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Part 11

Iraq & A Hard Place Part 10 - 

The Mistakes We've Made

23, 2003 81: AM CST

Although it is generally following the right course of action in Iraq, the Bush administration has made some serious mistakes. The President utterly failed to explain his motivations to the American people. His insistence on linking Saddam Hussein with al-Qaeda substantially weekend his arguments both at home and abroad. And our heavy-handed diplomacy deprived us of support in the region and unnecessarily damaged our relations with many nations, including some longstanding allies.

Since the war started, Americans have rallied around the President and our soldiers. This is typical of our patriotic spirit, and it is good. But before the war began, many Americans did not support the war. Some of them still don’t. They are not unpatriotic or anti-American. But they are misguided and ill informed, in large part because the Bush Administration failed to make a thorough case for the war.

President Bush asserted much of his case instead of arguing it. He asserted that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. He asserted that Iraq was seeking more weapons. In both cases, he provided little evidence to back up his claims – even though such evidence exists in public sources.

The one part that he did argue was largely a side issue. The United Nations lost much credibility due to its inability to deal with Iraq. But the United Nations is not very united. It consists of 191 member countries, each with its own identity. Nobody claims to be a citizen of the United Nations the way we claim to be American, British, Chinese, French, or Russian. There is no collective consciousness in the UN to shame into action. This argument was doomed to failure from the outset – despite the brilliant speech Bush gave before the General Assembly.

Furthermore, Bush erred by attempting to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda. There is no doubt that Iraq sponsors terrorism. But there is little or no evidence in the public domain explicitly linking Iraq to al-Qaeda. The evidence Bush provided is very slim, very circumstantial, and very disputed. He may well be right. Our intelligence services may have convincing evidence tying Iraq to al-Qaeda. But unless he presents this evidence to the public, this claim only hurts the President’s case. It plays well with the uninformed on the street, but it raises red flags in the minds of the educated. It is a ploy based on emotion rather than reason, and poorly chosen.

By far our largest mistake has been our diplomacy. Although I believe that this war was inevitable, I also believe that we could – and should – have entered it with more allies. Many blame this on the French, and they certainly deserve their share. I forgive the average French citizen for not understanding that this war is in our security interests. Nobody presented a compelling case. But if President Chirac didn’t know better, then either he has abysmally poor staff reporting to him or he is unfit to be the leader of a major nation. I believe that he knows better, and that he chose to press for every advantage he could get against the United States. Unfortunately for him, for France, for America, and for the world, he overplayed his hand. All he managed was to create an unnecessary rift between France and the US.

But the Bush Administration deserves a share of the blame as well. The key mistake was our attempt at a middle road. Bush could have declared a year ago that Iraq was a clear threat to our national security. If he had invaded then, without going the international route, the outcry would have been greater – but without time to simmer and boil, it would likely have died faster. On the other hand, he could have truly committed to an international solution. Had the world truly believed that he was committed to going through the UN, he could likely have maneuvered the UN, and even France, Russia, and China, into finally approving the invasion.

Instead, he chose a road of noncommittal. By declaring his right to avoid the UN, and then trying to go through it anyways, he got the worst of both worlds. He alarmed the world with his “preemptive war” policy (something every nation in the history of the world has believed, if only privately). He gave Saddam time to manipulate the international community. And he created a bubble of time in which to allow the anger and alarm at his “unilateral” policies to grow.

These mistakes are unfortunate. But allowing Saddam’s regime to continue would be a far graver mistake. Though it will have consequences, the rift with our allies will heal in time. World opposition to the war will largely dissipate as it becomes clear that we really have no desire (nor even any intelligent reason) to colonize Iraq – but every desire and every reason to free it. But the victims of any Iraqi weapons of mass destruction would never recover. The victims of international terrorism sponsored or inspired by repressive regimes would never recover. We must learn from our mistakes – but not wallow in them.

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Part 11