Sunday, 16 January 2005

Often in error, never in doubt: Glenn Reynolds marks the occasion of the Iraq Survey Group giving up the search for Saddam's nonexistent WMD stockpiles (link via One Hand Clapping) by tartly noting there were other reasons to go to war too, y'know, and that Bush's only mistakes were (a) listening to the CIA and (b) going to the United Nations in the first place.

I've noted elsewhere the problem with Glenn's assertion that the UN road was a mistake: At the time, he praised the Bush Administration's strategy and lauded their diplomacy skills. As for the claim that the Bush Administration was following the CIA's lead, as opposed to grabbing the CIA by the nose and frog-marching them to a pre-ordained conclusion, well… let's just say the reality-based community would take exception to that premise. There's also the issue that bypassing the UN would have made it difficult for Tony Blair to build his case for war, leaving Bush with a "coalition" of America and Poland.

Meanwhile, what I wrote at the time was disappointingly prescient. The Iraq war has been a success only in that it removed Saddam Hussein from the list of world leaders; in all other aspects, our efforts in Iraq have failed to deliver what Bush and Perle and Rumsfeld promised. We've turned Iraq into a latter-day Lebanon, a breeding ground for terror and torture, and it's grinding down our armed forces, increasing the threat to our homeland security, distancing us from our allies, and disgracing our reputation abroad. Iraq's upcoming "elections" will have the same effect as the "transfer of sovereignty" we had last June, and the same effect as the capture of Saddam: Things will continue to get worse, and we'll shift our focus to the next milestone.

I supported the decision to use force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. I supported it because I believe Saddam committed crimes against humanity — and I believe the world would be better served if we enforced our calls to end genocide, and held world leaders to some minimal standard of respecting human rights. I would love to further establish that precedent; it's the direction America was heading in when we put Milosevic on trial.

But the Bush Administration's case for war barely touched that argument — in spite of recent claims to the contrary. Bush's case was "all about" smoking guns, mushroom clouds, and falsely connecting Saddam to the 9/11 attacks; the case for invading Iraq on humanitarian grounds just didn't have enough sizzle for an administration that was busy linking Saddam to 9/11 at every opportunity. Dubya's case for war was noteworthy not only for the falsehoods it loudly proclaimed to be true, but also for the truths it shoved aside to make room for them: It's disingenuous to pretend that beating the drum for war, with repeated wolf cries about they'll-have-nukes-in-a-year and we-think-Saddam-met-with-Osama, will not drown out the remainder of both sides of the discussion.

I'm still willing to make the argument that deposing Saddam was the morally right thing to do, and that military force was the only means to that end. But, unlike my neocon "friends," I accept that my opinion may be in the minority. I'm not prepared to pad my argument with false premises and scare tactics, to build up a temporary majority just long enough for me to get the tanks rolling in, because that would be wrong. If I can't win over at least half the voting public, then either I'm a poor advocate or my argument is flawed — but in neither case do I gain the right to mislead people in pursuit of my goal.

There are people who believed that the risks of war, the downside risks and consequences of sending our troops into hostile lands, outweighed the advantages of removing Saddam. To date, these people have not been proven wrong… and the Bush Administration's disastrous mishandling of the post-war has strengthened their arguments. On bad days I'm reduced to arguing that Bush's incompetence at post-war strategy was not foreseeable in advance — and I'm arguing with people who predicted the Bush Administration would be incompetent at post-war strategy, so you can imagine how well that goes.

Right-wing bloggers can claim, in some cases justifiably, that their argument for war included the case against Saddam on humanitarian grounds; if so, good for them. But they can't argue retroactively that Bush made the case for war on humanitarian grounds, or that he argued the case for enforcing international law. Aside from one excellent speech that Bush gave on September 12, 2002, Bush's case for war relied on 9/11 ties that didn't exist… and on weapons that weren't there.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 5:40 am. comments.