Sunday, December 14, 2008

Well, Actually, ... No.

BAGHDAD, Dec. 14 -- Arriving in Baghdad today for a farewell visit, President Bush staunchly defended a war that has taken far more time, money and lives than anticipated, saying the conflict "has not been easy" but was necessary for U.S. security, Iraqi stability and "world peace."
Well, actually, Mr. President, no. None of those things required us to invade Iraq, and what's more, none of them have been improved by our invasion.

U.S. security? Mr. Bush seems to have forgotten (for some reason) that our exhaustive examination of the country showed that not only did Saddam NOT have WMD, but he wasn't likely to have them any time soon. He also had no missiles capable of delivering a weapon to the US. Despite Dick Cheney's repeated fantasies about a meeting in Prague, Saddam was not in league with the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.

Saddam was a horrible dictator and crazy man, but, as W's father understood, taking him out was not "necessary" for U.S. security. Despite Condi Rice's repeated use of the image during the run-up to war, Saddam was simply incapable of producing a "smoking gun" in the form of a "mushroom cloud".

What's more, multiple revelations since the invasion have not only shown that, they have shown that WE KNEW THAT. It was the administration's self-fulfilling desire to end Saddam that was the actual threat to our national security.

As for Iraqi stability? Is he serious? This is the man whose supporters have been telling us the place would devolve into chaos the second we bring our considerable armed force home? I realize Saddam was an awful tyrant, but before our invasion, Iraq had managed to stand on its own under that tyrant for many years. It's sad but true: Iraq was far more stable before we invaded than it is today.

Not that this should be a surprise. As we've learned more about pre-war planning, it's clear that, as with WMD, the planners were woefully mistaken about the realities of Iraq, and cruelly negligent in assessing what would be required. Despite the various positions to which they have pivoted over the years, it's clear they went in with no intention of actually working to establish a stable democracy after the fall of Saddam. They intended to go in, take out Saddam, and come home. They tossed out the work of serious adults to prepare, either believing that the long=sought thriving secular Arab democracy would instantly spring to life, just like their pal Chalabi told them, or just not really caring. Either way, stability for Iraq wasn't a motive for the invasion.

The New York Times gives us a view from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. Staffers at the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance were meeting with CENTCOM to discuss the plan.
During the two-day-long conference, key ORHA officials briefed six aspects of their evolving strategy: planning assumptions, requirements, high-impact actions, measures of effectiveness at 30, 90, 180, 270 and 360 days; policy decisions required; and "showstoppers". Security was the number-one showstopper. Official meeting notes state that "current force packages are inadequate for the first step of securing all the major urban areas, let alone for providing an interim police function. Ambassador George Ward, head of ORHA's humanitarian pillar, asked, "How am I going to protect humanitarian convoys, humanitarian staging areas, humanitarian distribution points?" A flag officer who had flown in from CENTCOM said, "Hire war lords." "Wait a minute," Ward thought, "folks don't understand this. There are warlords in Afghanistan, not in Iraq. There were no warlords to rent." "At that point," Ward says, "I thought this was going to fail because no one is paying serious attention to civilian security."

Dick Mayer, a former police officer and deputy director of the Department of Justice's International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), proposed that 5,000 international police advisors be rushed into Iraq to bolster rule of law efforts after the military victory. But no plans were made for such a deployment.
As for world peace...what can be said? We are still at war, years later. Iraq became a training ground for terrorists, and now the world has many more angry young men with experience building bombs, blowing up innocents, and taking out military convoys. The precedent of the "Bush Doctrine" means that now, in situations around the globe, countries may feel free to attack others on the thinnest of pretexts. How are we to talk India down from attacking Pakistan, when the evidence of Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai attacks might actually exist, as opposed to what we had going into Iraq? The cause of world peace has been set back by our efforts in Iraq, not promoted. Does he honestly not see that?

I will be glad when the President of the United States no longer spouts such Orwellian nonsense as claiming his foolhardy war was peace and that turmoil is stability. Considering the damage he has done to that country, and the claims he was making on his farewell visit, he's lucky he only had shoes thrown at him.