Oh?
The Bush Doctrine was fundamentally flawed from the start. It assumed that the US would not be met with heavy casualties and wouldn’t cause civilian casualties. It assumed that the war in Iraq would be vindicated, which it wasn’t, and that the United States could withdraw harmlessly after routing the Taliban, Saddam Hussein and aQ (at least on the surface) and allow those secondary, long-term goals to achieve themselves. It ignored the fact that, to maintain stability after deposing two regimes with an extremely tight grip on their respective societies, a far more monumental, longer and deeply unpopular occupation would’ve been needed. It ignored the fact that such a large scale war would create endless amounts of collateral civilian damage and as such the invasions and occupations of the Bush Doctrine will go down in history, least of all in this article, as some of the most morally bankrupt, regrettable and failed exercises of American foreign policy in history.
What rot. Trendy. Consensus. But rot.
The condemnation is focused on Iraq but the broader point is about Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea. So let's look at where we are now with each.
Well, we did win the Iraq War. With pre-war plans to remain just as we remained in Afghanistan after the 2001 operation. Indeed, the Iraq plans were far more ambitious.
The Iraq War was good enough that President Obama launched Iraq War 2.0 in 2014 to save it. And the casualties took place not during the invasions but because brutal enemies continued to fight after the destruction of the Saddam and Taliban governments.
And as a result of the war, Iraq no longer kills its own people as Saddam did, Iraq no longer threatens neighbors with invasion as Saddam did, Iraq no longer aspires to gain and use WMD as Saddam did, and most significantly Iraq is now an ally that helps America kill jihadis rather than being a state that supported jihadi killers as Saddam did.
And we have prevented Afghanistan from hosting attacks on our homeland. I was reluctant to escalate in Afghanistan as President Obama did. I didn't think it would do any good opposed to a low-level effort to support sub-national actors in the formal state of Afghanistan to fight jihadis and keep them from running the place. I firmly believe that the brief escalations were purely for making good on the campaign claim that Iraq "distracted" America from Afghanistan, and the many more deaths as a result were fairly pointless. I could be wrong that the escalations didn't set the stage for what we have now and that without it things would be worse. Yet I suspect we paid an unnecessary price. But we had to pay some price to destroy the authors of 9/11. And walking away would allow the threats to rebuild. Certainly, Obama's embrace of the war validates that war, too, as a bipartisan consensus.
As for North Korea, we've really done nothing until the last year or so when we have finally worked hard to solve the problem--hopefully without war. So the problems we have with North Korea threatening the peace have nothing to with Bush who rightly named North Korea a member of the Axis of Evil.
And Iran? The Left would have impeached Bush for addressing Iran which has been nothing but named a member of the Axis of Evil. Sanctions were briefly tightened and then relaxed to get Iran a farcical deal that only pretends to stop Iran from going nuclear. At best it prevents Iran from going nuclear during the time of the deal even as the deal makes Iran more capable of racing to nukes when the deal expires. At best. And I still worry that North Korea is essentially Iran's nuclear weapons program to furnish the warheads for the missiles Iran develops.
So Iraq is a relative success early in the process of being a full success.
Afghanistan is a success as far as preventing it from being a terror sanctuary. But the cost has been higher than it needed to be. But stuff like that happens in a war.
Iran remains a threat but it has not been seriously confronted. And indeed Iran has been bribed in a failed attempt to make it a responsible power.
As for North Korea, it hasn't been stopped and everyone seems to have hoped not to be in the White House when the music stops in this game of nuclear musical chairs.
As for jihadis, at its heart the problem is an Islamic Civil War about who defines what Islam is. The war against jihadis is just a holding action to protect us and enable reasonable Moslems to reject the bloody vision of the jihadis for what all of Islam should be. How long will it take to change Islamic society? You tell me. But it is at least starting.
Is the war on terror and the Axis of Evil going on longer than we hoped? Yes, but that is the fault of fighting very bloody enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we've not worked to really defeat North Korea or Iran.
What was the alternative post 9/11? To let Iraq and Afghanistan continue to be horrible regimes that host people who want to kill us and threaten their regions? How's that going with Iran in the Middle East and North Korea in northeast Asia, where both are still unconstrained? Would our enemies have tired of killing and just stopped on their own?
Are we to accept nuclear Iran and North Korea? How many more nuclear states will follow those two? And how long will it be before nuclear wars between close neighbors break out? America and Russia had the luxury of distance, at least, to reduce the friction that could have led to a nuclear war during the Cold War. How good will all these new nuclear states' command and control and early warning systems be? Will fear of being hit with a disarming first strike lead to launches of nukes in pointless nuclear wars?
And if you want to speak of a war that didn't go according to plan, why is America and the World War II alliance that defeated Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy still struggling to defend the West from external threats?
Oh, and didn't we turn regimes with tight grips on their people--Japan, Italy, Germany, and later South Korea--into real and prosperous democracies despite needing a long time to achieve that? Or is World War II, a morally bankrupt, regrettable and failed exercise? One even bigger than what we've faced so far?
We're doing all right in this very difficult Long War. Don't be so bloody dramatic.
