LOCAL VIEW: Going to war in Iraq was a mistake
Just as experts on peacekeeping predicted before the war, the invading force was grossly inadequate to maintain postwar security. And this problem was compounded by a chain of blunders: doing nothing to stop the postwar looting, disbanding the Iraqi army, canceling local elections, appointing an interim council dominated by exiles with no political base and excluding important domestic groups.
The lessons of the last few weeks are that the occupation has never recovered from those early errors. The insurgency, which began during those early months of chaos, has spread.
- Paul Krugman
The issue here is not whether or not you or I support the war on Iraq. That horse is long since out of the barn, and our support or opposition will do nothing to change the reality on the ground.
No, the problem here is fighting and winning the peace. Yes, I know that sounds ridiculous, but fighting the peace is exactly the position that the US military finds itself on the ground in Iraq. Of course, “peace” may be a bit of a stretch here, even if you’re one of those folks who defines peace as the absence of war.
Former Nebraska Congressman Doug Bereuter, whom no one could ever reasonably accuse of swinging from the left side of the plate, seems to be clear on the reality of the situation in Iraq. By failing to plan for the peace, we have subjected our men and women in uniform to much higher levels of risk than should have been the case.
Oh, yeah, and we also shouldn’t have been in Iraq in the first place, given that the reasons given for war never really existed to begin with.
It is a painful and disturbing process, but America and everyone involved in the decision-making and oversight process (the Executive Branch and Congress) must learn from the errors and failures related to waging a war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the aftermath of that war. The toll in American military casualties and those of civilians, physical damages caused, financial resources spent, and the damage to the support and image of the United States abroad, all demand such an assessment and accounting….
The first, and most basic, conclusion is that it appears there was a massive failure or misinterpretation of intelligence concerning the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs and supply stocks of Saddam, both by the U.S. agencies and leading decision-makers, but also on the part of allies and other leading countries….
Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified. However, the inability of the administration to clearly establish a link between al-Qaida and Saddam, despite the intimations of various administration leaders such as Vice President Dick Cheney, is no surprise to me. In my floor statement of Oct. 8, 2002, during the debate on the “military use of force” resolution, I said, “the administration cannot yet present incontrovertible evidence of a link between al-Qaida and Saddam.”
Knowing now what I know about the reliance on the tenuous or insufficiently corroborated intelligence used to conclude that Saddam maintained a substantial WMD arsenal, I believe that launching the pre-emptive military action was not justified. However, the inability of the administration to clearly establish a link between al-Qaida and Saddam, despite the intimations of various administration leaders such as Vice President Dick Cheney, is no surprise to me. In my floor statement of Oct. 8, 2002, during the debate on the “military use of force” resolution, I said, “the administration cannot yet present incontrovertible evidence of a link between al-Qaida and Saddam.”
The willful misinterpretation of faulty intelligence, the inadequate planning for the post-war nation-building mission, and the inadequate support and equipment provided to our soldiers in Iraq…. How can we let this pass without holding those responsible to account? You know, if Bill Clinton were guilty of this sort of mismanagement, he would have been lynched in Lafayette Park- and yet Geore W. Bush is lauded as some sort of hero? What sort of rabbit hole has the American voting-age public disappeared into?
This war has been mismanaged, poorly planned, and poorly provisioned from it’s illegitimate beginning, and yet fully half of America thinks George W. Bush is strong and resolute on the war on terror. This from a man who has never seen a day’s combat, while a legitimately decorated war hero is derided as “soft” on terror?
Sometimes, I really do have to wonder about our collective IQ. What does it say about us that we are so willing to accept the lies and prevarications of George W. Bush at face value and as Gospel? Are Americans really so shallow and ignorant that we will collectively accept any argument so long as it is phrased and voiced with sufficient conviction so as to SEEM true?
WE DESERVE BETTER.
