In Focus: Iraq, Five Years Later
It's been five years to the day since the Iraq war began. Michael Weiss reflects on the misjudgments and miscalculations made on both sides of a still very bitter debate.
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In 1946, four years before his death, George Orwell wrote one of his most incisive essays. The subject was the conservative thinker — and ex-Trotskyist — James Burnham, who had just come out with The Managerial Revolution, a widely scrutinized book that predicted an age of political economy that would be neither capitalist nor socialist but ruled by bureaucrats, technicians and soldiers, all of whom controlled the means of production and lorded over their respective societies as a kind of Politburo of elites. One of Orwell’s criticisms of the book, and of Burnham’s analysis in general, was that the author tended to make forecasts that were no more sophisticated than a prolongation of current events. If an outcome looked likely at the moment, then that outcome would decide the future until a different outcome announced itself. This wasn’t just Burnham’s vice; it was a vice of the intelligentsia at large, which, at the close of World War II, was found to have got things more wrong than the hoi polloi, which at least made up in consistency of opinion for what they might have lacked in “nuance.” As Orwell put it,
The English intelligentsia, on the whole, were more defeatist than the mass of the people — and some of them went on being defeatist at a time when the war was quite plainly won — partly because they were better able to visualise the dreary years of warfare that lay ahead. Their morale was worse because their imaginations were stronger. The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it, and if one finds the prospect of a long war intolerable, it is natural to disbelieve in the possibility of victory.” [Italics added.]
This strikes the reader today with especial force and urgency.
The argument is not that, five years on, the Iraq war has been won and we are assessing its historical merits with the benefit of safe hindsight; there are still 160,000 U.S. troops in the country, and the war may still be lost in the long term. The argument is that the intelligentsia — writers and commentators both for against regime change in 2003, who underwent every permutation of revision and recantation of their view since then — has suffered from a similar folly arrogant projection.
Keeping with Orwell’s defeatist paradigm for a moment, many vocal antiwar intellectuals anticipated an outcome that was more dire than the reality proved: Those who said toppling Saddam would loose a catastrophe in the Middle East succumbed to the worst of their apocalyptic imaginations (remember the waves of mass slaughter to be brought on by bio-chemical weapons?) and could not allow for positive consequences. What were some of them? A series of successful elections in Iraq (purple fingers galore); the restoration of the Iraqi marsh ecology; the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon; the handover of a much-advanced and well-concealed WMD program by Libya; the advent of women’s suffrage in Kuwait; and, in general, the prospect of liberal democracy to at least serve as a subject for debate and assessment in the Arab world, if not quite take hold with Jeffersonian aplomb.
However, here’s where Orwell needs updating: unself-critical intellectual champions of the war were not dire enough in their outlook. They did not foresee the high costs of an ill-planned occupation; unnecessary military and civilian casualties that were the result of gross administrative incompetence; a provisional authority that made a series of major mistakes (sweeping de-Baathification, the disbanding of the Iraqi army) from its inception to its end; fierce tribal-sectarian combat; the rise of thuggish clerical ruling class; the blackening of America’s standing by the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib. They tended to view the impressive gains listed above as a sufficient moral vindication of their case. Indeed, for those blinded by a resolve to see swift return on a risky geopolitical wager, it might be said that the quickest way of winning a war was to simply declare that it had been won.
Bungled prophecies continued well into recent memory. Eighteen months ago it was thought the height of neoconservative delusion to suggest that the addition of troops, wedded to a bold counterinsurgency strategy, might reduce violence in Iraq to a manageable level and catalyze the slow process of political reconciliation. Now, with the rare exceptions of Michael Kinsley in Slate and Nir Rosen in Rolling Stone, most professional observers are allied with mass opinion in thinking that the surge has worked and also exceeded expectation: it has not only routed Al Qaeda militarily in Iraq, it has discredited Al Qaeda ideologically.
And with the dated, shopworn slogans being marched in protest today on the streets of San Francisco comes further proof of Orwell’s insight that disbelief in even in the possibility of victory (much less a desire for it) is still the entire matter for some.
The president delivered a pro forma speech marking the anniversary, and the blogosphere is awash with retrospection.
Donklephant writes: “Some accuse the president of duplicitous or downright sinister motives. Others just assume incompetence. I tend to believe the fault lay not in cold deceit but in burning hubris. September 11th remade the president and the president decided to remake the world.”
Steve Soto, The Left Coaster fears: “Now five years, 4,000 American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and at least a trillion dollars of American taxpayer monies later, we find ourselves faced with another GOP presidential campaign that wants to highlight this war as a righteous cause requiring more patience and American sacrifice, based on an appeal to ignore the first four years of this war and give a blank check to the next four years.”
And Brownie, at the British social democratic blog Harry’s Place, remembers what it was like for America’s longest and strongest ally to join the coalition five years ago: “In the weeks preceding the commons debate, there was considerable doubt that Blair’s government would carry the day and, if anything, a small majority of commentators were predicting Blair would be out of work when he woke up on the morning of the 19th. They were wrong and the fact this was so is in no small way attributable to the speech given by the Prime Minister to open the commons debate. Reading through the text 5 years later, I’m reminded why I supported the decision to go to war and, mistakes and incompetencies notwithstanding, why I continue to support that decision today.”
Michael Weiss is the New York Editor of Pajamas Media. His blog is Snarksmith.
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9 Comments
Chris:These three comments show the “blogosphere awash with retrospection”? Hardly. More uneducated tripe from those on the “anti-war” side who don’t understand the reasons behind the war, nor the costs of not winning.
I always enjoy the “hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives” lines. One can easily assume Steve Soto is referring to lives lost post-invasion, since writers of his type support the troops while blaming them for imagined atrocities. He obviously still believes in the Lancet survey which has been discredited. Nor does he place the blame where it belongs, on those radical Islamists and al-Qaeda thugs who really perpetrated these acts. Still left unaddressed, the numbers of American and Coalition troops who were injured and killed obeying rules of engagement designed to protect civilians and exploited by the enemy.
Where was Mr. Soto prior to the invasion when Saddam was killing the Kurds or filling mass graves with the hundreds of thousands of his other countrymen? Where was his indignation then?
What about Mr. Soto’s statement of “ignoring the war”? Utterly stupid. I don’t know, but it seems that this war has been more openly scrutinized than any other conflict in memory. The Left (including their mainstream media outlets) have done yeoman’s work to show every casualty and mistake as another excuse to cry “the war is lost!” I also recall a general Presidential election in 2004 with the war as a preeminent topic. The only time the war is ignored is when advances are being made. Where are the headlines trumpeting the lack of casualties (civilian or military)? Any stories detailing the Iraqi people coming forward to help the Coalition root out the terrorists? Suspiciously quiet on these fronts.
The cry of hubris from the Donklephant? Perhaps he fails to recall the 9/11 attacks - easy to believe since any mention or vision of them is described as “too painful to endure”. Or perhaps all of those smart, non-CIA intelligence personnel who insisted Saddam was ramping up to do those evil things he had promised all along? What about the links between Saddam and terror (see http://www.husseinandterror.com for more)? If protecting our nation is hubris, then I want to be full of hubris.
It is ridiculous that these bloggers who would never deign to serve their country, or even fully investigate something outside of their own echo chamber, get to describe the war after 5 years.
It is true that the occupation was mismanaged, which led to serious problems and a near loss of public faith in the effort. The fact that only 4000 troops have been lost after 5 years of war and we have helped to create the only state in the Middle East willing to fight, prosecute, and punish Islamic terror while practicing democracy is an amazing achievement. Something else that the naysayers couldn’t be done, and the people wouldn’t want. They’ve seen the better life thanks to the Coalition and ignoring those improvements won’t make them any less valid.
Mar 19, 2008 - 12:48 pm Michael Weiss:If husseinandterror.com had posted a comment today, then I might have cited it. For what it’s worth, though, Harry’s Place is a pro-war British blog.
Mar 19, 2008 - 1:16 pm Dirty Dingus:The BBC’s John Simpson gave a great example of negativity in his retrospective which it was my great pleasure to fisk at my blog
Mar 19, 2008 - 1:19 pm David H Dennis:Everyone agrees Saddam Hussein was evil.
The Democrats were content to sit back and watch him stay evil. Their sophisticated analysis showed that deep knowledge of the middle east ends in paralysis.
President Bush didn’t know everything he should have. But he knew that Saddam’s being in power was wrong, for the sake of the Iraqi people as well as payback against his numerous threats against us. He acted and the Iraqi people are now free. Imperfectly free, but free.
There is no more Saddam, Al Queda is being routed everywhere, and soon Iraqi institutions will have to live up to their billing.
The United States formed the Articles of Confederation, they didn’t quite work, and five years later they founded the Constitution, which did. A lot of strife and struggle occurred during those years, and the US had the advantage of being a nation with a long history of dealing with freedom and the UK’s legacy of democracy.
I think we have to understand that forming a democracy takes time. Iraq is not perfect but it’s improving. In another decade or so I think we’ll find the Iraq war was a big success, with a great free country rising from the ashes. Nothing’s perfect but I think we can be proud of what we’ve accomplished.
D
Mar 19, 2008 - 3:16 pm Fen:“The Democrats were content to sit back and watch him stay evil.”
Worse, the Dems were willing to let him go back to his WMD programs. Watch them pull the same cowardice over Iran - Democrat Foreign Policy:
[Today] “We should not attack our enemies while they gather their strength”
[Tomorrow] “Our enemies have grown too strong to attack”
Mar 19, 2008 - 6:38 pm M. Simon:No plan survives contact with the enemy.
Winning a war requires continual adjustment. From the way things are going these days it looks like the proper adjustments have been made.
So what now? Abandon Democracy in Iraq because the war was hard? I was unaware that “Abandon Democracy” was the new Democrat slogan. Obviously I haven’t been keeping up.
Mar 19, 2008 - 6:44 pm An European:The War in Iraq is the central and most sensitive question of these strange American elections (for an European), where the most absurd voices are opposed to the most obvious reasons. I am sure the racial or religious problem is secondary in these elections, if not quite irrelevant. The primary problem is the historical destiny of the United States. And the destiny of this great country is the destiny of the World. So I think it necessary to have a clear idea, based on the reality and not on the demagogical fantasies of the American liberals and the European leftists, of this “strange” War.
Mar 20, 2008 - 1:58 am Chris:From the military point of view the Iraqi war was perhaps the easiest of all the wars in the history of the United States, and nevertheless, it provoked more resistance everywhere than any other. And not because it was a “mistaken” war; on the contrary, it was absolutely right and necessary, lead with a mastery that not very often has been seen in contemporary history. There must be not confounded, as mass media do, the war in strict sense, fought and won in little more than two weeks, and the terrorist guerrilla of post-war period, that still lasts and that was always particularly difficult for a regular army.
In Northern Ireland it lasted more than forty years with almost four thousand dead, mainly civil, and it was extinguished rather because the terrorist groups lost their “social base” than by the military action. But Americans have demonstrated their effectiveness and, above all, political wisdom also in this “war without rules”, organizing the new Iraqi army and assuring free elections. Clausewitz would be ecstatic before this military and political capacity of the Americans. In effect, war becomes inevitable, like a surgical operation, when the “ordinary medicine” of pure politics works no longer, creating a new context that allows politic to follow its course again.
From the historical point of view its consequences can be compared only with those of the II World War, which created a new order based in the separated “spheres of influences”. The dismantling of the Soviet Union finished off this system of “balances”, quite fluctuating, by the way. The nations had to find a new equilibrium or direction in order to continue their historical existence and no to be lost in the labyrinth of the time without exit and end. In effect, time is not a simple “physical quantity”, but a creation of the man, that is to say, only the historical time is real.
From the political point of view, for those who have been witnesses of the evolution of the last 20 years, the change produced by the Iraqi war appears still more radical, because it has concluded definitively the era of coexistence with the dictatorships, that are impenetrable, except for crime and putrefaction, like a dense and dark matter, to all vivifying movement. The dismantling of two monstrous and irremediably criminal regimes, like those of the talibans and of Saadam Hussein, has created new democracies, reinforced the existing ones, and not only in the Middle East, but also in the Eastern Europe, causing contemporarily the weakening of dictatorships that still remain and try desperately to counteract and to resist the extension of the democratic sphere.
And, on the contrary, the lack of American military response after the terrorist attack of the 11 of September would have flooded Europe and the United States with terrorism, and not only Islamic, but also “revolutionary”, constantly awaiting propitious occasion to resume its destructive action; it would have reinforced the criminal regimes, weakened the existing democracies and suffocated the new ones. This is the unique and main reason that provoked the protest of the “pacifists” and “liberals”, who have always collaborated with all totalitarian regimes of the worse kind, without hiding their irrational hatred for democracy. In effect, all these protests had an only aim: to prevent the expansion of the democratic sphere, that can happen only under the American sign, because the American democracy is the only one that has a true universal vocation, and for that reason no reactionary force, represented by all dictatorial regimes, can stop its march to freedom.
In our time the most reactionary force is Islamism in all its forms, radical and “moderate”. That is why the Afganian and Iraqi Wars were true revolutionary ones, like the American War of Independence, and George W. Bush is the only true revolutionary President, like the great Commander-in-Chief George Washington. In this historical context, one vulgar demagogue, like Obama who preaches tolerance and peace with the criminal Islamofascist and communist dictatorships, these by-products of the History, can only disappear in the Nought from where he came out.
M. E.
Michael - sorry, I know Harry’s place is a pro-war blog, and that was obvious from the comment. In my hurry to pop out a comment, I neglected this. As to “Hussein and Terror”, I think the last time Deroy Murdock updated this was in 2006, when Saddam was hanged. Nevertheless, it is still a great piece of research that can easily be used. As to the original content in the article, I agree wholeheartedly with what you stated about Orwell’s observation. Those other bloggers just steamed me, and I had to reply!
I think M. Simon said it best with his simple sentence - “No plan survives contact with the enemy”, which can be seen time and time again throughout history.
And M.E., a beautiful post. Thanks!
Mar 20, 2008 - 7:11 am Neil Pharazyn:Our site http://www.newsknife.com rates news sites based on their appearances at Google News.
You may be interested in Newsknife’s current rating of Iraq news coverage at Google News.
* 2008 year-to-date:
- major news sites ranked for current Iraq coverage
- top news sites in Iraq and nearby regions
- top Iraq-related headlines
* Plus bonus ratings from Newsknife’s archives…
Apr 2, 2008 - 7:59 pm- 2003, top news sites covering the move into Baghdad, protests, Colin Powell at the UN, etc
- 2005, top sites covering the Iraq election
- 2007, top sites covering the US mid-term elections Iraq debate