Did our Iraq involvement make us more secure? An analysis of Douglas Feith’s statement
Understandably enough, Bush supporters have been consumed with the question of why Obama did not say anything positive about the Iraq war in his speech this week. He did not even repeat to the nation what he once said to a group of GIs at Fort Bliss, that the war made the United States more secure.
Paul at Powerline quotes Bush Defense Department official Douglas Feith on the various ways that the Iraq involvement made our nation more secure:
It would have been useful for the president to have used his Ft. Bliss formulation when he gave his oval office speech. If statesmanship trumped politics, he would have observed last evening that the war not only freed the Iraqis from a sadistic tyranny, but it made America more secure in various ways. It removed a regime that threatened aggression throughout its region. It punished a regime that was hostile to the United States and contemptuous of the U.N. Security Council’s formal decisions on disarmament and peace. It demonstrated that a large price is sometimes imposed on regimes that support terrorism and pursue weapons of mass destruction. And it gave the Iraqis an opportunity to create democratic political institutions in their country, an enterprise that might help someday bring about a benign political transformation of the Arab world and the broader Muslim world.
Let’s consider Feith’s arguments one by one:
Feith: “It [the war] removed a regime that threatened aggression throughout its region.”
LA: But the question is whether the war made the United States more secure, not whether it made the Middle East more secure.
Feith: “It punished a regime that was hostile to the United States and contemptuous of the U.N. Security Council’s formal decisions on disarmament and peace.”
LA: Punishing a regime that was hostile to the U.S. does not necessarily add up to making the U.S. more secure.
Feith: “It demonstrated that a large price is sometimes imposed on regimes that support terrorism and pursue weapons of mass destruction.”
LA: This argument is undermined by the fact that while we attacked Iraq, we have allowed Iran and Korea to continue developing nuclear weapons, while we have also allowed Islam, which Bush called a religion of peace, to continue growing stronger in America and the West.
Feith: “And it gave the Iraqis an opportunity to create democratic political institutions in their country, an enterprise that might help someday bring about a benign political transformation of the Arab world and the broader Muslim world.”
LA: There they go again! Feith is admitting that Iraq doesn’t have democratic institutions, but that it only has the opportunity to create democratic institutions. And he’s saying if it does develop democratic institutions (which hasn’t happened yet), that possible event “might help someday” to make the Muslim world more peaceful. There is not a single actual fact here that makes the U.S. more secure. It’s just the same old neocon hope-and-change masquerading as an actual change.
Finally, notice how even Feith does not mention that the U.S. invasion stopped Iraq’s possession and ongoing development of weapons of mass destruction, which was, for most Americans including me, the decisive reason for supporting the invasion. Does he no longer believe they existed? If a champion of the war, in the very act of trying to persuade us that the war improved our security, doesn’t believe that the WMDs existed, or at least doesn’t care enough about them to argue that they existed, then that argument, which was the principal argument for the war, has been lost to the pro-war side.
In sum, Feith’s argument that war made the U.S. more secure is an empty collection of words.
- end of initial entry -
James N. writes:
Feith: “It punished a regime that was hostile to the United States and contemptuous of the U.N. Security Council’s formal decisions on disarmament and peace.”
1) “It punished a regime that was hostile to the United States … ” The regime could have been punished so severely that all would shrink from annoying us for an hundred years, in fifteen minutes, with no risk of so much as a scratch on a U.S. soldier. This would have been well deserved, and excellent, both in its own right and “pour encourager les autres.”
2) ” … and contemptuous of the U.N. Security Council’s formal decisions on disarmament and peace.” This is absurd, almost treasonous. I am contemptuous of ANYTHING taking place at the UN, most especially pretended “formal decisions.” The U.N. is a farcical assortment of Eurotrash, savages, and barbarians, with no right to “decide” anything. What will Mr. Feith think when they “decide” to dissolve the State of Israel? What will he think when they “decide” Arizona should be punished for violations of “human rights”?
Any acknowledgement, any HINT, that anything that happens at the U.N. has a shred of legitimacy weakens our security. Bush, Rice, and Feith are all guilty of pushing this fantasy, and we need less of it, not more.
LA replies:
This argument is both valid and invalid. It is valid, because the UN is what James N. says it is. It is invalid, because, as a matter of fact, the cease fire agreement with Iraq in 1991 was made under UN auspices and therefore Iraq’s failure to live up to its requirements was a UN matter.
James P. writes:
The question of cost-effectiveness arises in connection with Feith’s remarks:
Feith: “It [the war] removed a regime that threatened aggression throughout its region.”
Was invasion and prolonged occupation the most cost-effective method of dealing with the threat Saddam posed? Arguably, no. This threat was extremely weak in 2003. And in particular, if Saddam launched aggression against Kuwait or Saudi Arabia, we’d crush his invasion forces with airpower and bomb his country, which would be far more cheap for us than was occupying Iraq. [LA replies: The invasion was not advocated in terms of preventing an invasion of Kuwait or Saudi Arabia; it was advocated in terms of eliminating the thread of WMDs that might be transferred to terrorist organizations.]
Feith: “It punished a regime that was hostile to the United States and contemptuous of the U.N. Security Council’s formal decisions on disarmament and peace.”
Was invasion and prolonged occupation the most cost-effective method of punishing Saddam’s regime? No. The existing scheme of containment punished him much more cheaply from our perspective. [LA replies: not if he was acquiring or possessed WMDs which might be transferred to a terrorists organization and used against an American city. It’s evident that you have forgotten the number one reason for the invasion as argued by the Bush administration and as believed by a large majority of Americans at the time. It’s also entirely understandable that you have forgotten it, given that Bush and his people stopped mentioning it years ago. It’s hard to think of anything more contemptible in the annals of American leadership—a president who led our country into an unprecedented, pre-emptive invasion and occupation of a foreign country, and then, after the foreign country was invaded and occupied, dropped the reason he had given for the war and adopted a different reason. However, no matter how blameworthy Bush and his supporters are, that does not change the fact of why the American people consented to go to war at the time that they consented to go to war. To forget that fundamental fact about the Iraq war, to block it out, is to live in an Orwellian, constructed reality.]
Feith: “It demonstrated that a large price is sometimes imposed on regimes that support terrorism and pursue weapons of mass destruction.”
And a far larger price was imposed on us relative to what we were doing from 1991 to 2003 (containment).
Feith: “And it gave the Iraqis an opportunity to create democratic political institutions in their country, an enterprise that might help someday bring about a benign political transformation of the Arab world and the broader Muslim world.”
How much is either of these—giving an Iraq a democratic opportunity or bringing about a political transformation of the Arab world—worth to us? If we could be 100% sure of achieving democracy in Iraq or democracy throughout the Arab world, how much should the US taxpayer be willing to pay for this in blood and dollars?
September 4
James P. writes:
You write,
“The invasion was not advocated in terms of preventing an invasion of Kuwait or Saudi Arabia; it was advocated in terms of eliminating the thread of WMDs that might be transferred to terrorist organizations.”
That is true, but my remark was responsive to Feith’s specific point that “It [the war] removed a regime that threatened aggression throughout its region.” By this Feith appeared to mean we removed a regime that threatened aggression against Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. We may note that Feith did not mention the other potential target of Saddam’s aggression, Iran, for the obvious reason that the truth—that our invasion made life easier for another enemy state, Iran—does not make the decision to invade Iraq look very wise.
“not if he was acquiring or possessed WMDs which might be transferred to a terrorists organization and used against an American city.”
Again, I was responding to Feith’s specific point, which did not mention WMD. However, on that score, we know from the postwar investigations that with respect to WMD, the existing scheme of containment punished him cheaply and effectively.
LA replies:
You write:
That is true, but my remark was responsive to Feith’s specific point that “It [the war] removed a regime that threatened aggression throughout its region.”
You’re right. How about that—another post-invasion change of the invasion’s purpose by Feith. Bush and his supporters did not say, prior to the invasion, that the invasion was needed to prevent Iraq from being aggressive to its neighbors. But the dropping of the WMDs reason for the invasion is so total that Feith is even making up this fictional justification for the invasion seven years after the fact.
September 5
Jed W. writes:
The Bush admin’s failure to make the incredibly strong arguments proving the existence of WMDs is one of the great historical mysteries of all time.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 03, 2010 06:41 PM | Send