Who is to blame for Iraq?

There’s no point in my saying this again, because I’ve said it so many times before. But I must unburden myself of the anguish I feel over the horrible situation we got ourselves into in Iraq as a result of our total failure as a political society to have a serious national discussion prior to the war on the consequences of invading and occupying a major Muslim country. Who is to blame for this?

First, the Bush administration, for refusing to think seriously about post-war Iraq at all, based on their insane, ideologically driven assumption that the Iraqis would move spontaneously and rapidly toward a peaceful liberal democracy.

Second, the anti-war left, which made no rational arguments against the war, but simply attacked Bush for his racism, his desire to dominate Muslims, and all the usual leftist anti-American claptrap.

Third, the anti-war right, a movement dedicated to the proposition that the invasion of Iraq was “really” a war on Israel’s behalf, so that the anti-war rightists felt that simply attacking the treasonous bad faith of President Bush and his neoconservative supporters was a sufficient argument against the war.

In turn, the necessity of responding to the irrational and vicious attacks by the anti-war left and anti-war right consumed all the energy of those who supported the invasion, both those who supported a war for national defense and for spreading democracy, and those, such as myself, who supported the war for national defense only, and prevented any mental energy from being devoted to more serious aspects of the war. For example, some time before the invasion I had the thought that we would be getting into our own West Bank, i.e., we would be occupying a region where suicide terrorists would be attacking us. The thought troubled me, but I did not pursue it, because the overwhelming thrust of the debate was on completely different issues. Imagine if before the war, instead of the country “debating” about whether the Bush administration was evil and treasonous and run by Jews and imperialists and oil men, the country as a whole had accepted that the administration was acting in good faith, and then had looked at the likelihood of a jihadist/terrorist resistance against the U.S. occupation. Imagine if we had thought about how, just as in the terror war against the French in Algeria in the 1950s, any Iraqi who sided with us would become a marked man (which in turn would mean that when we finally departed, there would be the expectation that we allow all our Iraqi allies to come here as refugees). Imagine if we had broadly and intelligently discussed the impossibility of a liberal democracy taking shape in a devout Muslim country. If these issues had had pride of place in the national debate, including in the administration, the entire American approach to Iraq would have been different. Either we would have taken a much closer look at the WMD issue, or, if the apparent evidence for WMDs still held firm, then we would have conceived of the invasion in very different terms, perhaps as a short-term action to overthrow the Hussein regime, clear out any WMDs, hand power over to a successor regime, or perhaps several successor regimes in a partitioned Iraq, and then leave.

In sum, the Bush administration didn’t think about the consequences of occupying Iraq, and there was no loyal opposition that thoughtfully challenged the adminstration on the dire consequences of occupying Iraq (with the exception of a tiny handful of articles, such as an uncharacteristically sane piece by Patrick Buchanan in September 2002 predicting a jihad against a U.S. occupation). And so America took over and occupied a tribal Muslim country without the slightest notion of what it was getting into.

A further cause for grim feelings is that none of the three parties listed above has acknowledged its responsibility for this disaster.

- end of initial entry -

An Indian living in the West writes:

I have been reading a lot of Bush quotes lately. And the one thing that stands out (which I don’t think anyone who is a keen observer would ever miss) is the use of the word “democracy.” Here in Europe, they think Bush is some kind of Christian fanatic. They’ve got it half wrong. He’s no Christian fanatic but he is a religious fanatic of a sort. And his religion is this thing called “democracy.” The word “democracy” appears so often that it probably has the same significance for him as the word God did for Eisenhower and people of that generation.

With this kind of blind faith in democracy and the belief that democracy is the end all and be all of everything on this earth, it is no wonder that his foreign policy is such a disaster. He makes Woodrow Wilson look like a realist.

LA replies:

This is why today’s politics is so impossibly wacky. Bush is a radical liberal, perhaps the most extreme radical liberal ever to sit in the White House. He wages wars to spread liberal democracy to countries inherently incapable of it. He takes over dangerous foreign countries and then subjects our occupying soldiers to a demoralizing regime of political correctness and cultural sensitivity. He sends his Secretary of State around the world telling other countries that America is still woefully unequal and discriminatory. And he seeks the political and demographic merger of Mexico and the U.S. Yet world opinion regards him as a right-winger. It’s enough to make you want to tear your hair out.

Cindy writes:

I just had to let you know how great it was to read this latest post, because I have felt the way you do from the very beginning. I never thought the administration made a very solid case for invading Iraq, and I was in favor of it only if it were being done to prevent another 9/11. Preventing another 9/11 to me meant that there were WMD and/or that our presence in Iraq would draw Jihadists to fight us there rather than here. I don’t remember there ever being a case being made that we were going to establish democracy—I would have been totally opposed to that, as I am now, having known many Arab Muslims through the years—and Iraq hadn’t yet committed a grievous enough offense for us to use the kind of force that would be necessary to subdue that area of the world (even if only for a decade or two). I used to argue in vain with my one or two liberal friends that I wished they would not impugn Bush’s motives—that I could understand not agreeing with his decisions but that it was frustrating to not ever be able to get past their accusations that it was all about oil, or imperialism, or personal retribution for Saddam’s attempts to assassinate George Sr., etc. etc. The national dialog on just about everything is so dumbed down, and look at the price we pay for it.

Reader RL writes:

I assign blame for the Iraq war to seven key constituencies:

1. Democracy romantics who thought the ballot box can solve anything.

2. Oil interests who wanted to get their paws on more oil reserves.

3. Arrogant and naive pseudo-Zionist operatives who thought the war would be good for Israel.

4. The CFR/Trilateral world-government gang, who wanted to restructure Iraq for its incorporation into their intended world government.

5. American Empire builders, who wanted to use Iraq as the foundation-stone for a new Middle East of American client states.

6. Securocrats who were willing to fight any war that could somehow be represented as being in the sacred cause of American security, not matter how dumb.

7. Iraqi exiles scheming to get into power.

No one of these could have pulled off the war on its own; each brought something to the table that the others needed: means of legitimation, support (or at least acquiescence) of a key constituency with meaningful ability to veto the invasion.

LA replies:

That’s an interesting picture, but it is incomplete and, in its emphasis on venal motives, too harsh. It leaves out (8) those who were actually concerned about WMDs, and (9) those who thought that by “mixing it up” in Iraq, we would somehow trigger a process of reform in the Muslim world by which Islamic radicalism would be weakened. The latter is an incredibly jejeune and irresponsible basis on which to initiate a major war and conquer a country, and I’m not defending it, but some of the pro-war people seriously believed it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 23, 2006 03:40 PM | Send