Misled into a mistake, a decade later
Note: This incorporates material from a post published earlier on this blog. It is posted here as the electronic version of a column published in today’s dead-tree edition of the AJC.
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Ten years ago today, the United States launched an unprovoked invasion of another country, an attack that was justified by claims of dire threats that our leaders knew to be false and exaggerated. More than 4,000 of our sons and daughters were to die as a result of that decision; tens of thousands more live today with physical and psychic wounds that have changed their lives forever.
The last of our soldiers to die in that war was named David Hickman. He was a recently married 23-year-old Army specialist from Greensboro, N.C. He was killed Nov. 14, 2011, by an improvised explosive device, a term that by the end had became all too familiar. The death toll continues even now within Iraq, with an average of a dozen people a day dying from political-related violence. More than 60 civilians were killed in a terrorist bombing Tuesday, a story that made headlines here only because it was timed to coincide with the war’s anniversary.
In other words, what was once deemed worth the investment of thousands of lives is now not deemed worthy even of notice.
Today, a majority of Americans have come to understand that the war was a mistake. However, that was not the case 10 years ago. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, our country was experiencing a degree of fear that it had not felt for decades. Under those conditions, it was all too easy for those in power to direct that fear wherever they wished, and to isolate and marginalize those Americans who dared to question the narrative as they spun it.
One of the architects of that effort, former Vice President Dick Cheney, looks back on that era in a new documentary film that was televised last week on Showtime. Cheney played a decisive role in maneuvering a pliable, inexperienced and maybe somewhat frightened president into an unnecessary war. But in typical Cheney fashion, the vice president expresses not the slightest regret or doubt.
“I did what I did,” he told the filmmakers. “And it’s all part of the public record and I feel very good about it. If I had it to do over again, I’d do it in a minute.”
While we did succeed in removing the tyrannical Saddam from power, that part of the mission was never in real doubt. In other ways, however, the invasion has set American interests back significantly. Instead of serving as a military outpost for U.S. forces keeping Iran in check, Iraq today is all but an Iranian client state. Despite our investment of blood and treasure, we have little or no influence over Iraq’s policies or practices.
By fighting on two fronts at once, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, we also divided our manpower, financial resources and attention, ensuring that we achieved real victory in neither. We will never know whether a full commitment to Afghanistan in the early years would have paid off with success; we do know that the odds of ultimate success look very dim.
Cheney, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and others also lost the war here on the home front. The invasion launched 10 years ago today in a show of shock and awe was intended to mark a newly muscular and militaristic foreign policy, with the United States finally freed of the constraints once placed upon it by the Soviet Union.
That was the theory. In practice, the invasion of Iraq, driven by false promises of easy conquest and false threats of WMD, yellowcake, mushroom clouds and unmanned aerial vehicles, exposed the strategic overreach and arrogance implicit in such a policy. By his second term, a chastened President Bush had largely pushed Cheney aside. That recognition of his vice president’s malignant influence came too late to save his presidency.
Today, the ambitions of Cheney and his friends have been discredited. The lessons of Vietnam have been refreshed rather than overturned, and support is now growing even within the Republican Party for a less expensive military and a more circumspect use of force overseas. The remaining advocates of a Cheney-esque foreign policy — men such as John McCain and William Kristol — are left to stamp their feet in frustration.
If given the chance, they, like Cheney, would indeed be willing to do it all over again. But next time, the American people may be wise enough not to give them or others like them the opportunity.
– Jay Bookman
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517 comments Add your comment
JamVet
March 20th, 2013
12:15 pm
I apologize the link I was referencing was the one I posted earlier and it was in regards to Bush’s approval.
After his Afghanistan response and residual “glow”? Irrelevant to Iraq.
And you apology is fully accepted.
I had some trepidation about this thread when I first saw it. I have exceedingly strong feelings about that “war’ and they sometimes overrule my humanity. And for that I apologize to you.
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. ~Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861, Washington, D.C.
JamVet
March 20th, 2013
12:18 pm
Do we invade, do we wait until after a nuke goes off, do we do nothing regardless of the threat?
I presume you are being totally facetious.
And I suggest you become a quick study of logical fallacies, because you crammed several into that one question…
Welcome to the Occupation
March 20th, 2013
12:19 pm
td: “It has become obvious during the current administration that laws mean nothing any longer. Just look at Obama’s public refusal to enforce the immigrations laws, DOMA laws..”
And who set the template for Mr. Let’s look forward, not backwards, td?
As I mentioned earlier, Iraq was the dress rehearsal for the consolidation of ruling class power as unchecked unilateral power.
Doggone/GA
March 20th, 2013
12:24 pm
“Just look at Obama’s public refusal to enforce the immigrations laws, DOMA laws”
that’s not what he did. You need to check the dictionary for the difference between “enforce” and “defend”
if you can
Tom Middleton
March 20th, 2013
12:32 pm
Jay, I figure we’ve got about half a generation to get our foreign policy to the next level before we forget the lessons of Iraq and start getting stupid again.
The next-to-fastest way to destroy America is to deny who we are to others by not helping them to get free on their own. The fastest way, of course, is when we deny it to even ourselves.
It’s said that insanity is doing the same old things while expecting different results, so what do we call the Cheney-esque approach that expects the same old results as well?
God, I pray we remember this clown (and his idiot friends) for a long, long time to come, but something tells me our time is limited, to do what we know we must or lose it all!
BuckWheat
March 20th, 2013
12:55 pm
“Your assertion that one must be “authorized” to express an opinion is rejected.”
Well sir that was an opinion and because it was mine I guess that makes it patently wrong and rejected in your worldview but an opiniion nonetheless. I see how things work now.
GT
March 20th, 2013
1:12 pm
Scratch It when you change the definition of things you look like you are always right but being right the way you are right is like being mentally ill and enjoying it.
Patrick Edmondson
March 20th, 2013
3:29 pm
Anyone notice how many of the names involved in this war scam were introduced from under the rock of the Nixon regime? Many continued to deceive the American people with secret actions in South America and beyond under Reagan and Bush and Shrub. Now the same “experts” are pushing for a war with Iran. This time they promise they are telling the truth Charlie Brown.
MrLiberty
March 20th, 2013
3:51 pm
The correct word is LIE. As in criminal act by a president. A war crime, a treasonous act, an impeachable act, an act for which he, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, and likely hundreds of others both in the administration AND the media should stand trial for. Nothing less.
Latrina
March 20th, 2013
5:22 pm
As one who lived through the drawn out nightmare that was VietNam I completely agree with the several prior posters who’ve observed that time seems to erase our collective national memory, leading us to repeat the same mistakes.
I see so many painful parallels between Nam and Iraq/Afghanistan, not the least of which is that the daily casualty count seems to move further and further off the front page, if it even gets reported at all.
Bernie
March 20th, 2013
6:44 pm
DannyX @ 9:02 am – I Could NOT have MADE A BETTER COMPARISON other than the addition of this STAT.
September 11, 2001 – 3,000+ Americans Killed!
Here’s were Republicans get just down right creepy.
Iraq war, 4,000 dead soldiers, thousands more injured, trillion dollars wasted.
BENGHAZI!, 4 American deaths, 3 injured.
Now, which one of those events did Republicans go completely ballistic over?
Not ONE Republican STOOD BEFORE The American People and DEMANDED A COMPLETE INVESTIGATION INTO ANY OF THESE AMERICAN DEATHS OTHER THAN…… BENGHAZI!
This is more than CREEPY! Its SCANDALOUS!…..Self-Serving DEMAGOGUERY!
Joel Edge
March 21st, 2013
6:56 am
Excellent article, Jay. In the coming months as the Syria debacle reaches it’s expected end with rumors of gas used on civilians and talk of red lines being crossed, I’m sure you’ll be right there reminding us why we shouldn’t intervene……..unless the current administration says we should…..then you’ll be right in there with the rest of the lefties.
Wade Marbaugh
March 21st, 2013
3:07 pm
Thanks, Jay, for continuing to carry the torch. I recall you wrote back then that we should beware an energy war in the region. Amid all the talk of military options in Iran, I invite all to read Zbigniew Brzezinsky’s presentation to the Council of Foreign Relations in 1997, “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And It’s Geostrategic Imperatives.” (Book in libraries, bookstores). Brzezinsky explains it very clearly: 70 percent of the world’s known energy resources are located in Eurasia and most of that is in Central Asia, or the five countries that end in “stan.” Whoever controls the energy resources of Central Asia controls the world economy in the 21st Century. The U.S. should go in and control it, he says, because if we don’t, somebody else (probably China) will, and they’ll use it for “evil.” To his credit, Brzezinsky said that the U.S. cannot reach the objective militarily. He wrote that the war would be too long and vicious for the American people to tolerate. He states an exception: if Americans are militarized by a Pearl Harbor-type incident, they may support the war. So, he spends the second half of the book showing how we can diplomatically, without war, obtain those energy resources and still meet the needs of the nations interested in the area— Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, et al, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, the Arabian monarchies, Turkey, eastern Asia and Europe. His “soft imperialist” approach amounts to forming partnerships and trusting the power of peaceful trade relations. And he says the U.S. should use the opportunity to establish a legacy of really promoting world peace and democracy. It is brilliant strategy, as imperialism goes. Bush, Cheney, the neocons and the right wing idiots said, “Forget that, we’ll get the oil the old-fashioned way,” and they were preparing for this war long before 9-11. Imagine if we had invested those billions into Brzezinski’s diplomacy/trade policy (”We share the technology, you share the energy profits”) instead into war and bloodshed. Or, better yet, invested it into green energy. As the sage Pete Seeger wrote, “When will they ever learn?”
Mack
March 22nd, 2013
12:37 pm
Remember the anthrax letters?
This is how I think it went down. These wars and 9-11 were planned long before the perpetrators stole the election for W. So, they had to steal the election, which had to be an inside job. Washington was put on notice right there that these people were not to be f**ked with. It was the same crowd that ran the show when Reagan was president and we had all that Iran/Contra cr*p going on. W was basically along for the ride, playing the important role of figurehead and down home PR guy. His role was all planned out.
Then we get 9-11. That was WITHOUT ANY DOUBT part of the plan. Surely, Congress was scared sh*tless by now.
Just to make sure nobody got out of line, these b*stards sent out a few anthrax letters.
Why? oil, opium, Halliburton (who just finished working for them?), all the profits of war going to people with no souls, power… not a pretty picture.
The worst part of it? The hypocrisy, the lies, that they are not in prison. I’d give W probation, though. He was practically a patsy. They sent him to Florida and wouldn’t let him come back to Washington. He couldn’t believe what his bosses had done.
So, yeah, Congress crumbled. Everyone did except for a few old hippies who knew exactly what went down but couldn’t break through the bullsh*t. It is truly sad how the masses can be manipulated and only wake up ten years later and say, “Wow, that sucked.”
Personally, I was not fooled for a second. But then I’m just one of those old hippie conspiranoids.
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deegeejay
March 24th, 2013
12:23 pm
The liberation of Iraq was no mistake. The US (primarily) removed a genocidal despot from a position of authority. Said dictator was caught, convicted, tried for crimes against humanity, and hung by his own people: Sunni, Shia, Kurds alike all shared in his demise. This brought freedom of self-determination to millions upon millions of people. History has spoken – it may take a while for the peace-niks to agree but the morality of the decision is clear as a bell – a rung bell. Only fools keep wasting their energy trying to un-ring it.