One thing that distresses me is the willingness of so many to throw the correct decision to destroy the Saddam regime under the bus for apparent expedient's sake. The war was justly begun and waged. And we won.
Eric defends the bi-partisan legal justification and necessity of the Iraq War against efforts to declare it a mistake and move on. Eric does great work on this angle in a much deserved fisking of a prominent writer, Richard Haass. And covers a lot of of other areas, too. It's worth your time. I won't try to summarize Eric's views. But I will give my quick take--that is, relying on memory--on the issues he addresses. This alone will make this post longer than I like.
He covers:
"Lying" America into war. We did not lie. And with the possible exception of the existence of chemical weapons at the time of our invasion, Saddam was indeed a WMD threat. And the other reasons given for going to war were correct.
Requiring the passage of time to judge the rightness of going to war--which remain "opaque". We were justified and it is clear to me we won the war. Even Obama and Biden agreed. But I do think the passage of time will sway those who claim defeat.
The so-called "war of choice" versus "war of necessity" issue. Bad things happening abroad affect us at home. So direct attacks on American soil aren't the only justification for war. I mean, all our wars could be considered wars of choice by that standard. And note that the lauded "war of necessity" in Afghanistan became a "bad" war just as soon as it wasn't needed as an example to lose the Iraq War. Which I predicted.
Going to war to prevent Saddam from giving WMD to terrorists. The threat was real since 1991 and in the aftermath of 9/11 hard to ignore. I don't think more sanctions would have done the job because we saw them faltering in the years leading up to the 2003 invasion. There was no other realistic enforcement method left.
Powell's presentation justifying war. The presentation distilled what we thought we knew and key elements were accurate) and accurately described what Saddam was required to do to avoid war. Saddam chose to risk war with America rather than comply and prevent war. To me that convincingly proves no lesser means would get Saddam to comply.
The danger of leaving assumptions unchallenged. We knew Saddam had and used WMD. We knew he maintained the organization, personnel, and raw materials to resume WMD work. We knew his generals believed Iraq had WMD. We knew Saddam was required to prove he had disarmed and could not resume WMD production. We were really supposed to look at that and instead say, "Hey, maybe Saddam isn't a WMD threat to his own people and neighbors"?
I say the war and destruction of the Saddam regime demonstrated the danger of assuming you can get away with this level of evading ceasefire obligations.
Oh, and another assumption Haass makes is that failure to find actual WMD in the years after the invasion means there were none. Which ignores the evidence of "cleaners" scouring Iraq to remove traces of WMD programs or documentation after we toppled Saddam's regime but before control of the territory could be completed.
Saddam wasn't a terrorism threat. Well that's just an outrageous claim that defies evidence of supporting terrorists as well as ignoring how Saddam turned to Islam has a foundation of his regime after 1991. The jihadi "ratline" through Syria that supplied suicide bombers existed before the 2003 war and supplied Saddam with jihadis in his paramilitary forces that resisted the invasion, for example. And yeah, Saddam posed a threat for terrorists getting some form of WMD. Either from policy, leakage from corruption, or jihadi sympathizers withing the Iraqi government. And that was a bipartisan worry.
Bush 43 had grander goals and Iraq was a mere for that ambition. Hogwash. Bush was clearly focused on domestic policy. Democracy in Iraq and regime change were already official American bipartisan policy. And 9/11 compelled Bush to prioritize defense of America's homeland. Something "big and bold" happened in America that day. Something far bigger and bolder than firing cruise missiles at empty tents in Central Asia was required.
America didn't have explicit U.N. authorization to invade Iraq. Hogwash. Saddam's failure to comply with the requirement to prove he disarmed triggered our option to invade. A fresh vote was in the category of "nice but not required". You wonder why I was critical of the so-called "snapback" sanctions provisions of the Iran nuclear deal?
Fighting with few allies isolated America. Well, we had fewer allied troops to invade. But we had far fewer of our own troops, too. The 1991 war showed that we didn't need all the prop allies who sent troops to periodically move forward in the wake of our liberation of Kuwait. And we won the major combat operations quickly in 2003. Further, many allies signed on in support and many provided troops for the occupation. We were not isolated.
The war "distracted" America from bigger threats. Oh, terror was a minor threat in 2001-2003? Russia was not considered a threat then. We were still pulling force out of Europe even after the war. China's military was much weaker. And our pivot to the Pacific started right after the Cold War was won. This is just one more manifestaton of the Goldilocks Syndrome. Oh, and Obama himself implicitly minimized the "distraction" issue.
And please don't try to tell me that absent the Iraq War we would have persisted in Afghanistan.
The failure to "understand" Iraq prior to invading. That complaint is nonsense masquerading as sophistication. And America did indeed adapt to changing threats.
The cost in lives was too high. One, our invasion wasn't the cause. Saddam and his jihadi allies and Sadrist frenemies inflicted the death after a relatively low-cost invasion--in part due to Saddam's destruction of civil society prior to the invasion. Two we couldn't know ahead of time the price. Three, we still don't know the alternative cost of not destroying the Saddam regime and fighting to prevent it from regaining control of Iraq. And finally, are we really going to say that if a dictator is brutal enough that we let him hold a country or region hostage to remain in power no matter how cruel and barbarous he is? Really?
Yet I remain conflicted over the issue of whether America should have finished the job in 1991 by going all the way to Baghdad. We promised our allies we would not do that. And Saddam had a robust chemical weapons arsenal in 1991 that I assume Saddam would have used on us and against neighbors. Maybe the price of going all the way would have been lower than the two-stage war against Saddam we ultimately waged. But I am wary of assuming all good things with an alternative strategy in 1991.
The Persian Gulf War was low-cost. And so ... what? That's great, of course. But I think we simply exported costs to the future. We may not have had much of a choice, but that was the reality. Honestly, not long after the 1991 war ceasefire--probably after he put down the Shia uprising (hello, Iran) I expected another war against Saddam at some point.
"Imposing" democracy was a mistake. Oh? Putting in another dictator was the proper response? A Shia? A Kurd? A Sunni Arab? Who would have had legitimacy or the means to rule? I never expected full and immediate democracy and long advocated a post-war struggle to establish rule of law as the proper foundation of democracy. It's a long job. Start now. And honestly, notwithstanding the still-huge corruption that cripples rule of law, Iraq is doing okay at using ballots rather than bullets.
There was no other option than starting the democracy project. That is a source of legitimacy, and all you have to know to accept that is the fact that every tyranny has sham elections and sham popular institutions. Even thug rulers know they have to pretend to have a democracy.
Obama recognized it was futile to stay. Hogwash. Obama (and Biden) boasted of the success upon leaving in 2011! So staying at least as long as we did was good. And Obama himself embarked on Iraq War 2.0 when once-defeated jihadis predictably rose up in 2014 under the black flag of ISIL. We're still there.
The War strengthened Iran. On the contrary, the Iraq War eliminated a major reason Iran had so much influence in Iraq as far back as the 1970s--a Sunni Arab minority brutally oppressed a Shia Arab majority--and Shia but Persian Iran posed as their protector. Failure by Democrats to treat Iran as an enemy that needs to be opposed rather than the strange object of their desire is what enables Iran's mayhem in the region. Which also undermines Haass's specific objection that the Iraq War prevented America from opposing Iran--where America didn't have UN backing as the foundation for opposing it, as Eric notes.
The outcome was overwhelmingly negative. Hogwash. Imagine what we could have chosen instead. And imagine trying to pivot to Asia while containing Russia if we still needed a robust CENTCOM to contain Saddam's Iraq.
Anyway, Eric's take is worth reading even though I took the opportunity to add my two cents. But hey, it's my site.
While Eric's great work on the legality of the war is needed, I tend to downplay the legality issue--which I accept as a foundation--to focus on the need for and the success we achieved in the war. I can't--as I noted--imagine being able to pivot our military away from the Middle East without destroying Saddam's Iraq.
My bottom line view is that Saddam had the raw materials, infrastructure, and scientific and engineering talent to quickly restart chemical weapons production. Remember, Saddam was obligated to prove he could not do that. Don't invert the requirements and insist we had to prove Saddam still had that capacity.
And I don't rule out that he had small amounts of actual chemical warheads--apart from the thousands of old rounds we found that still could have given off indicators of poison gas if used--to bluff an arsenal until production could resume. Keep in mind that Obama's chemical weapons deal with Syria was credited with eliminating raw materials--raw materials that apparently didn't count as WMD in Iraq.
And again, as Obama and Biden declared at the time, we won the war--if we'll hold it against Iranian attempts to dominate the Iraqi government. As Eric rightly notes, it is important to understand that Iranian influence in Iraq is enabled by our failure to resist Iran after defeating Saddam. If your rejection of the war rests on insinuating that keeping the monster Saddam in power to balance Iran was a better choice, that's effed up thinking.
Saddam was no champion of the West.
UPDATE: Also, as Eric noted, Saddam had biological warfare capabilities. But I was mostly thinking about battlefield use of chemical weapons--as Saddam carried out repeatedly against the Iranians. And which Saddam used to terrorize Iraqi Kurds. And of course, in time Saddam or his brutal sons would have returned to pursuing nukes.
And I corrected the spelling of Haass in the piece. I guess I haven't thought about him in quite a while.
UPDATE: Eric commented that I was probably being overly cautious in saying Saddam had only a small chemical weapons arsenal prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom.
I once would have agreed. But two things are relevant.
One is defining "small". Given that Saddam's production quality was low, chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War were produced shortly before use. So stockpiling made little sense.
Two, until American forces had the freedom to roam through eastern Syria, I thought it plausible that Saddam sent WMD to Syria for safekeeping. If that was true we'd have found signs--even if the WMD are still under Assad's control in an enclave in the east. Nothing has been reported. So my definition of small went down.
That said, I would not be shocked to eventually read that we found such evidence but didn't reveal it to put the war behind us and not open up an old "settled" debate, as wrong as that motivation would be.
NOTE: The image was made from DALL-E.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
