy the “rush to war” analysis completely. It’s much too pat and fraught with political posturing. It’s little more than a perfectly designed soundbite used to create doubt and undermine support of the mission. Indeed the mission seems to have been lost completely as baseless accusations mounted.
This war, and the decision to engage in war in Iraq, did not begin at 911. Years of attacks on Americans and others around the world and years of drawing lines in the sand led up to 911. A decade long game of chicken waged by Hussein with Clinton and the UN contributed. The invasion of Kuwait and Genocide of the Kurds and contributed. The intelligence, whether completely accurate or not, contributed to the mountain of information Bush used to make his decision. Evidence of WMD, knowledge that Hussein had used them in the past, Hussein’s nose thumbing stance at UN resolutions (those lines drawn in the sand), reports from Iraqis who surrendered to our troops after Kuwait who wanted us to continue on into Iraq to liberate them, evidence that Hussein gave aid to Hamas and Al Qaida, and the terrible brutality of Hussein’s regime all contributed in a long timeline of wait and see that led to the Bush decision. If it was a “rush to judgement” as some claim, it was also astounding that it still had the support of the majority of Congress 18 months after 911.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,65395,00.html
It is even more amazing that Congress continued to fund the war after strong criticism began, but they did, and they continue to do so even after Obama was elected and to this day!
What DO they know that we don’t know?
On the other hand, it was totally predictable that those of our representatives who quickly turned when the going got rough (Pelosi, for instance) began to make public denouncements. I call these types weenies. They are weenies because they only cheerlead for America in their own interests. They support war if it can serve their political party and career and they turn on efforts waged by the opposition as soon as they see an opportunity to do so.
The Iraq decision was not just a decision to “invade” a single country. It was part of a much larger plan to protect America from a threat the likes of which the world had not heretofore seen. That threat changes as our tactics change making preparedness and decisions difficult. The threat continues to this day and I don’t like it, but neither will I put my head in the sand and pretend that any president will address this major world problem perfectly and without mistakes nor will I pretend that it is possible to prevent death and injury. What is a defense aparatus if not a group of men and women willing to make the tough decisions and to risk life and limb?
This story is not finished. If Iraq ends as some predict in further genocide and collapse of the fragile democracy then surely this aqdministration and the unsupportive naysayers hold a measure of responsibility. There are many questions to be answered and many things to learn along the way. How will we respond to the various factions forming now? What are the true intentions of these groups? Some would have us believe that there are no “war mongers” who choose to wage war on America…unless they are provoked by us, of course. This is utter nonesense!
Like it or not there will be other wars and battles and like it or not they will involve the young and strong among us. I don’t like this fact of life and because of that I do believe it’s important to carefully consider before going to war. War should only be used as a last resort. I also know that the “last resort” never comes for weenies and appeasers. I know that many of those appeased in the past have become terrible tyrants bent on conquering the world.
President Bush was not an appeaser but that doesn’t make him a war monger. Making this comparison is both irresponsible and infantile. Bush weighed all of the evidence and the legacy of radical elements and much more before he made his decision. He thought he was doing the right thing. I am amazed and in awe of anyone who is willing to shoulder this burden in earnest; Bush carried it with respect for our troops and a dedication to our troops and the mission that cannot be denied. He did it showing great diplomatic respect for our allies and even for our enemies. I can’t ask more than that from a president who finds himself at the helm when all hell breaks loose…and if you recall, that is exactly how his 8 years began.
Thank you Jack…your an American with both grit and honesty!
We pretty much agree Tina, thank you for your perspective, it makes the Iraq picture much more complete, unlike something Quentin or Libby. The just toss the grenade into the crowd and run for cover.
You didn’t really think we were going to let you get away with it, did you?
Some of us (though not nearly enough of us) do pay attention. And there ain’t gonna be no unchallenged revisioning of reality on this blog.
You put that freakin’ frat boy in the White House, and we will be paying for it the next decade, at least … and you don’t want to be giving us any further opportunities to remind you of it!
Fondly.
Libby: “You put that freakin’ frat boy in the White House, and we will be paying for it the next decade, at least…”
What a joke coming from one who helped put Obummer in office!
Information gathered from the Congressional Budget Office and the Statistical Abstract:
During Bush Presidency 2003-2008 spending on the war was $554B.
(Federal spending on education over that same time period was $574B.)
The Iraq War cost $709 billion spread over eight years (to 2010).
The sum of all the deficits from 2003 through 2010 is $4.73 trillion. Subtract the entire Iraq War cost and you still have a sum of $4.02 trillion.
The Iraq War accounts for less than 8% of the federal debt held by the public at the end of 2010 ($9.031 trillion).
Obama’s stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than the entire Iraq War — more than $100 billion (15%) more.
The CBO estimates the Obama stimulus, by 2019, will have cost $814 billion.
A little defense spending perspective:
During the (JFK/LBJ) eight years of 1961-69, 46% of all federal spending was on national defense. During President Bush’s eight years, defense spending did not even average 20% of federal outlays. Under JFK/LBJ, defense spending was 8%-9% of GDP. Under Bush, it was about 4%.
Defense spending under Bush is not the cause of our financial troubles!
Read the excellent article by Randal Hoven from which these facts were gleaned:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/08/iraq_the_war_that_broke_us_not.html
BIG GOVERNMENT SPENDING and ENTITLEMENT SPENDING, and the EXPENSIVE BEAURACRACY required to administer various PROGRAMS and DEPARTMENTS, is the main cause of our finacial woes. Waste, fraud, and abuse are offensive and add greatly to the ridiculous wasteful expense.
The Obama war on business is costing all of us, including our government, a lot of unnecessary pain, lost opportunity, and money!
I’d call Obama something crappy like “frat boy” just to get even but since he hasn’t released his college records…Oh! I do have a pic of him smokin’ a dube…would that do?