February 12, 2007

Iraq: Can Anyone Figure Out Why This Happened?

 

What were these guys really thinking about invading Iraq? I mean really! That’s one of the most mysterious unanswered questions of this incredible debacle.

 

All the expressed reasons for the invasion have proven – how do they say? – “inoperative.”

 

Intelligence? Vice President Cheney goes over to the CIA to glare down the analysts with the insolence to tell the truth about the lack of clandestine weapons and connections with Al Qaeda, but that doesn’t do it. So they pick and choose from what does get through, but that still doesn’t quite match the administration’s line. Now it turns out that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld created his own intelligence service to come up with the “information” they needed. So there! Who really takes this intelligence stuff seriously anyway?

 

What were the real reasons for these guys turning the world upside down to force this war down ours and the Iraqi’s throats? There was no plausibly achievable foreign policy goal that could begin to justify this level of expenditure, sacrifice or disruption.

 

It wasn’t the so called* “weapons of mass destruction” (as if our 500-pound cluster bombs and laser-guided missiles don’t massively destroy). We were told by the real intelligence service they didn’t exist. It wasn’t Saddam’s connections with Al Qaeda. Any student of Arab history, and our own CIA, knew the super-secular Baath Party and the fundamentalists were arch-enemies within the Arab world. It wasn’t Saddam making Iraq a base for attacks on American interests. The only attacks by Iraq on anything American were occasional shots at American planes patrolling Iraqi territory.

 

Getting rid of Saddam? A terrible man he was, but contained by an army of UN inspectors when the attack was launched. Revenge for Saddam’s attack on the president’s father, or accomplishing something his father didn’t? Those get closer, say the presidential psychologists, but hard to imagine for the rest of us. Also, if the president were trying to show his father up, he wouldn’t accept recommendations from a group led by one of his father’s key advisors. Oh yeah, he didn’t exactly embrace them. Oil? It certainly figures into the equation. Remember the only ministry guarded during the looting?

 

There is the neocon fantasy about a democratic Iraq becoming the shining beacon of a new Middle East. NeoCON is right! Even the perpetrators were too embarrassed to offer this up as the rationale for the greatest foreign policy blunder in U.S. history, including destruction of a country. This outdoes the Vietnam mantra of “burning down a village to save it” by a lot.

 

A great irony is that many of the “inaccuracies” put forth to justify this war have ultimately come true as a result. Iraq has indeed become a center for terrorists and their plots against the U.S., and is likely to remain so for many years, whatever we do from here. Our adversaries have weapons they never would have. The government may become a puppet or strong ally of Iran and its budding nuclear program. Vladimir Putin recently said that U.S. policies have caused many countries to begin to acquire weapons of mass destruction to protect themselves from resulting instability in the world.

 

I remember a movie of an attempted scam about a holy fountain. The fountain was said to cure believers who touched its waters. A newcomer to the village pretended to be a cripple to fake being cured by the waters and receive notoriety from the Church. With much fanfare he wheeled himself to the fountain’s edge, pushed himself off the chair into the water, and began to yell, “Miracle!” when he realized that for the first time his legs really didn’t function. Touché! Beware false claims of peril or pain.

 

Another bitter paradox is that much of the rationale for the war on Iraq is now the case with Iran. Our involvement in Iraq weakens us enormously from addressing many more real and serious national security issues.

 

Bungling aside, what did our leaders really hope to accomplish from all this? As the story unfolds, the real reason for this obsession becomes more difficult to comprehend. They certainly didn’t level with us at the time. Foreign policy is a high stakes and sometimes costly game. Perhaps they didn’t expect us simple people to understand the depth of their thinking and the dangers we were facing. It worries me even more to think they really believed their own stories. Perhaps they can at least tell us now.

 

To offer feedback on this column, click here.