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The Spectacle Blog
Below are a number of recent items occasioned by the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War.
Max Boot, Commentary. “The Future of Nation Building.”
There are two essential lessons one can draw from the Iraq War: either that we should never get mired in counterinsurgency or “nation-building” operations in the future or that, if we do get involved, we should do a better job of achieving our objectives.
Editoral Board, New York Times. “Ten Years After.”
[N]one of the Bush administration’s war architects have been called to account for their mistakes, and even now, many are invited to speak on policy issues as if they were not responsible for one of the worst strategic blunders in American foreign policy.
Ezra Klein, Bloomberg. “Mistakes, Excuses, and Painful Lessons from the Iraq War.”
[A]t the core of my support for the war was an analytical failure I think about often: Rather than looking at the war that was actually being sold, I’d invented my own Iraq war to support—an Iraq war with different aims, promoted by different people, conceptualized in a different way and bearing little resemblance to the project proposed by the Bush administration.
Andrew Bavevich, Harper’s. “A Letter to Paul Wolfowitz.”
With the passing of the Cold War, global hegemony seemed America’s for the taking. What others saw as an option you, Paul, saw as something much more: an obligation that the nation needed to seize, for its own good as well as for the world’s.
James Wolcott. Vanity Fair. “The Waning of the War Whores.”
Kristol may still sport his Cheshire cat grin and Victor Davis Hanson may still lay down the stentorian drumbeat at NRO, but the neocon heyday is done and good riddance. Frank Gaffney, a familiar face in the run up to war and after, is now reduced to running around with the likes of Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, waving his hands up in the air about the menace of jihadism, and the perfect new face of War Party militance—Allen West—lost his House seat and has signed on to do a National Review cruise, which is equivalent to a has-been actor getting a guest spot on Love Boat.
David Frum. The Daily Beast. “The Speechwriter.”
I was less impressed by [Ahmed] Chalabi than were some others in the Bush administration. However, since one of those “others” was Vice President Cheney, it didn’t matter what I thought.
Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian. “David Frum, the Iraq War, and oil.”
Talk about self-serving revisionism: to distance himself from neocon designs on Iraq, Frum claims that he “was less impressed by Chalabi than were some others in the Bush administration”. But, as Ruben Bolling just reminded me, Frum wrote a long and angry defense of Chalabi in 2004 at National Review, hailing him as “one of the very few genuine liberal democrats to be found at the head of any substantial political organization anywhere in the Arab world”, and ended with this proclamation: “Compared to anybody [sic] other possible leader of Iraq – compared to just about every other political leader in the Arab world – the imperfect Ahmed Chalabi is nonetheless a James bleeping Madison.”
Daniel McCarthy, The American Conservative. “The GOP’s Vietnam.”
Republicans split over Bush’s wars as deeply as Democrats once split over Vietnam. The raw numbers aren’t similar—the antiwar right is not as numerous as the antiwar left once was—but the philosophical depth of the divide is as great. And it’s a generation gap. Boomer Republicans are still refighting old wars—Benghazi is the new Khe Sanh, and they’ve adopted Israel not only as avatar of the lost South Vietnam but as symbol of the Providential favor and military virtue our nation lost in the 1960s. Yet even the younger evangelicals—let alone Ron Paul’s youthful supporters and the neo-traditionalist “crunchy cons”—don’t buy it.
Pat Buchanan, Townhall (syndicated). “Was Iraq Worth It?”
We are not known as a reflective people. But a question has to weigh upon us. If Saddam had no WMD, had no role in 9/11, did not attack us, did not threaten us, and did not want war with us, was our unprovoked attack on that country a truly just and moral war?
What makes the question more than academic is that the tub-thumpers for war on Iraq a decade ago are now clamoring for war on Iran. Goal: Strip Iran of weapons of mass destruction all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran does not have and has no program to build.
Despite my efforts to provide a balanced selection, most of these pieces are strongly anti-Iraq, a perspective that (I must admit) I share.
View all comments (9) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Matthew Walther
http://spectator.org/blog/2013/03/22/iraq-anniversary-wrap-up
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CJW| 3.22.13 @ 8:18AM
We should have left Iraq after the capture of Saddam.
Obama has done a slow withdrawal.
The MSM has forgotten the war since the evil Bush/Cheney left. So we are today no better than where we were in 2003, except we lost many brave Americans dead and injured.
The same scenario has unfolded in Afghanistan.
Jack in Wi| 3.22.13 @ 8:27AM
The Buchanan Paleocons, The Ron Paul Libertarians, and me were right and most of the rest of you Bush birds were wrong. I exempt General Brent Scocroft who bravely fought against the Bush Cheney Neocon cabral, to the bitter end. Of course he was daddy Bush Sr. National Security advisor and a co-author of several books with him.
Dai Alanye | 3.22.13 @ 10:18AM
It is well to remember that the original nay-sayers (those whose memories haven't altered over a decade) predicted not eventual difficulties but immediate failure. That the implacable Afghans and their harsh winter would destroy our military, and that Iraq would require months to defeat, becoming a lake of blood in the process.
None of them foresaw victory in each case within a few weeks, and with very low casualties.
The problems that have stymied us since military victory come from the attempt to turn each nation into a sort of European social democracy instead of letting them limp along as the basically tribal societies they once were and are now in the process of again becoming. Did the nay-sayers foresee that? No, they did not.
As it is, though, we can still claim to be better off with having, if only temporarily, rendered Afghanistan unfit as an Islamist sanctuary, and assured that Iraq for the time being no longer offers training and support to terrorists.
Bob K| 3.22.13 @ 10:34AM
It can't be denied that getting rid of Saddam was a good thing!
This should have been done by Bush the Elder during the 1st Gulf War.
We would not be arguing about these specific facts had it been done. But we would be arguing about something!
Mike W| 3.22.13 @ 11:51AM
Saddam was no worse than a dozen African leaders, Robert Mugabe, Charles Taylor. We didnt wage a war to remove them. Saddam's treatment of his people was not my concern. Let them have a revolution if they wanted him out.
We didnt remove Saddam in 1991 because Bush 1 thought he served our interests better than some unknown alternative. He didnt support the Shia uprising for that reason.
Iraq 2 was a catastrophe of epic proportions. It's like the adults abdicated responsibilities and let the crazies make the decision. A frightened US public acquiesced easily, only 18 months after 9/11.
Dai Alanye | 3.23.13 @ 9:32AM
Let's not be naive. We don't remove dictators because they are icky but primarily because they harm Americans or American interests. Too bad, as has been mentioned, Bush I failed to do the job correctly the first time.
Ralph Gizzip| 3.22.13 @ 3:10PM
Let's say we screwed up. That's all water under the bridge. Now what do we do (or not do) to fix it and get the world to love us again? All I hear from the Left is, "No war for oil! There were no WMD's! Booooosh!!!!" Well, your man's had 4 years as C in C to put things on the "right" track but the Muslims in the ME hate America even more than they did during the GWB administration. I hear lots of blame throwing and finger pointing but I'm not hearing any solutions put forth. In fact, Obama's position seems to be "Stay the course." Oh well, I guess it's just one more campaign promise broken by "Teh Won."
C Bowen | 3.22.13 @ 6:18PM
It's not too late to get the House Committee on Un-American Activities to investigate anyone who used the media streams to advocate for the ridiculous and criminal invasion of Iraq.
Podesta| 3.22.13 @ 7:29PM
I hate to agree with the racist Pat Buchanan about anything, but even a stuck clock is right twice a day. Not only was the Bush War Machine wrong about invading Iraq, its remnants are already planning a similar massive blunder in Iran. Hopefully, they never get the opportunity.
As for the commenters defending the fiasco in Iraq, they are either ignorant (one thinks the war in Iraq is still going on) or delusional.