Walter Russell Mead: Remembering Iraq
[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.]
Seven years ago this week the first bombs were falling in Iraq and the war was breaking out, a war that caused untold suffering in Iraq, led to waves of anti-American feeling around the world, polarized politics in the United States, broke the administration of George W. Bush, and contributed to one of the most amazing political developments for many years: the election of a first-term African American senator from Illinois to the presidency of the United States.
There have been, so far, 4,703 military casualties among the coalition forces; 4,385 of those casualties were Americans. 31,616 Americans have been wounded.
Accurate counts of the number of Iraqis killed, including members of the Iraq Security Forces, resistance fighters and the much larger numbers of civilians killed either by accident or by terrorist action, are much harder to get. Estimates range widely, but icasualties.org (my source for all the casualty numbers in this post) estimates that 9,415 members of the Iraq Security Forces have died overall, and lists 47,278 reported civilian deaths since January 2005 –warning that the real total is considerably higher. Millions of Iraqis have fled into exile abroad or have had to flee their former homes in ethnic and sectarian violence.
Today, the war seems to be winding down, though serious risks remain. The Iraqi government has expanded its authority; the resistance has faltered. Despite ongoing violence and the potential for more, Iraq seems to be stabilizing to the point where American forces can continue to withdraw without the country returning to civil war. Meanwhile, if the political situation continues to stabilize, the economic future looks bright. Iraqis now believe that they will be able to increase their oil production from the current rate of 2.5 million barrels a day to levels that could make it the largest oil producer in the world by 2020. We shall see; optimistic predictions have failed before in Iraq, but it does appear that the country’s resources are significantly greater than previously believed.
I supported the US invasion. I supported it originally because I believed Secretary of State Colin Powell’s assertion that Iraq had an active WMD program. (I felt that some of the Bush appointees were capable of stretching the evidence, but Powell over the years had convinced me that he was a sober and serious person on whose judgment it was safe to rely.) I supported it because I believed that the current policy of containing Saddam Hussein was fanning the growth of Al Qaeda and related forces in Saudi Arabia because of the presence of US forces in large numbers on Saudi soil. I supported it because I believed that the UN sanctions program was falling apart as the UN system grew more corrupt and less efficient, and as political support for the sanctions continued to weaken at the Security Council.
I believed that the invasion was legal because the United States was not at peace with Iraq. Our relations were defined by the cease-fire agreement that ended the first Gulf War. Iraq was in flagrant violation of that cease-fire; the United States was under no obligation to respect a cease-fire once the other side had broken it.
Finally, I believed that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was the better course on humanitarian grounds. The regime had been so murderous, and the sanctions regime was taking such a toll on the population, that a continuation of the status quo was likely to lead in the long run to more death and suffering than a war.
Looking back, it now seems to me that I was wrong on two points. First, the Iraqi WMD program was moribund. I believe Bush, Blair and Powell were all sincerely convinced that Iraq was actively pursuing WMD. But with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight it is clear that Iraq’s WMD program was in a shambles, and that the decision-makers in the US and the UK did not look hard enough or skeptically enough at the evidence they had.
Second, I significantly overestimated the capacity of the American government to manage the post-war transition in Iraq. Both on the military and the civilian side, it is clear that the administration was not prepared for the immense responsibilities and challenges that a successful war would bring in its train. As a result, the stabilization of Iraq took much longer than I expected, and both the coalition military and the Iraqi people suffered many more deaths than I hoped would be the case.
Even at the time, I had some misgivings about the administration’s approach. Several times I used a story from Abraham Lincoln’s courtship of Mary Todd to describe what was happening. Meeting her at a dance, Lincoln is supposed to have said to Mary Todd, “Miss, I’d like to dance with you in the worst way.” And Mary Todd would tell her friends later that “That is exactly what he did.”‘
Had I known then that the Iraqi WMD program was moribund, I would have urged the administration to seek delay and shift its Iraq policy toward one of coercive diplomacy based on the demand that Iraq fully and unconditionally implement the original cease fire agreement. Had I known additionally just how unprepared we were for the post-war challenges, and how slipshod the planning actually was, I would have urged even more strongly for delay.
Nevertheless, once we were at war, even as it became ever more clear that the WMD weren’t there, that the post-war situation was extremely challenging, and that the Bush administration did not know what to do in the situation in which it found itself, I continued to support — as I still continue to support — the American involvement in that war...
Read entire article at American Interest (blog)
Seven years ago this week the first bombs were falling in Iraq and the war was breaking out, a war that caused untold suffering in Iraq, led to waves of anti-American feeling around the world, polarized politics in the United States, broke the administration of George W. Bush, and contributed to one of the most amazing political developments for many years: the election of a first-term African American senator from Illinois to the presidency of the United States.
There have been, so far, 4,703 military casualties among the coalition forces; 4,385 of those casualties were Americans. 31,616 Americans have been wounded.
Accurate counts of the number of Iraqis killed, including members of the Iraq Security Forces, resistance fighters and the much larger numbers of civilians killed either by accident or by terrorist action, are much harder to get. Estimates range widely, but icasualties.org (my source for all the casualty numbers in this post) estimates that 9,415 members of the Iraq Security Forces have died overall, and lists 47,278 reported civilian deaths since January 2005 –warning that the real total is considerably higher. Millions of Iraqis have fled into exile abroad or have had to flee their former homes in ethnic and sectarian violence.
Today, the war seems to be winding down, though serious risks remain. The Iraqi government has expanded its authority; the resistance has faltered. Despite ongoing violence and the potential for more, Iraq seems to be stabilizing to the point where American forces can continue to withdraw without the country returning to civil war. Meanwhile, if the political situation continues to stabilize, the economic future looks bright. Iraqis now believe that they will be able to increase their oil production from the current rate of 2.5 million barrels a day to levels that could make it the largest oil producer in the world by 2020. We shall see; optimistic predictions have failed before in Iraq, but it does appear that the country’s resources are significantly greater than previously believed.
I supported the US invasion. I supported it originally because I believed Secretary of State Colin Powell’s assertion that Iraq had an active WMD program. (I felt that some of the Bush appointees were capable of stretching the evidence, but Powell over the years had convinced me that he was a sober and serious person on whose judgment it was safe to rely.) I supported it because I believed that the current policy of containing Saddam Hussein was fanning the growth of Al Qaeda and related forces in Saudi Arabia because of the presence of US forces in large numbers on Saudi soil. I supported it because I believed that the UN sanctions program was falling apart as the UN system grew more corrupt and less efficient, and as political support for the sanctions continued to weaken at the Security Council.
I believed that the invasion was legal because the United States was not at peace with Iraq. Our relations were defined by the cease-fire agreement that ended the first Gulf War. Iraq was in flagrant violation of that cease-fire; the United States was under no obligation to respect a cease-fire once the other side had broken it.
Finally, I believed that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was the better course on humanitarian grounds. The regime had been so murderous, and the sanctions regime was taking such a toll on the population, that a continuation of the status quo was likely to lead in the long run to more death and suffering than a war.
Looking back, it now seems to me that I was wrong on two points. First, the Iraqi WMD program was moribund. I believe Bush, Blair and Powell were all sincerely convinced that Iraq was actively pursuing WMD. But with the advantage of 20/20 hindsight it is clear that Iraq’s WMD program was in a shambles, and that the decision-makers in the US and the UK did not look hard enough or skeptically enough at the evidence they had.
Second, I significantly overestimated the capacity of the American government to manage the post-war transition in Iraq. Both on the military and the civilian side, it is clear that the administration was not prepared for the immense responsibilities and challenges that a successful war would bring in its train. As a result, the stabilization of Iraq took much longer than I expected, and both the coalition military and the Iraqi people suffered many more deaths than I hoped would be the case.
Even at the time, I had some misgivings about the administration’s approach. Several times I used a story from Abraham Lincoln’s courtship of Mary Todd to describe what was happening. Meeting her at a dance, Lincoln is supposed to have said to Mary Todd, “Miss, I’d like to dance with you in the worst way.” And Mary Todd would tell her friends later that “That is exactly what he did.”‘
Had I known then that the Iraqi WMD program was moribund, I would have urged the administration to seek delay and shift its Iraq policy toward one of coercive diplomacy based on the demand that Iraq fully and unconditionally implement the original cease fire agreement. Had I known additionally just how unprepared we were for the post-war challenges, and how slipshod the planning actually was, I would have urged even more strongly for delay.
Nevertheless, once we were at war, even as it became ever more clear that the WMD weren’t there, that the post-war situation was extremely challenging, and that the Bush administration did not know what to do in the situation in which it found itself, I continued to support — as I still continue to support — the American involvement in that war...