Defcon Blue

There’s a dangerous and incorrect consensus forming on the War in Iraq. It’s bringing together arch conservatives like Bill Crystal and Tony Blankley and moderates and liberals like Hillary Clinton and Thomas Friedman. Conservatives are desperate to explain how their “Grand Idea” of pre-emptively invading Iraq and toppling its dictator, Saddam Hussein went so terribly wrong. Liberals like Hillary Clinton and 199 other Democrats in Congress are trying to explain why they voted to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq. The new consensus: The war in Iraq was a great idea that President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and others screwed up in execution.

Although this conclusion is politically convenient for both conservatives and many liberals, it is wrong and I want to set the record straight. Although President Bush’s execution of this war has been shockingly incompetent, execution was not the problem with this terrible escapade. The Bush Administration never had a post-war plan and if it had bothered to try to make any plans it would have realized that toppling Saddam Hussein was opening a can of worms. If you decapitate a dictator in a multi-ethnic state you always end up with either partition, or civil war or both. (See my previous post). You never end up with a Jeffersonian democracy.

So if almost everyone agrees that this war has been a calamitous mistake, why does it matter whether it was a good idea done wrong or just a bad idea from the start? It matters because the history of this war will be used to justify a war in the future. You can see it happening today. For 20 years it was conservative dogma that the Vietnam war was a great idea executed poorly. The Lyndon Johnson White House micro-managed the generals until the war was lost. That is why Vietnam failed, poor execution. The fact that the Vietnam war was a terrible idea from the start has been completely forgotten by conservatives. So this time when Conservatives get a new “big idea:” into their heads to invade an Arab country so we can create a new Arab democracy, they are sure that it will be quick and easy. All we have to do is not interfere with the Generals and invading Iraq will be a piece of cake.

Just listen to the Bush Administration from the President on down talk about the war. “I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.” said Vice President Cheney in his now famous comments on Meet the Press in 2002. President Bush consistently says that he will listen to his Generals. At a September 2006 news conference Bush said: “And that’s the way I will continue to conduct the war. I’ll listen to generals.” This is convenient from two standpoints: one he will fix the error that Johnson committed and he can ignore anyone else who disagrees with him.

Don’t let the history be written this way. This war was LOST from the day it was started. President Bush was able to choose the time, place, and circumstances of this war. He chose to start a pre-emptive war against a country that had not attacked us. He chose to start a war that the overwhelming majority of Arabs thought was unjustified. He chose to justify the war on the basis of obviously flimsy evidence. If he had real evidence he would have done as Kennedy did and brought the 3′x5′ glossy satellite photos into the United Nations Security Council. He chose to send as few troops as possible and to use private contractors as much as possible. He chose to treat this war as cheap, easy and without costs to the American people. As a result, Americans do not view this war as vital, Arabs view this war as unjust and everyone wants to blame Bush’s incompetence in execution.

President Bush’s execution of this war has been completely incompetent bordering on criminally negligent, but that is not the reason this escapade is going to fail. The war in Iraq is going to fail because we invaded, unprovoked or threatened, an Arab country and tried to install our own puppet government. We removed a dictator in a multi-ethnic state and hoped everyone would suddenly get along and forget 1000 years of history. The execution has been terrible but the idea of starting this war was unconscionably horrible. The two hundred Democrats and uncounted Republicans who supported this war can’t get off by just blaming Bush. We must get the history right so that the errors of this war can’t be used to justify another unjust war.