Iraq's Death Spiral

As Iraq descends deeper into the mire, those of us who supported the war, especially those who supported it as vehemently as I did, and who made large claims for it in advance as I did, have an obligation to explain ourselves.  Though our intellectual honour is of no significance in the unfolding misery of a nation, we still have a duty to truth to look honestly at the gap between what we forecast and what has happened and either to re-justify or to recant our belief in a project that has proved to be so tragically flawed.

First let me say what I won't say about this. I won't argue, as so many of the war's supporters now do, that what has gone wrong has all been because of poor execution by the Bush administration.  This is a favourite trope: there was nothing wrong in principle with the decision to go to war, it goes.  If it hadn't been screwed up by Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld, Iraq would now be fine.  In all honesty, this just won't do.

Not that the administration's execution is blameless.  Far from it.   It was shockingly obvious early on that the US had little clue what it was going to do after the intitial phase of the war.  Apart from blithe statements about how freedom would take root as if by osmosis or magic, there was criminally little preparation for the hard postwar task of mending a broken country. The US allowed to sweep into the post-Saddam vacuum - nothing.

Its fecklessness was only underlined by its insistent message when things started to go wrong.  "We're sticking with it. It's working." has been essentially all the administration has had to say, despite mounting evidence that it was not working.  And for the last couple of years US policy has actually been bent primarily to the objective of getting out as quickly as possible.

For all of these reasons the administration deserves to be roundly condemned.

But it's simply a cop-out, I think, for the war's supporters to say its conception was brilliant but its execution a failure.

It's a cop-out because of the uncomfortable fact that  many of those who opposed the war said at the time that certain things would follow - a bloody insurgency, a lethal inter-ethnic struggle, broader damage to the US cause in the Middle East.  I, certainly, and others, downplayed - all right, dismissed - these arguments.

And now?  They were right and I was wrong, But I was wrong not just because Donald Rumsfeld didn't send in enough troops, or Paul Bremer didn't allow elections quickly enough, but because the risk of long-term violence and instability was always greater than I had believed; building stability in that ruined country was going to be a tall order.

Does this mean the war was wrong?  Am I recanting?

It's necessary to disentangle two elements - whether the war was justified and whether it was wise.

I remain completely convinced that if ever there was a case for a pre-emptive war, Iraq was it.  Saddam Hussein was one of the world's great destabilising forces.  He had invaded his neighbours, was murdering his own people, defying the UN and making a mockery of international law.  The overwhelming preponderance of the evidence was that he retained weapons of mass destruction illegally. The UN's rickety and corrupt sanctions regime was falling apart. After 9/11 the case for a pre-emptive war, for impatience with the slow machinery of diplmacy,  was stronger than it had ever been.

And let's state too that the war was fought with the best of ulterior motives.  Standing up a democratic state in Iraq was - and is - vital to the long-term stability of the region and the wider world. Let's once again wearily take on the myth that this was some sort of war for oil or American power and occupation.  I do not doubt that, for its authors, and even more for its executors, the good, brave men and women of the American, British and other armed forces, this was a war to liberate an abused and repressed people. The stain of  Abu Ghraib does not obscure the fact that there is nothing nobler than what these servicemen have been doing for the last three years.   

But in considering the progress of the war now we need to do more than examine our intentions.  We need to examine outcomes.

Three years ago I believed passionately that the US and Britain had a strong moral and legal case for removing Saddam Hussein.  Three years later I still believe that.  Three years ago I thought it was not only right but wise and necessary to fight that war. It's much harder to make that case now.

Comments

[Joe Winter]

Regarding why the U.S. and Britain went into Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein, I haven't yet seen the argument that it doesn't matter if he had WMDs or not - he acted as if he had. Still had. There's an element of smoke and mirrors about the whole WMD-possession scenario - one recalls Kinnock getting it wrong when at first disavowing any possible use, then recanting. The most significant lesson of the invasion in the long term may well be that if you act as if you have them, you'll be taken at your word.

[Ade Alade]

There is the misconception or deliberate mis-information, that those that opposed the war surpported Saddam or could offer no other solution.
I think a better outcome could have been achieved thus;
We could have continued using the United Nations to rachet the pressure on Him, He should have been told that to protect his people against him, UN ground troops would be moved into Iraq. Every time He did not comply with UN demands more troops with a massive US compostion and command would be sent into Iraq. This would have increased the likelyhood of his henchmen deserting him and his eventual capture. Other criminals in administraion would have been caputured and all sent abroad for trial. Since most of Iraq's inrastructure and army would be intact it would have been easier to organise elections hand over to a new administration and eventually leave.
But all that is in the past. In my opinion there is no future for Iraq in its present form the US and UK will have to leave eventually and Iraq will be split into three.

[Colm Halloran]

Why is that many ordinary people, myself included, who have done business in the past in the Middle East could predict the mire the US is now in Iraq pior to the invasion and the best brains in the USA and the UK could not?

[Pierre]

And thus the backtracking begins. It would be amusing if young men weren't being dismembered on a daily basis. The warmongering premise was as preposterous then as it is now, but fanaticism blinds and apparently continues to do so.

A certain willingness to suspend reality after a five year wild goose chase and little evidence of WMD, leads one to conjecture other reasons for this war. Nothing as "sophisticated" as oil or geopolitics. This is just a case of the schoolyard bully trying to give some comeuppance to the little twerp who talked back and refused to roll over. It ain't going too well and it actuallylooks like the bully may get a hiding.

How silly to be wringing one's hands about the execution when the very idea was ill conceived.

[Colin King]

Our leaders exhibit breathtaking naivete concerning the Middle East. Their advisors are either being ignored or are from the same mould. While reprisals after 9/11 were understandable, and a desire to control oil supplies inevitable given rampant domestic consumption, could they really have been so innocent of the complexities of fighting in and then dominating a highly complex tribal/religious environment? Anyone who has lived in the ME will tell you that its problems are not going to be resolved by outsiders.

[Hal Jones]

Gerard Baker wants it both ways. He wants to be admired, or at least understood, for admitting he has changed his mind about the wisdom of invading Iraq - but still believes it was justifiable at the time.

His statement that "After 9/11 the case for a pre-emptive war, for impatience with the slow machinery of diplmacy, was stronger than it had ever been" is as perfect an example of Washington's ethno-centric view of the world as we are ever likely to read.

My beef with Bush, Blair - and even a somewhat contrite Baker - is that they still have no concept of what has been unleashed by their ill-considered Iraq venture.

Instead of first dealing with the rag-tag bunch of loonies in Afghanistan and leaving Saddam bottled up in his crumbling police state they decided they wanted to sort out everything at once.

As predicted they sorted out nothing - and the butcher's bill for their folly is a long way, perhaps decades, from being complete.

Is Gerard Baker prepared to accept any responsibiliy for that?

Hal Jones

[dsquared]

[Let's once again wearily take on the myth that this was some sort of war for oil or American power and occupation. I do not doubt that, for its authors, and even more for its executors, the good, brave men and women of the American, British and other armed forces, this was a war to liberate an abused and repressed people.]

Without wanting to be rude, Gerard, I am missing the bit where you "take on" this myth, or indeed give any reason to believe it is actually a myth. A substantial although seemingly not overwhelming majority of the British and American forces are indeed good and brave, but this has nothing to do with it being a war for oil or not, because even if they didn't believe they were liberating an abused and repressed people, they would have had to do it anyway. That's what being a soldier means, and both the US and British forces have been just as efficient and enthusiastic when engaged in the project of abusing and repressing a population themselves when their orders demanded it.

So the only thing that actually matters is the intention of the authors. I appreciate that you "don't doubt" that their only motivation was to liberate the Iraqis, but you haven't given any reason for anyone who _does_ doubt it to stop. Since we do in fact need oil (and therefore have an interest in trying to maintain geopolitical stability and even hegemony in a part of the world that produces a lot of oil), and since we have, in fact, fought a war on exactly the same territory in the last twenty years that we explicitly admitted was mainly about oil, it doesn't seem to me as if this motivation can be shrugged off by calling it a "myth".

In fact, oil almost certainly did have something to do with it, as did post 9/11 fears (I would take issue with your view that the "overwhelming preponderance of the evidence" suggested that Saddam did have WMD, however; this is hardly what Hans Blix said, is it? Lots of pro-war types seem to just ignore the fact that the inspections took place, as if the war process had started inexorably long before Blix's team reached Iraq. This may be true but I really don't see anyone admitting it).

It is possible to have more than one reason for doing something, and oil was very likely part of the reason for this war. Given the number of occasions on which the stated rationale has changed, this attempt to keep the case pure of even a trace of oil is silly; it is far more outlandish to believe that the war had nothing to do with oil than that oil was the only reason.

I'd conclude by noting the suppressed premis in your concluding paragraphs:

[I remain completely convinced that if ever there was a case for a pre-emptive war, Iraq was it.]

You then seem to operate on the assumption that there is ever a case for a pre-emptive war. The Nuremberg Principles established by the International Law Commission state the opposite point of view and with respect, I would suggest that they had probably done quite a lot more thinking about the nature and the track record of pre-emptive wars than you have.

[Mark T]

A noble cause, that was obviously impossible to succeed. Just two words: don Quixote.

[Michael Berger]

I can understand how history-challenged Americans could swallow the Bush line, but how could Gerard Baker manage to discount Britain's disastrous history in what is now called Iraq? And how could he overlook the obvious Bush fixation on avenging Daddy? This was a phony war from the beginning.

[Sweetie]

"Why is that many ordinary people, myself included, who have done business in the past in the Middle East could predict the mire the US is now in Iraq"

I did contracting work for the US Navy in both the 80s and 90s in the region (Oman, UAE, Bahrain). I disagree completely. The people I worked with admired the US and the West. And there are more where they came from. Not that you'd know that reading Western Newspapers.

Reasonable people can disagree regarding the ability of the Middle East to make democracy work. But as the threat of civil war slides only to be replaced by the next Western Media trumpeted threat to success at some point you have to wonder how real these 'show stoppers' are in the wake of the fizzle from previous 'show stoppers' like Abu Ghraib, Sunnis sitting out elections etc.

There's something happening and you don't know what it is, do you Mr Jones?

[CTR]

I still think it is far too early to judge this war. No democracy is created peacefully overnight. And I would wager anyone there will be no civil war, for the same reasons I never thought there would be: Iran and Turkey. Those two countries would love an Iraqi civil war, allowing them to openly interfere, take sides, etc. The Kurds, despite all their hatred of the Sunnis, want Turkey to play NO part in the future makeup of Iraq. The Shiites, despite their "links" with Iran, DO NOT want to be ruled from Tehran. Iraq will remain independent, and civil war will be averted.

But it won't be pretty.

[Byron]

While it is well and good for all to re-examine their positions on such important questions, is it not just possible that given some actual amount of time, the verdict of history may focus more on the fact that in these times the world needed leaders and that Bush and Blair have led. The attribution of sinister desires to control oil reserves or avenge "Daddy" are far too simplistic and speak to the authors' knee-jerk antipathys toward the entire concept of liberation or democracy proliferation. The advent of the microsecond news cycle gives critics and supporters alike fresh fodder to support their views with every passing day. Agree to disagree on the advisability of the enterprise, but do not presume to speak for history.

[dadmanly]

Oh Ye of little faith.

You were not wrong, and those who warned against the war in Iraq are certainly not right.

You base your assessment on a dishonest and distorted assessment of reality on the ground.

This too shall pass. Making long term judgments -- much as history will -- is doomed to critical error using narrow timeslices and prejudicial data selection.

You have wavered; you judge based on flawed data selection (and perhaps a fear of being on the losing side of a proposition).

I predict you will regret your second guessing; already the situation improves by the day, and US military on the ground are more positive than ever.

The Iraqis will keep their democracy, at least for now. The rest of the Middle East looks on and envies.

[Winston Smith]

"Saddam Hussein was one of the world's great destabilising forces. He had invaded his neighbours, was murdering his own people, defying the UN and making a mockery of international law. The overwhelming preponderance of the evidence was that he retained weapons of mass destruction illegally."

None of this was true in 2003.

As Mr. Baker himself confesses, the failure of this adventure rests on the Bush Administration's prediliction for glossing over facts. If one is to turn over a new leaf in this context, a good way would be to stop glossing over facts.

The fact is that after the 1991 war, Saddam Hussein was a STABILIZING force in the region. If you read the words of people like... oh, let's say DICK CHENEY, from 1991, you'll find that the decision not to depose Hussein was because they were afraid of the destabilizing consequences.

Robbed of his ability to make offensive war and to conduct mass slaughter in the north or the south, Saddam Hussein wasn't murdering and torturing any more of his citizens than our "friends" in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Uzbekistan do. During the period between 1991 and 2003, Turkey killed more Kurds than Iraq did.

The Bush Administration went to a lot of effort to bring it to the attention of the UN that Saddam was violating the arms control resolutions, but the UN didn't believe that. The reason they didn't believe that is that there was FLIMSY evidence of it. There were no WMDs and pretending that there was a credible case in 2003 doesn't make it so.

[Anthony (Los Angeles)]

I've been reading Mr. Baker's columns for several years, now, and, like him (and in part because of him?) I've been a strong supporter of the liberation and reconstruction of Iraq. I still am. I think there's no question that invasion was the right choice --the best from among a series of bad choices, really-- even if (and I think he's right) that the early occupation was badly handled.

But I have to disagree with him on this:

"And for the last couple of years US policy has actually been bent primarily to the objective of getting out as quickly as possible."

No, more than that. Since the summer of 2004, the Coalition has been pursuing a strategy of using money, force, and blood to buy time: time to develop an effective Iraqi security force, time for democratic habits to develop, time for Sunni, Shia, and Kurd to learn to live together without drawing daggers at the drop of a kaffiya. It's painfully slow, and there are often setbacks (such as the Golden Dome bombing or the discovery of death squads), but the progress is there.

First and foremost, Iraqis have now held three successful elections under grueling conditions, providing more and more of their own security each time. The elections are creating expectations of a continued democratic process that will become habit.

Second, while negotiations for a new government are painfully slow, the fact they are taking place at all is a vast improvement over What Might Have Been. While we want to beat our heads on a brick wall at their snail's pace, it's still a good sign that they haven't walked out flipping a one-fingered salute to each other.

Third, in the recent crisis over the Golden Dome attack, the performance of the Iraqi security forces (police and especially army) was very good. If they had disintengrated or become the tool of sectarian factions, then I would say we had lost. But their discipline and skill in restoring calm speaks volumes about the progress we've made since Petraeus took over their training in 2004. I think it's hard to overplay the significance of this.

Finally, remember that, in the wake of the Golden Dome crisis, many Iraqis crossed sectarian lines to protest what had happened, even to the point of Shiite tribal warriors protecting Sunni mosques in some cases. That surely wasn't in the program for those who predicted doom and gloom in any invasion of Iraq.

While I never thought occupation would be a cakewalk, I have been disappointed with how it seems to move at a pace of "Three steps forward, two-and-a-half back." But, I still firmly believe that, with patience (the kind of patience our own militaries show) this will turn out well in the end and, indeed, it will be seen to have been "wise and necessary."

[NewSisyphus]

Michael --

We're not "history-challenged" so much as not interested in the same old European story.

To leftists like you the brutish rise of fascism is always dawning in America, yet, somehow, it only ever seems to actually land in Europe.

I wonder why?

[rich]

Respectfully, I think you are mistaken.

Iraq has too much going for it to fail.

You may think that the USA and UK have failed but that should not be the question. The central question is whether Iraq has failed.

Where was South Korea in 1957? Where was Germany in 1949? Neither was pretty, but both survived to go on to a real democracy.

In Germany, some would say it took until 1989, with the fall of the wall. In Korea, there was substantial fighting along the DMZ in the 60s. It took until the 1990s for the South to become a real democracy.

In both countries the west held firm until things worked out. It is very likely that if the west holds firm in its support of Iraq, a democratic state will succeed.

The most serious danger to the success of democracy in Iraq is the anti war movement in the west.

They put a dagger in the heart of any hope for South Vietnam. They can do it again.

If they do, the Iraqi and other casualties seen today will seem minor.

This will be a long war. It is very winable. It is also very losable.

I very much respect yuor opinion. I hope that you will, over time, reconsider.

[ed boggan]

So Sweetie's friends on the receiving end of U.S. Navy dollars in the 80s and 90s "admired" the U.S., did they? I might admire us a bit more myself, if you paid me that kind of money.

As for Mr Baker, your assumption that something unwise can be justified is most intriguing. When stupidity is justified what do you call it? "Neoconservatism"? "New Labour"? I think the term you're looking for is not "justified" but "rationalized." And rationalization is not quite what we need now. The way to say "I was dead wrong" is to form your lips around the words "I was dead wrong" and blow.

The "sanctions" murdered 500,000 Iraqi children, and Mr Baker thinks they were "rickety" and didn't work. Is this an example of the "moral clarity" we heard so much about a few years ago?

The Bush "administration" was set to invade Iraq before 9-11 ever happened, and used it as an excuse, along with a lot of other malarkey. And only the truly cynical would believe that a cabal of incompetents, most of whom made their money in oil, would invade anywhere for the oil, right?

All war is about real estate and money. Period. There never was one that wasn't, and there never will be. If I learned anything growing up in the U.S. Army during Vietnam, I learned that. Anyone who seriously believes wars are fought for "noble" reasons has no imagination of what war really is and really does. Mr Baker and others of his ilk are what the Army called "garatroopers" -- that's people who are too close to the front to have to wear a tie, and too close to the rear to ever see combat.

"The overwhelming preponderance of the evidence was that he retained weapons of mass destruction illegally". Really? According to MI6, intelligence on Iraqi WMD was 'patchy and sporadic' - not overwhelming. Read the Butler report.

[NewSisyphus]

Interesting comments on WMD in Iraq. I guess that famous picture of the dead, gassed Kurdish woman clutching her dead, gassed baby is a neo-con Zionist forgery.

And I guess that those stories about Iraq using chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war are typcial propaganda ploys.

Nope. As every good liberal/leftist knows, there were no WMDs in Iraq and that, as they say, is that, pictures of gassed dead people notwithstanding.

Some Israeli with Photoshop, no doubt.

[James Richardson]

The catastrophe we now have in Iraq is the result of allowing another country, in this case Israel, to set our foreign policy. When Ariel Sharon told Shimon Peres in October of 2001 "don't worry about American attitudes, we the Jewish people control America and the Americans know it" he certainly knew what he was talking about.
Now Israel is demanding that we pick a fight with Iran. If the administration does what Israel wants it may well be the gravest disaster to ever befall America.
If I remember correctly General MacArthur advised President Kennedy to "don't get involved in a land war in Asia because we cannot win it". Vietnam proved that quite easily. It appears that President Bush, lacking any knowledge of geography, almost certainly did not know that Iraq and Iran are in the heart of Asia. He surely is lacking in any intellectual insight into the Arab/Muslim people. And now because he lacks the ability to admit that he might possibly have made a mistake many hundreds or even thousands more young Americans are going to die.
What a tragic price to pay for this President's misplaced pride.

[Alison]

Newsisphus - second that. Of course now Saddams henchmen can talk openly they have indicated where the WMDs were and are. See if you can find that in the MSM. Not likely! As you say every good liberal/leftist KNOWS Bush and Blair lied lied lied! Unlike Mr Baker here they are extremely unlikely to reconsider anything if it means deviating from Bush and Blair bashing. The latter is sacrosanct. If youve been sporting a 'Bliar' t shirt these past 2 years you might want to stick that at the back of your wardrobe. Mr Baker bravo for reconsidering the situation. However it is early days yet.

[lims]

no war is justified. war is not a means to an end. it only leaves unhealed scars. in the name of democracy, the iraq war took place. can US fight China? Never!

[Robert]

My only objection to the war was and still is over the chronology of the decisions. As the Kelly affair and other developments have since proved, the decision to go to war was made earlier (Sept 2002), and for different reasons than those declared to parliament, congress and the public. That was wrong when it happened, and remains wrong now. Back in 2003 I was called 'unpatriotic' for questioning the war, but it remains the most patriotic thing I have ever done.

[dave murphy]

"I do not doubt that, for its authors, and even more for its executors, the good, brave men and women of the American, British and other armed forces, this was a war to liberate an abused and repressed people."

huh? which planet do you come from? Blair told us that Saddam could nuke us in 45 minutes thus we had to go to war. Liberating Iraqis came much later when Blair and Bush realized their lies were being found out. The war was all about US geo-strategic posturing - primarily to ensure they could have a secured base to dominate the middle east.