THE WHY OF THE IRAQ WAR

A central question of the Bush years will always be the Iraq War. Why did Bush invade Iraq? It certainly was not the WMDs. Even I, only an moderately well-informed private citizen, knew there was no evidences to suggest Hussein had such weapons. No it was not the WMDs.

One obvious reason was to remove Hussein's Iraq as a threat to Israel's hegemony in the greater Middle East region. That was attractive to an element in the government, but that could not be the entire reason.

Another, may have been George Bush's own personal predilections: When his father, George H. W. Bush wisely refrained from entering Baghdad at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, he was pilloried for "not completing the mission". Some say young George saw this as a way to differentiate himself from his father with his political base by accommodating the "hawks" and "completing the mission" to "out" Hussein. There are abundant evidences to support that contention in reports from Bush's first cabinet meetings in the early days of his administration in which it was reported that Bush stated clearly his intention was to invade Iraq. Paul O'Neil, former Treasury Secretary mentions that in his book, as does Richard Clark White House Security Chief in his memoir.

Also the stage may have been set for the invasion as far back as March 1992, when a document entitled the "Defense Planning Guideline" written by Paul Wolfowitz was leaked to the NY Times. [Wolfowitz was the former Undersecretary of State who famously stated: "Iraq floats of a sea of oil."] The frank nature of the leaked document sparked such controversy that it was quickly withdrawn and rewritten, and a toned down. A more diplomatic version was issued in April of that same year. However, the original (leaked) document is the one that the neocons of the Bush regime seemed to have kept in their vest pockets. When Bush was elected eight years later they attempted to put many of these into play as the "Bush Doctrine". Thus the Bush team had a grand strategy ready for implementation given the opportunity.

What were the tenets of the right's grand strategy as outlined in the "Defense Strategy Guidelines"? The main premise was that after the Cold War, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US was the sole superpower. Under those conditions the objective of the US should be to maintain that prime status. "Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival,...and that we (should) endeavor to prevent any "hostile" (my quotes) power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to general (sic) global power." Furthermore, Wolfowitz and the neocons eschewed international coalitions, preferring the security and secrecy of US unilateralism. It stated the USA's right to intervene when and where it believed necessary, preemptively if it saw fit. It viewed Russia as a continued potential threat. In the Middle East, it stated the need to remain the predominant outside power in that region and to preserve US access to the region's oil. Eight years later, upon the election of George Bush these precepts were put into action with what turned out to be disastrous results.

As Fareed Zakaria notes in his Nov 29, 2008 essay,"Wanted a New Grand Strategy". Mr. Zakaria states that with a grand strategy in place (even a flawed one such as the Defense Strategy Guidelines) the Bush administration only had to take advantage of the "opportunities" (such as the tragedy of 9-11) to implement these ideas. Or according to Zakaria, "to use the urgent to pursue the important or, put another way, never let a crisis go to waste."

Thus the Bush Administration saw an opportunity to implement a major part of its grand strategy as the 9-11 tragedy unfolded. The implicit reasoning was put forth by Mr Robert Kagan (1) (in the Washington Post, June 19, 2005). "The most sensible argument for the invasion was not that Hussein was about to strike the United States or anyone else with a nuclear bomb. It was that containment could not be preserved indefinitely, that Hussein was repeatedly defying the international community and that his defiance appeared to both the Clinton and Bush administrations to be gradually succeeding. The main concern of senior officials in both administrations was that, in the words of then-national security adviser Samuel "Sandy" Berger, containment was not "sustainable over the long run." ....if and when containment collapsed. As Berger put it, "Saddam's history of aggression, and his recent record of deception and defiance, leave no doubt that he would resume his drive for regional domination if he had the chance."

It was Kagan's opinion that if the Bush administration had not gone to war in 2003, the United States might have faced a more dangerous and daring Saddam Hussein later on, consequently it felt compelled to act. So, in addition to whatever price might have been paid, certainly by the Iraqi people and possibly by Iraq's neighbors, for leaving Saddam in power, we might have wound up going to war anyway. There is the further question of what the entire Middle East would have looked like with a defiant, increasingly liberated Hussein still in power. To quote Berger again, so long as Hussein remained "in power and in confrontation with the world," Iraq would remain "a source of potential conflict in the region," and, perhaps more important, "a source of inspiration for those who equate violence with power and compromise with surrender." Whether historians judge the war favorably will depend heavily on whether post-Hussein Iraq does indeed provide a different sort of inspiration, but, again, the effort to change the direction of the region was surely worth paying some price."

This last statement is the crux of Kagan and Berger's arguments. Would Hussein have been containable? And was he to become a "source of inspiration for those who ....equate violence with power and compromise with surrender." And we can add here..an inspiration for those who might have the temerity to stand up to American domination in the region. Thus the entire question comes to this. Was the effort to change the direction of the region "worth paying some price?" The answer is yes..some price. But at what price? Today we must look at the balance sheet prepared for us by the Sandy Bergers, Kagans, Wolfowitzs and Bushs. Was the devastation of Iraq, the loss of life, the unimaginable costs in money and horrible costs in blood and suffering be worth the change they sought? Did they accomplish their goals? Can we say we have moved the region in a new direction (a pro-American direction)? I think not. We have changed the Middle East but not they way Kagan, Berger, Bush et. al wanted. It is a less pro-American Middle East and a more dangerous world for us all. Can we honestly say that a further diplomatic effort was not the wiser choice? I think not. It is obvious that those that prepared our balance sheet prior to the war saw only what they wanted. They are a generation too far removed from the horrors of the great wars in Europe. Perhaps we must learn over and over again what horror and devastation war really is.

Were there other reasons? Many have suggested that Bush feared he might end up as his father did, challenged by a strong Democrat and ousted after only four years. However, a well-timed middle east war would have the advantage of avoiding that eventuality and as well, advancing the Wolfowitz-Bush global strategy, eliminate the potential for a rival such as Russia to control a rich oil reserve, and make it possible for the US to position itself in the center of the Middle East where it could more effectively project its military power; and most importantly for Bush, make it difficult for the unsteady, "wet behind the ears" junior Bush to be challenged from the left in the 2004 election. Furthermore, if he attained a second term he could cement Republican gains in Congress, and the Supreme court and thus help to permanently ensconce Republican far-right wing philosophy and its "grand strategy" in a power position for the next several election cycles. And certainly, he was not immune from the personal financial advantages a war could have to advance the Bush-family economic interests. The war was a win-win situation for Mr. Bush. There was little to say about it that was not positive, except perhaps there was no "good reason" to go to war. But then Mr. Bush was adept at "cherry picking" among CIA data and wholly unperturbed and unembarrassed (perhaps unaware) of the lack of logic in his verbal gyrations prior to and during the war.

Gwynne Dwyer (Japan Times, March 22, 2008) writes in "Iraq after five years of war" that the "facts" Bush's defenders love to restate over and over are how Hussein's security forces killed thousands of Iraqis every year! The Bush war removed this tyrant from power. But as Dwyer states, the figures of Hussein's atrocities (as horrible as they were) pale in comparison to even the monthly figures of deaths resulting from the insurgency and the sectarian violence unleashed by the US war. Yes Iraq's evil Hussein killed his own people during uprisings. There is no valid comparison here, but in an accounting only of the number of dead the deaths of Iraqis at the hands of Hussein and his henchmen pale in comparison to the numbers that the US has been responsible for as the result of the invasion and its aftermath.

Keeping in mind that Iraq posed no threat to its neighbors (or to Israel or to the distant USA) when we invaded, and there was no moral imperative to invade. Recall that their army had been annihilated in the Gulf War of 1991 by "pere" Bush and could not be rebuilt because of the strict and harsh post-war sanctions imposed on Iraq. [The economic and health effects of that ten year period of sanctions are another chapter of American abuse of Iraqi population which no one wishes to include in the estimates of civilian deaths. That is another story.] The oft repeated claim of connections to al Qaida were patently false. For basic religious reasons...Hussein was a Bathist Sunni while al Qaida were predomnately Shia. The antipathy between those two groups was on the level of the hatred between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. The idea that they might collude with each other is hard to imagine for anyone understanding these basic Iraqi cultural facts. In fact, a Pentagon study of post-war captured Iraqi documents (more than half a million of them) proved conclusively that Iraq had no ties to al-Qaida. So we can just leave those tried old justifications as one of the many "mis-statements" that Bush and his cronys used so effectively in the lead up and during the war.

The balance sheet must include the US dead (nearly 5000) and maimed and the Iraqi dead and maimed. Had we not invaded, those vast numbers of Americans and Iraqis (solid estimates for Iraqi dead range from 100,000 to 600,000) would still be alive. And let us not forget the horrendous monetary cost...three trillion dollars in lost war expenditure (See Stiglitz and Bilmes' book: "The Three Trillion Dollar War".) dumped down a hole. The money was spent for no good purpose since the outcome of the war has not changed the region the way the war planners had hoped. That lost war money would be a great boon to us today during the economic crisis we face, were it still in our coffers.

Our so-called "troop surge" was a "success" but not because of the additional number of soldiers but because of the cooling of the Iraq civil war (nothing we had to do with) and our policy of walling off and segregating formerly mixed Sunni-Shite neighborhoods, as well as the costly arming and subsidizing of local Sunni tribal groups...many of which now pose a threat to the Iraq central government.

Then there is the case of the Iraqi refugees and displaced persons. About one out of every eight Iraqis have fled their neighborhoods and homes (or about 4-5 million people displaced) out of a pre-war population of about 32 million. Will they return? Probably not. And certainly not to their old homes which have been destroyed or taken over by some other family. The costs to a nation so altered by human tragedy are incalculable.

Again was the war worth it in terms of cost? The direct costs (12 billion x 68 months) right now (December 2008) range from 800 billion on up to a trillion dollars. Were those costs contributory to the economic melt-down in the USA and the world of late 2008? Linda Bilmes a budget and public finance expert at Kennedy School of Government (Harvard) thinks so and states that "both in a long term sense and short term...the US is worse off economically..because of the war." She states that by adding nearly a trillion dollars to the national debt, due to borrowing for the war, debts which clearly limit the fluidity and financial flexibility to respond to the financial crisis. That "war money" is not available to provide things like economic stimuli to improve the economy." Bilmes states further that as a result of having to borrow the money for the war (and ultimately to repay its interest costs) that any idea that the war was good for the economy is a myth.

We must not let the Bush revisionists get away with it. Hearing that the war was worth it go back and dig up the real facts and respond to them with the truth. Our very democracy depends on a valid recounting of the past, so we can avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.

1. A little background on Mr. Kagan: He writes extensively from the far right perspective on US strategy and diplomacy. Kagan and fellow neoconservative William Kristol co-founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) in 1997. Also Kagan signed the famous 1998 PNAC letter sent to President Clinton urging regime change in Iraq. A more critical view of Mr. Kagan appeared recently in a piece by Glenn Greenwald (March 11, 2007) entitled, "Why would any rational person listen to Robert Kagan? (Read at: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/03/11/kagan/)
Greenwald states:"No rational person would believe a word Robert Kagan says about anything. He has been spewing out one falsehood after the next for the last four years in order to blind Americans about the real state of affairs concerning the invasion which he and his comrade and writing partner, Bill Kristol, did as much as anyone else to sell to the American public."]