The New Republic

There's been plenty written about that war, but not enough, particularly because the members of the Bush Administration insist that they did it to keep us safe and, therefore, I still don't know the real reason. The fact that Bush portrayed our reliance on British intelligence about a Niger claim as a reason to invade, when our own intelligence contradicted that claim, tells me, as Mr. Judis has said, that the administration was then and still is "bent on deception."

- Nusholtz

March 18, 2013 at 10:59am

Great article from Mr Judis. Those of us who opposed the war have reason to be proud that we didn't fall for the lies and the p.r. manipulation. What continues to astonish me, however, is that so many of the people who sold the war, particularly in Congress and the media, continue to be prominent opinion-makers, at least on the right. It really is a consequence-free environment they live in. Alas, for the people of Iraq, who do not live in an environment free of consequences.

- DC Spence

March 18, 2013 at 11:02am

The relevant question is whether we learned anything from the Iraq intervention, and I'd say the answer is we have not. It was excusable ten years ago that few Americans knew much, if anything, about Iraq or Islam, though it's less excusable that those leading the charge, both in and out of the administration, knew so little and plowed ahead anyway. Nobody has that excuse today. Yet, what have Americans learned about the region and Islam? Not much, I'd say. We'd better learn, and learn fast, because the sectarian lines are being drawn, as national boundaries and sectarian boundaries are finally reaching alignment. America has chosen Shia Iran as the "enemy". Is it strategic or a holdover from the humiliation of the 1970s? Does it matter that Sunni Muslims from Saudi Arabia attacked the US on 9/11? Does it matter that Sunni insurgents killed and maimed thousands of US soldiers in Iraq? Does it matter that Sunni Muslims pummel Israel? Does it matter that Jerusalem is a holy place for Sunni Muslims but not Shia Muslims? Does it matter that Sunni Muslims comprise over 85% of Muslims worldwide, Shia Muslims less than 15%? Does anybody even ask these questions? They better, because sectarian strife in the region is increasing and will likely lead to regional war, for a heretic is far worse than an infidel.

- rayward

March 18, 2013 at 11:21am

Most people who opposed the war remember the Bush Administration's weak-on-evidence campaign to convince Americans that Iraq possessed WMDs. What I found far more offensive was the - also successful, but built on an even weaker evidentiary foundation - campaign to convince the public that Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Al-Qaeda were in cahoots. Remember the polls that showed a substantial minority (or maybe even a majority) of the public blaming Saddam for 9/11? The way the Bush Administration did this was by playing the race card. They managed to convince enough people that because Iraq was a Muslim nation and that Al Qaeda were Islamic fundamentalists, that the two HAD to be connected. The argument went this way: How could they possibly NOT be connected? All those Ay-rabs hate us and they're all working together. Yes, no one from the Bush Administration ever explicitly made the link, except for some ridiculous rumor about a Saddam intelligence official having met an Al Qaeda operative in Europe. But every discussion on Iraq always harkened back to 9/11. And, our public, shell-shocked as they were by 9/11 (and possessed of an Ay-rab = Evil monolithic perspective on the Middle East) connected the dots. And, of course, no one from either the Administration or the press that was baying for blood, bothered to correct them by informing them that Saddam's Baath Party was ideologically Socialist and Secular and hardly fundamentalist beyond weak attempts to portray Saddam as a modern-day Saladin fending off Western Crusaders. Of all the things that the Administration did to fan the flames of war, it was this campaign, waged subtly and by people who should know better, to appeal to the racial prejudices of the public that was still reeling from 9/11, that I found most offensive. It is also frightening that virtually none of the post-mortems on the lead up to the war even mention this. And, whenever (I don't say IF, because I am convinced it is inevitable) we wage war on Iran, we should expect the Administration of the day to find a way to link them to Al-Qaeda too, even though that connection is even more idiotic than the purported link to Saddam was. And we should expect that the public, aided by a docile Press, will swallow it, hook, line and sinker.

- SRS

March 18, 2013 at 12:21pm

I was opposed to the Iraq War from the start. I got out in the streets in opposition for the first time since the Viet Nam War. And my instincts proved to be right. Counting the cost of veterans' rehab, the Iraq War will end up costing between two and three trillion dollars, easily--plus tens of thousands of American casualties and thousands of American deaths. And religious nuts in Iraq are still blowing each other up every day, and the totally corrupt Iraqi government is thinking about going to war with the Kurds--again. Things sure have changed. And, oh, wasn't the U.S. invasion of Iraq supposed to lower the price of gas? Uh-huh. Judis talked to CIA analysts who opposed the invasion. I saw many of them in documentaries who made it clear that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld were lying. The WMD 'intelligence' Bush and Cheney talked about came from a secret, unconstitutional 'intelligence' organization that Cheney and Rumsfeld (old buddies under Nixon) formed in the bowels of the Pentagon that was designed to sucker Americans, including the media, into doing something against their own self-interest. NUSHOLTZ, the real reason for the invasion is simple. The Bush Administration Neo-Cons wanted to establish forward air bases in the Middle East that didn't depend on the whims of the Saudis or Kuwaitis. The Iraqi government knows that we will reestablish our air presence in their country any time we feel the need to. They know we're not faking about invasion. It's Realpolitik at its most naked. I went to a Michael Moore rally during the 2004 election campaign, and Moore rounded on the media, more than anyone else, for not doing their job--speaking up in a supposedly free society. When the media cowers and lays down on the job in a life-and-death situation like war, a so-called free society is in trouble. We'll be paying for the cowardice of the media, including TNR, for a long time on the Iraq War issue.

- magboy47.

March 18, 2013 at 2:19pm

Judis states: "[The dissenters] were not in a position to make their voices heard". Has he never heard of the option of resigning your job out of principle? President Carter's first Secretary of State Cyrus Vance resigned his job in protest of the attempted hostage rescue. Many others before him have done likewise. Going to war is surely a big enough deal to risk your career on if you're convinced that it's a terrible idea. I like Judis' article in general, but think he provides an extremely lame excuse for the dissenters' roles as passive bystanders to a national disaster.

- JackR

March 18, 2013 at 2:26pm

"The relevant question is whether we learned anything from the Iraq intervention, and I'd say the answer is we have not."_____ Not only have the American people learned nothing from the Iraq war but I woud posit that we have devolved in our knowledge. Yes ignorance of the region has increased not lessened. Why? Xenophobia, isolationism, racism, theological bigotry, the list goes on but I will lay that firmly at the feet of the Bush Administration and those who blew the trumpets well before 9/11 even occurred.________That Dick Cheney shows neither remorse or the inkling of self-reflection on everything that went wrong during the Bush years and he is willing to do it all over again shows that the ideology and narcissism and ID that props up the feeble-minded thinking of the neo-cons leaves a devastating hole of instability and uncertainty in the world. That the world is less secure and stable in the shock-wave rubble of the Iraq war says much about the efficacy of the Bush/Cheney/Rice/Rumsfield/Kristol/Neo-Con Doctrine.

- singlspeed

March 18, 2013 at 2:28pm

I would respectfully disagree that the American people have learned nothing from the Iraq War. The fact is that American public opinion has successfully pushed the US into leaving Iraq seven years after the invasion with no residual military presence whatsoever; has pushed the US into winding down the Afghanistan War without a clear-cut outcome and quite possibly without a significant residual military presence there either; prevented the US from unilateral (or ad hoc coalition) military intervention in Libya and has contributed to the US's very light footprint in that country after the overthrow of Qadaffhi's government; prevented the US from any military intervention in Syria; and so far prevented the US from deploying anything other than financial sanctions and clandestine intelligence activities against Iran's acknowledged drive toward nuclear technology and barely concealed drive toward real-live nuclear weapons. While some of this public opinion has manifested itself directly in opinion polls heeded by politicians, a lot of it is the result of electing candidates (especially Presidential candidates) whose own views -- or the views of important advisors -- reflected these opinions. It is a large part of the reason that Barack Obama soundly defeated both Hillary Clinton (a somewhat chastened proponent of the Iraq War) and John McCain (a thoroughly unchastened proponent and major booster of the Iraq War) in 2008, and one of the material reasons that Obama again soundly defeated Mitt Romney (an unprincipled Iraq War proponent in 2008 and a major Iran War proponent in 2012). It is a major reason why the public now trusts Democrats more than Republicans on foreign policy and military issues, in numbers unseen since the end of World War II and the advent of the Soviet nuclear bomb. It is a major reason for why the GOP base turned on its establishment after the 2008 elections and has led to a re-emergence of neo-isolationism among the Republican political elite unseen since before Pearl Harbor. No, the American people have learned plenty of lessons from the Iraq War, the same way they learned them from other enigmatic American conflicts from the War of 1812 to World War I to Korea to Vietnam. As with all those conflicts -- none of which ultimately ended the way the US originally intended -- the lessons learned are different for different groups of pundits, politicians and voters, and those persons differ as to whether the lessons are good, bad or some of both. But the lessons have been learned, and there is plenty of evidence out there for it.

- wildboy

March 18, 2013 at 3:05pm

Self-congratulatory pap. History has a higher standard than journalism: http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/03/17/a_decade_later_and_the_iraq_debate_is_still_contaminated_with_myths Most important fact up front is that the Iraq War didn't start in 2003. It started in 1990, with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. And a good argument can be made that it started in September 1980, when Saddam invaded Iran. Read a book.

- Robert Powell

March 18, 2013 at 3:09pm

"Those months before the Iraq war testify to the importance of letting the public have full access to information before making decisions about war and peace. And that lesson should be heeded before we rush into still another war in the Middle East." That misses the lesson of the Iraq intervention: it wasn't so much that the public was denied information, but was expected to distill its significance at a time of national trauma. Andrew Sullivan has a post today praising Judis's essay, in which Sullivan asserts his usual excuses (national trauma, faith in Bush, confidence in Rumsfeld, etc.) for poor judgment about the Iraq intervention, and repeats Judis's admonition that we not rush into another war. But the time for in-depth analysis and sober reflection is now, not at the time of another national trauma.when emotions run high and reflection is absent. Yet, how much analysis and reflection have been offered regarding the sectarian strife in the middle east, how the sectarian strife is increasing and likely to lead to a sectarian war, what the US can do to diminish the sectarian strife, which side of the sectarian divide the US should favor, how the US should respond to the inevitable conflict among nations divided by religious differences. Instead, we get a steady diet of anti-Iranian propaganda and lots of sympathetic reporting about "freedom fighters" in places like Syria. Does replacing a minority Shia government in Syria increase or diminish the likelihood of sectarian regional war? Do overtures from Iran to Egypt likely increase or diminish the likelihood of sectarian regional war? These and the other questions i asked in my prior comment are never asked, much less answered. Naval gazing about events that occurred ten years ago helps. A TNR dissenter to the Iraq intervention (it may have been Judis) wrote at the time that the greater risk to the US was that it would discourage a later intervention that was not only warranted but vital to our interests and national security. The time for in-depth analysis and sober reflection is now, so we are prepared for the inevitable.

- rayward

March 18, 2013 at 3:12pm

'History has a higher standard than journalism.' ROBERT POWELL, I'm not in any way saying that you're Hitler, but your grandiose statement has a Hitler flavor to it. The Grand Visions of power-obsessed individuals or coteries always lead to disaster. Your statement also has a Marxist flavor to it. And we know how accurate the Grand Visions of Hitler and Marx turned out to be. In a democracy war is only used for self-defense. A preventative war is only used by dictators. And dictators the Neo-Cons turned out to be. The great majority of the 'free' American press and the American people prostrated themselves before them in the run-up to the Iraq War. In a free society there has to be a serious discussion of whether going to war is justified. Such a discussion occurred in America prior to Pearl Harbor. And then we, as a free people, waited before we were attacked before we lowered the hammer of vengeance on our enemies. In World War II we did it just right. In Iraq, as a 'free' nation, we did it just wrong.

- magboy47.

March 18, 2013 at 4:02pm

Wildboy, While I understand your position in believing the American people have learned lessons from the Iraq war because they voted for politicians who promised a draw-down versus escalation or expansion, especially with regards to Iran, I would beg to differ that the lessons learned you speak of are not what I would consider broadened lessons overall._____ The mere reason we’re having this debate at the moment is because of the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and the broad-spectrum, nebulous nature of the “War on Terror” that we still find ourselves engaged in. Sure, the America public as a whole, has garnered a distaste for boots on the ground and more so with 24hr news coverage and the information flow from the war front itself (POV videos shot by troops, documentation of their own ill-behaviors, the posting of be-headings on-line by jihadists during the insurgency, the censorship of flag-draped coffins returning to America, etc) but those “lessons” are nothing new. Americans have, in general had a bad taste for boots on the ground. _____ But the lessons we really learned were not that we should question our roll in the world from the perspective of those most impacted by the for-profit war-machine we unleash but that now, to engage in war, requires little sacrifice on the parts of the average American or requiring meaningful reasons as to WHY we go to war._____ That there are still neo-cons and liberals out there condoning the continued presence of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan speaks volumes to what little has been learned. It would appear their primary reason is to save face instead of admitting the Iraq war was and is the greatest blunder in American history. What have we learned about the Middle East as a whole in the last 10 years? Very little I would say. The average American still harbors suspicions about “muslims” or those that appear Middle Eastern can’t really be trusted to be real Americans. That a majority of Americans couldn’t tell you why we are still in Iraq or what our 10 years of occupation have accomplished other than destabilizing the country so that it is barely more functional than Afghanistan, Yemen or Somalia._____ That Americans were never asked to make sacrifices for the war (as we did during WW 1 and 2) and instead were told to keep shopping as if nothing were going on tells me that those most supportive of the war were doing so for questionable reasons._____ The US’s most successful/rightful/moral uses of military intervention have been when we have struck last and the moral reasons for acting exist for our use of military force. The first Gulf War walked a fine line, the second was neither moral , right or successful in that our reasons for war were to satiate the blood & power lust of the neo-cons like Cheney who pushed for a pre-emptive war. _____ No…I am afraid the lessons learned regarding Iraq are fleeting at best and will soon be forgotten as the lessons from Vietnam were forgotten /glossed over/ or completely dismissed out of hand.

- singlspeed

March 18, 2013 at 6:21pm

Wildboy, I hope I didn't imply that the invasion of Iraq was something new in American history. I remember reading in a foreign relations course I took in the Seventies that an unprovoked U.S. had invaded more than 30 countries in its history (this is not counting the justified invasions). And there have been a number of unprovoked invasions since the Seventies. I was merely stating what I thought we should or shouldn't do as a 'democracy,' not what we have done. I picked the Iraq War as an example, because it has brought us nothing but guaranteed forward air bases in the future in the Middle East at a terrible monetary and human cost. As the most powerful nation in world history, of course we are going to throw our weight around. And the media and the American people go along with it--until the cost starts coming home to them. But that's the way it's always been throughout history in all nations.

- magboy47.

March 18, 2013 at 8:25pm

I served as a medical corpsman in Vietnam, and I thought that Bush #43's propaganda campaign to get his resolution to go to war in Iraq reminded me eerily of how LBJ pushed through his specious Gulf of Tonkin resolution. After what I saw at the base hospital where I served, I was opposed from the start. Bush #43, Cheney, Rumsfeld are all war criminals just as LBJ, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Richard Nixon are. It's really that simple.

- rewiredhogdog

March 19, 2013 at 12:29am

"the tremendous power that an administration, bent on deception, can have over public opinion, especially when it comes to foreign policy. And when the dissenters in the CIA, military, and State Department are silenced, the public—not to mention, journalists—has little recourse in deciding whether to support what the administration wants to do. Those months before the Iraq war testify to the importance of letting the public have full access to information before making decisions about war and peace." I've come to a very different conclusion: we can't hope for any such transparency, and administrations must be judged in larval form, when they are candidates and political campaigns, because once in office, as Himmler famously put it at Nuremburg: "the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." We need to study the foreign policy advisors to a candidate. We need to understand to what degree the candidate stands on his/her own two feet when it comes to FP. This is what made Romney so scary - Bolton, Black, and others were his advisors, and Romney was a domestic policy guy.

- sconover

March 19, 2013 at 3:15am

Tom Friedman was fanning flames - even with his dislike of Bush's propaganda campaign. {Bush needs to] "start selling this war on the truth . . ." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/19/opinion/tell-the-truth.html Have trusted him enough to read his column since. DonMc

- NR138704

March 19, 2013 at 11:48am

Facts I saw in the news today, on the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq: 1) the War has cost $2.2 trillion so far 2) today in Iraq at least 60 people were killed and scores were injured in terrorist bombings, and 3) over 4,000 Americans were killed and over 30,000 were injured, many badly, in the Iraq War. Boy, that one worked out. Good job, Republicans.

- magboy47.

March 19, 2013 at 8:56pm

@Robert Powell That piece was a laughable attempt at a knock-down argument against the now settled and extensively documented history of stove-piping, distortions, and mendaciousness that got us into Iraq. Contrary to the bare assertions of the author, the chronology of events bears out multiple cases of outright dishonesty, as well as routine lessor transgressions of selectivity and politicisation (which he totally ignores) in making the case for war and selling it domestically and internationally. There were a variety of alarmist misstatements provided that were known to be dubious or false at the time. For example, Powell’s feedback on the Bush speech and his own speech before the UN, for which his serious contemporaneous reservations are public record (see worst day of my life), or Rice on aluminium tubes and yellowcake from Niger. There was also a pattern of reckless indifference to contrary views in the military and intelligence establishment about the war. By itself, the establishment of the Operation of Special Plans, and staffing it with a political hack to create a separate politicised channel of intelligence is damning, and we know that normal checks around source-verification were bypassed, which would have excluded and heavily qualified all the Administration’s key sources from the INC - see Curveball. The idea that this debacle can be reduced to a simple false dichotomy between all lies or all sincere and honest mistakes is self-evident sophistry which belies the fact that there is a gradient of good faith. We have myriad examples populating the full spectrum from genuine mistakes, to failures of disinterested inquiry to outright deceit. Indeed, there is a cluster of transgressions by key players in the administration at the deceitful end that are beyond any disputation. If that airy and evasive piece was meant to floor anyone with the deep currently of moral complexities and good faith within the Bush Administration, count me suitably unimpressed.

- Willf

March 19, 2013 at 11:23pm

Hitler, Stalin, Himmler, Nixon (what about Kissinger? He's still alive and presumably prosecutable), LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin Resolution--gee whiz! I am familiar with how honest history is put together, as opposed to the excellent examples of partisan cut-and-paste reporting on view here. The admittedly lightweight article I linked simply points out significant factual errors in the Standard Line as repeated here in several well-written comments. We went to war in Iraq in 1991. That war continued in fits and starts until recently. No amount of re-arranging tidbits of information retrospectively with a view to supporting a predetermined premise can negate this fact. The War in Iraq was a bi-partisan, multi-administration operation with consistently broad public support, and was probably the most exhaustively debated war in recent history. All the facts decision makers had were widely available, and widely debated, up to and including the catastrophic mis-management of the war during Dubyah's first term. Lessons learned? You betcha'. Don't confuse "intelligence" with truth; don't expect a war once started to be have a neat, conclusive finale; even the best military in the world can't overcome incompetent leadership; it costs a lot of money to win a war, but nothing is more expensive than losing one.

- Robert Powell

March 20, 2013 at 2:17pm

I do not entirely agree with Mr. Powell's final comment, notably the claim that: "All the facts decision makers had were widely available, and widely debated, up to and including the catastrophic mis-management of the war during Dubyah's first term." In fact, I remember our newspapers of record reporting administration leaks with great credulity, hile making sure to quote a more dovish analyst questioning these conclusions. It was lazy journalism, not providing the bare minimum it would have taken for a relative layman to tell who was telling the TRUTH abouth the situation--the Nat'l Security 'experts' whose analysis of Sadaam's actions made no sense unless the dictator was hiding some sort of weaponry, or the folks who distrusted US military power so much they'd oppose nearly any war (as it turned out, these folks were almost completely right--and many of them were probably not against war at all--I am merely angry that, as a layman, the usual, 'he says, she says' formula of journalism was applied, and it was impossible to know who was deluding themselves for ideological reasons and who was providing responsible analysis. As a result, I enlisted so as to serve in Iraq, and I will never recover from my experience there--which also taught me the utter ridiculousness of some military bureaucracy and the deep divide between top and bottom, as well as the waste of lives and potential strategic incompetence of the US military (yes, we're ahead on technology, but we lost one soldier in my unit just because their supervisor didn't know how to do a duty roster sheet--and had him driving a dangerous LMTV military truck on a convoy after not having slept for 24-36 hours[because of other duties]). My points? Yes, the media discussed the war a lot beforehand, but proper investigative journalism was not, so far as I'm aware, done, and that is a major failure of the fourth estate, regardless of how hard it was to challenge Bush II on the facts in late 2002(Judith Miller repeating leaks from the offices of Richard Armitage and Dick Cheney does not, in my view, count as actual journalism). Second, it all might have been different had our militaries been run by men of competence, which, in my experience, it clearly was not. And, hell, third, I will never be the same person because I erroneously volunteered to participate in an incompetent, mission-less occupation where Americans and Iraqis were shot up in sectarian conflict, and, far from 'winning hearts and minds' none of us could speak a word of Arabic. And no one up top (or in the middle) seemed to think that was importance. In sum, the Iraq War before 2007 was conducted with staggering incompetence and savagery, and while I tried to contribute as a medic, my view of life and my mind will never be the same again. And part of the blame for this is that no one even tried, during the war-planning stage, to plan to stabilize the country or win the peace, or prevent the circa 65% Shia population from taking over the country and forming a dictatorship of the majority. Deep incompetence. Everyone is to blame here, including myself, for my naivete. But mostly the W administration (and Blairites) for their selective reading of intelligence, and the press for rarely calling them out on such details in anything but an equivocal manner. Journalism fail.

- Curran1

March 23, 2013 at 6:00am