The Opinionated Bastard

Going Into Iraq

This is probably the least understood part of the whole Iraq issue. According to the press, we went into Iraq for just one reason, WMD, which turned out not to be true. That’s quite an oversimplification, and its a symptom of the sound-bite culture of the media. Bush stated several reasons for going into Iraq, not just one. The media turned that into one reason, because you can only cover so much in a newspaper headline or TV broadcast, but if you read the original statements, there were four reasons. They were:

• Preventing Iraq from getting WMD, and getting rid of the weapons Iraq had at one time admitted to having.
• Stopping Saddam’s active support for terrorism (Well documented, Saddam put out press releases)
• Humanitarian reasons, given the large extent of evil of the regime
• Promoting democracy in the Middle East.

Additionally, we now know there were some additional reasons that he couldn’t state at the time:

• We had intelligence from the French, via the English that Saddam was trying to buy uranium.
• Putin warned Bush in person that Saddam was going to try some sort of terrorist attack in the United States.
• Saddam was using the Oil-For-Food program for lots of evil purposes, one of which was funding terrorist organizations, one of which may have been Al-Queda.

Ok, so we have 7 reasons total. The first one, the WMD issue turned out not to be true. This was very surprising for everyone because the Iraqi’s had admitted to having some of those weapons in their declarations to UN inspectors. They also were quite resistant to UN inspectors, for no reason if they supposedly had nothing.

However, with Iraq, you have to look at not just what happened, but what the alternatives were. Just because Saddam didn’t have any working WMD doesn’t mean he wasn’t trying. If we had opened up sanctions, he might have succeeded. If we had removed the weapons inspectors, he might have succeeded as well. In fact, if the scientists he had actively working on weapons programs had been a little more honest, he might have had an active biological program.

So even with the lack of WMD, if you look at the other reasons, Saddam was too dangerous to leave alone. The US had to do something. Now given the information Bush had at the time, I have to give him credit for making the tough decision to go into Iraq in the first place. He knew it was going to be unpopular, and he’s constantly told us it would be tough. It has been, but its been better then it could have been.

For those who disagree, I feel the need to point out that Kerry has stated that he probably would have made the same decision, even knowing what he knows now. Kudos to Kerry for stating this.

Building Worldwide Support

The next step was building worldwide support for going into Iraq. Bush did a just ok job at this in the abstract, but perception is reality here, and he did a terrible job with the public diplomacy aspect.

That is, while there are lots of members of the coalition, and he did a great job getting all the other arab nations on board, the omission of France and Germany has been focused on by the rest of the world as a rebuke. This is squarely Bush’s fault.

As far as the UN piece goes, Bush got two resolutions. The first, unanimous resolution was supposed be the one to authorized force. The reality of modern war is that it takes a year to prepare, so when Bush asked for that resolution in 2002, it was supposed to be understood that war was coming: we had to make commitments to our arab allies it was going to happen.

Unfortunately, the US and the other countries on the security council had different perceptions of the first resolution, so Powell had to go for the second one. Frankly, from my cheap seat, I think that they should have forced France to veto the second resolution, possibly after getting China and Russia to come on board. Then it would have been apparent to everyone what really happened: that France was vetoing something where they also had a large financial interest.

Winning the War

If you read Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward, you’ll see that Rumsfeld did a brilliant job of pushing the Pentagon and General Franks to rethink how they were going to fight the war. If Rumsfeld hadn’t done that, not only would US casualties have been much higher, but the civilian casualties in Iraq would have been devastating.

While Rumsfeld deserves credit for kicking the Pentagon in the butt, General Franks really deserves a lot of credit for the war plan itself in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It was quite brilliant, and I expect that it will be used as a model for all future military action by the US. Its too bad he retired in fact.

Bob Woodward’s thesis in the book seemed to be that having a good war plan made it too easy for Bush to go to war, but I think that’s nonsense. Its more accurate to say that the public part of the diplomacy was about a year behind the private part, so Bush was already committed by late 2002 into going into Iraq. Since Woodward never actually offers any evidence other then his own opinion for his thesis, its easy to discount.

Planning the Peace

What most people don’t know is that Bush did actually do a lot of advance planning for handling the occupation and peace in Iraq. He contacted a number of NGO’s like the Red Cross and such to help in Iraq, and lined up construction companies to rebuild and fix things as soon as possible. However, read the next section.

Winning the Peace

No plan survives contact with the enemy. Once we got into Iraq, most of the planning for the peace went out the window because the reality in Iraq was better then we thought in some places, but worse in others.

Things we overestimated:

• Damage to oil facilities
• WMD cleanup
• Iraqi Army Loyalty
• Food

Things we underestimated:

• Electricity Problem
• Foreign Interference from Syria and Iran
• Gasoline
• Difficulty of keeping Iraqi Army together
• Our own bureaucracy

So while the planning was pretty good, the reality in the field was quite different. However, I’m still willing to give Bush a B, because really, what do we have to compare it to? Bush is doing a lot better in Iraq after a year then the UN has done in Kosovo after 9 years. No one can do this sort of job very well, and I have a lot of respect for Bush in that he realized that the best thing to do was turn it over to the Iraqi’s themselves as soon as possible.

Going the Distance

Bush has set himself a high standard here. Winning the peace for Bush is nothing less then for Iraq to become a stable, functioning democracy. While others have tried to scale that back to something like maybe just a US-friendly dictatorship, I think Bush deserves credit for believing that democracy and freedom are for everyone, not just Europeans.