Was the Iraq War a mistake?

[vimto]

Do you understand even?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I'm just amazed at the support of Saddam here.

What did he have as a redeaming quality for dictating the couontry?

How can you defend this man?

and don't get off of the subject.

I just scanned the thread, who was defending Saddam? Did I miss something?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Meanwhile, the Iraq war is a mistake because.

From the point of view of the majority of citizens of the invading countries. (I say majority because for a minority, Halliburton or Blackwater shareholders for example, and other clients of Joe Allbaugh , it has been highly profitable)

1) It has made them more liable to terrorist attack in return for no corresponding benefits. One of the London bombers made a video that explains all this very clearly, from the point of view of an actual terrorist.

2) It costs a very great deal of money, which will come out of our taxes, or out of our public services, or both.

3) It gets our soldiers killed to no useful purpose (propaganda bullshit apart) and has probably rendered the US military useless and impotent for the forseeable future. Their morale is in the toilet and the whole world can see how ineffective they are against a bunch of rag-tag militias. Of course they can still drop bombs on innocent civilians from a safe altitude, but that's not going to win them anything but more enemies if the whole world knows they can't take and hold the ground underneath with their soldiers.

4) The exposure of the lies they used to start the war has brought the governments of both the US and UK into disrepute with their citizens. (Some may argue that this is a good thing, but I assume you're doing this for some sort of US high-school debate where the consensus would be that it's not good for citizens to assume that anything their government says is probably a lie)

5) Involvement in torture has horribly besmirched the reputation of the US in particular, but also that of the UK in being associated with it. There is no real doubt in the minds of most people around the world that the US is actively committing war crimes. Whatever their politicians may say to excuse them. This has wrecked the reputation of the US as a decent and honourable nation, among the many people who previously believed that it was.

6) It has significantly destabilised the middle east, from which much of the oil comes. Oil that is absolutely necessary for the maintainance of the present global economic system. That's really a very large potential problem, and one that there is no evidence that they have any idea how to solve.

From the point of view of the government of Iran though, it's been a huge success. Not only has an unfriendly regime been replaced on their borders by a friendly one, at least in the bit of Iraq with most of the oil, but that regime is heavily influenced by people who owe them favours and in many cases no doubt are actually their agents. The "Great Satan" is being humiliated right in front of the whole world while the Ayatollahs laugh and laugh ...

Meanwhile the cause of Salafi terrorism has also gained an enormous propaganda victory, although that's likely to be dwarfed by the victory they'll gain when the US runs away whining about being betrayed by liberals and so on. Meanwhile they have the best recruiting and training ground they could possibly hope for and an endless supply of recruits, eager to practice their terrorist skills on lots of handy US miliary personnel.

One really has to wonder whose side Cheney, Rumsfeld at co are actually on. Are they double agents for Al Quada or for Iran? It's rather hard to tell.

Of course they could just be incompetent morons. Either way, history will not treat them kindly.

 

[herman]

The war was not a mistake, and any attempts by the media to portray it as such now things are going tits up should be rejected. The war was part of a deliberate policy. The fact that things haven't gone to plan does not take anything away from the fact that the US now has millitary bases in another country, access to markets and reconstruction contracts, are in a position to destablise the neighbours (Iran and Syria) and have a largely controlled regime administering the oil. So there seems to be no mistake.

The war was a criminal act, defying not only international law but flying in the face of Christian notions of "Just War" and the peace has proved impossible to win- but I don't believe any mistake was made. They are achieving their goals.

But their goals and the interests of the people either in the US/UK or Iraq are not necessarily the same thing.

 

[nino_savatte]

I just scanned the thread, who was defending Saddam? Did I miss something?

It's typical of many US right wing nuts to use tropes to demonise their opponents or to rationalise the position of their opposition in this way. Rusty Nuts is just another ignorant yes man for Team Bush and like so many of our resident Bushbots he is knowledgeably ignorant about other countries. He's a hit and run poster for sure.

 

[oi2002]

The war was not a mistake, and any attempts by the media to portray it as such now things are going tits up should be rejected. The war was part of a deliberate policy...

Most great strategic mistakes are deliberate policy. Operation Barbarossa, both Mussolini's and Stalin's pacts with Hitler, Pearl Harbor, the Bay Of Pigs, JFKs commitments to Vietnam and Israel, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, 9-11 etc.

Just like the American intervention in the Vietnam civil war, this was primarily about strategic flexibility and the neighbors, in the 60s it was China, in 00s it was Iran and Syria. While it's fair to say Syria has been cowed by M1As on it's border the principle enemy Iran has actually grown much stronger. This was meant to be a short war that would produce basing opportunities, secure Gulf oil production against attack and keep the Gulf Kingships stable and obedient vassals. On these grounds it has failed. The US is overstreched weak and exposed.

Pentagon strategy wonks are very frank about the costs of the Iraq war. While the war lasts the US does not have a land army. Bringing Iraq to a successful conclusion might require decades of commitment. The US is left reliant on its Navy, Airforce and Nuclear options. DC has long seen its military as the guarantor of its hegemony and is deeply worried by this.

The fissures opening up in the US elite over Iraq suggest that they are less naive than the average US punter. This is no longer about national pride, the elite stand to lose their shirts if the Gulf Kingships fall.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

While they're all tied up in Iraq, the US military is no longer as credible a threat as it once was. Sure they can bomb infrastructure and civilians from a safe altitude without committing troops, but that's not a decisive argument against anyone who is really serious about defying the Washington consensus. For example, it looks unlikely to convince Iran of anything much.

That has some negative consequences, but it also has positive ones, right around the world. Maybe it's worth exploring some of the positive outcomes.

There is perhaps a potential window of opportunity for some countries to shake off some of the deadly consequences of globalisation, because the expropriation and/or destruction of their natural resources and social capital is no longer directly backed up by the threat of the US military. For example, this is an opportunity for people in the developing world to tell US agribusinesses and the IMF to fuck off, as the democratically elected Venezuelan government has, and to try to do some worthwhile land reform for example. Of course anyone wanting to do that has to be able to resist their own local exploiters first, but at least those aren't in the position to get backup quite so easily from the US right now, if they look like failing to control the situation themselves.

 

[oi2002]

Larry Korb at The Center for American Progress is suggesting strategic redeployment PDF .

"It has become clear that if we still have 140,000 ground troops in Iraq a year from now, we will destroy the all-volunteer army,"

There are some comments on it here:

While the Bush administration is unlikely to announce a timetable for troop reductions, the CAP plan is probably similar to what Bush policymakers have in mind anyway, according to Dobbins, of RAND.

U.S. military planners, administration officials and critics on both the right and left all seem to have different agendas for troop reductions in Iraq, but each group essentially has the same aim -- to have most American troops out of the country by the end of 2007, Dobbins said.

"I think (the new report) is exactly what the U.S. military plan is and I think it's exactly what the administration and the president hopes can take place by then," he said. "The problem is that each of these constituencies, if you will, is speaking for a different audience."

Broader strategic realities will shape the US withdrawal into something very similar to what Larry proposes, essentially a return to offshore balancing, but the timetable will be set by the next Presidential race and haunted by the ghost of Vietnam.

 

[Dopermine]

Your views don't matter.

You don't live their.

Saddam ruled the country like some tenth centry king, he stold everything he wanted and his sons, raped and robbed and killed for the fun of it...........

And now he's gone, and the people have a chance at living in peace and security, just like you do.

Whoops, you've fallen right into the Neo-Conservative elephant trap. This is an ideological war to prove that...war is good. That'll show those namby-pamby liberals.
War is an instrument of power for elite groups such as the neo-cons. They have invented all manner of propaganda to disguise the basic blood truth of power - war benefits the elite totemically, ontologically and economically.
Saddam knew that, Kaiser Bill knew that, Hitler knew that, Blair and Bush know it. You don't.
There have been no US mistakes in Iraq. Anything that prolongs war is good for hierarchies.
Oppose all elite power - whether Bush, Blair or Al-Zarquawi, they all play the same game.

 

[jonH]

There is no war as such just a series of barbaric acts committed by men with bombs and ammunition, things have gone completely out of control, even the neo cons can't tell who's boss.

 

[oi2002]

Pat Lang has a big fat post larded with PDF files on the intelligence failures that lead up to the war. This PDF by David Habakkuk is particularly strong on the harm a little poorly understood Strauss can do:

The fact that the OSP got Iraq so spectacularly wrong, was certainly comprehensively gulled by Ahmed Chalabi, and most probably was turned into an instrument of a brilliantly executed deception strategy which has massively increased the power of the theocratic regime in Iran, is I think no accident. Put Straussians in charge of intelligence and this kind of thing is what you will get. Their intelligence blunders follow from fundamental flaws in Strauss’s intellectual method.

Quoting Sherman Kent in his 1949 study of 'Strategic Intelligence in American World Policy':

Research is the only method that we of the liberal tradition are willing to admit is capable of giving us the truth, or a closer approximation to truth, than we now enjoy. A mediaeval philosopher would have been content to get his truth by extrapolating from Holy Writ, an African chieftain by consultation with his witch doctor, or a mystic like Adolf Hitler from communion with his intuitive self. But we insist, and have insisted for generations, that the truth is to be approached, if not attained, through research guided by a systematic method. In the social sciences which very largely constitute the subject matter of strategic intelligence, there is such a method. It is much like the method of physical sciences. It is not the same method but it is a method none the less.

That's what the elitist neocon hacks in the OSP failed to understand.

On the dangers of overreliance on intuition, Kent developed his argument in an elaboration of his contrast of ‘research’ with the approach practised by Hitler. He stressed that he had no wish to claim infallibility for the method he was advocating, or to suggest that hunches and intuitions were 'uniformly perilous'. There were, he wrote, 'hunches based upon knowledge and understanding which are the stuff of highest truth.' What he wished to reject, Kent suggested, was 'intuition based upon nothing and which takes off from the wish.’ Developing his argument, he noted that on a number of occasions Hitler was indeed proved right and the advice of his experts wrong. But he went on to catalogue the long list of misjudgements by which Hitler which contributed to Germany's ruin. And recalled how Ribbentrop, as Foreign Minister, had expressed scepticism about the feasibility of the goals for aircraft and tank production set out by Roosevelt in January 1942, on the basis of a failure to grasp that the steel production figures he had been given were calculated in millions of tons rather than thousands.

Concluding his discussion, Kent noted the disastrous effect of Hitler's disregard for advice on the German intelligence services. When, he commented, 'intelligence producers realize there is no sense in forwarding to a consumer knowledge which does not correspond to his preconceptions, then intelligence is through. At this point there is no intelligence and the consumer is out on his own with no more to guide him then the indications of the tea leaf and the crystal ball. He may do well with them, but for the long haul I would place my money elsewhere.'

And here we have the nub: the failure to consider Tehran's non-military instrumentalities in the Iraqi Shi'a South:

At this point, however, one also comes up against the fact that questions to do with secret intelligence are inextricably bound up with larger questions of political and social analysis. We can formulate the point in terms of the combination of Kent's analytical framework with that of Collingwood. Let us suppose that an investigation of the 'objective situation' in Iraq indicated that the Iraqi Shi'ia were essentially secular – as Paul Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives believed. It would follow that it was unlikely in the extreme that the regime in Tehran could have 'non-military instrumentalities' by means of which it could hope to establish control over all or part of Iraq. Of course, it might still be the case that the people in Tehran thought that they had such 'instrumentalities' – but if the 'objective situation' was such that they could not have, it would follow as a simple point of logic that they were wrong. It would be possible that the United States would need to take into account the possibility of actions based on this wrong analysis – but the question about possible Iranian intentions in Iran would become relatively much less salient. Let us however start from the reverse assumption. It would then be extremely natural to suspect that the Iranian religious Shi'ia could have a strategy to achieve control over all or part of Iraq. The question and answer complex naturally generates a requirement for intelligence both as to the intentions of the Iranian government, and also of those organizations opposed to Saddam Hussein who have been supported by that government. If there are such intentions, then of course it is natural to suppose that efforts would be made to conceal them. The intelligence problem would be to formulate alternative hypotheses and to work out means of testing them.
...
Had it been the case that the Iraqi Shi'ia were as secular as they thought, then toppling Saddam Hussein might perhaps have been expected to produce a challenge to the Iranian regime -- as well as, although the logic is harder to see here -- a new political alliance to replace the traditional alliance with authoritarian Sunni regimes. In the event, of course, the outcome was to massively increase the influence of the Iranians, at least for the time being.

Why was this? I suggest that the hostility of S&S to 'social science' may hold one key. Although they have so much education, the effect of the kind of education they have is to produce an intellectual incapacity rather similar to that of Felix Cowgill. The reason is that they genuinely believe that they have been given access to a superior truth, which means that it is not necessary to reckon with the objections of the uninitiated. One consequence of this is that, if someone like Chalabi has appropriate credentials, it is extraordinarily easy for him to dupe the neocons.

The OSP of course were just lackeys serving their masters, telling them what they wanted to hear, all I've read on the build up to war suggests an atmosphere of group delusion in the Pentagon.

Was the Iraq war a mistake? Well it was founded on a deeply flawed understanding of Iraqi society. Dick and Dubya really did not understand the risk they were taking or the limitations of the US military. It's not operation Barbarrossa or the Athenian invasion of Sicily but it's a far bigger error than Vietnam.

 

[oi2002]

Francis Fukuyama and G. John Ikenberry co-chaired a working group on Grand Strategic Choices recently here is their report PDF which stresses the urgent need to shed the strategic deficit in Iraq and focus on emerging threats in Asia:

It may seem fanciful to speak of the centrality of Asia at a time when the United States is fully engaged in a hot counterinsurgency war in Iraq. However, one way to think about the recommendations in this report is to view Iraq as the near term danger but Asia as the long-term challenge. In other words, we must transition the United States to an Asia centric grand strategy but first it is imperative that we deal with the security challenges in the Middle East.

We are skeptical about using military power to transform the Middle East and we believe that the United States stirred up a hornets nest by invading Iraq and dealing with the aftermath in the way that it did. However, it is also clear to us that the consequences of failure in Iraq, now that we are there, could prove to be catastrophic, leading to further American casualties, a failed state in the Sunni region which could serve as a launching pad for terrorism, a civil war that could come to include neighboring states, a diminution of American prestige and credibility, the potential for an isolationist turn in American public opinion, and the continuing preoccupation of the United States with the Middle East.

The consequences of failure rule out a simple departure. There are no easy solutions. Indeed, finding any solution is exceptionally difficult. The prudent option is to exhaust strategies in descending order of desirable outcomes. Thus, plan A is to stay the course for the next 5-10 years, using a sizable U.S. military presence to wage a counterinsurgency war and forge a stable and functioning Iraqi state. Plan B is ‘Iraqification’ in which U.S. forces begin to draw down during the next 12-18 months as the Iraqi constitutional process advances, with greater near-term reliance upon Iraqi forces. There is also a plan C, by which the country is in effect partitioned and the defense burden falls on the Kurdish and Shiite militias. Plan A is not tenable for both operational and political reasons; a large continuing U.S. military presence feeds the insurgency and has strained our ground forces. The Bush Administration has thus apparently moved to some version of Plan B, to which we see no immediate alternative.

Plan C is an act of desperation that will be costly above all for the Iraqis given how intertwined the different ethnic and sectarian populations are.

Or put more crudely: Iraq is a karsee, our pants are down and we'll be Bejing's jailhouse bitch if we don't watch it.

 

[Dopermine]

This was meant to be a short war that would produce basing opportunities, secure Gulf oil production against attack and keep the Gulf Kingships stable and obedient vassals. On these grounds it has failed.

In other words, it was pure fantasy spun out to mesmerise the masses, which it has succeeded in doing. Don't be foooled by it. Herman is spot on.

 

[oi2002]

In other words, it was pure fantasy spun out to mesmerise the masses, which it has succeeded in doing. Don't be foooled by it...

Err no, 9-11 made the masses maleable anything was possible in the rage that followed. This isn't about selling the war. The dumdbshit thing was not realising that taking out Saddam meant giving Basra and 80% of Iraqs oil reserves to Tehran. And that means to an Iran backed by China.

The fantasy is that DC is run by superhumanly competent men, when evidently it's full of naive, lawerly, party hacks unprepared for the roughhouse of international affairs. It's rather weird that folks on the left buy into that West Wing dreaming just like Peebs does.

 

[Streathamite]

I'm just amazed at the support of Saddam here.

What did he have as a redeaming quality for dictating the couontry?

How can you defend this man?

and don't get off of the subject.

you really are a brain dead fucking clown, aintcha?
let me explain; opposing one murderous regime inading another does not mean we support that other regime.
fuckwit

 

[Dopermine]

Err no, 9-11 made the masses maleable anything was possible in the rage that followed. This isn't about selling the war. The dumdbshit thing was not realising that taking out Saddam meant giving Basra and 80% of Iraqs oil reserves to Tehran. And that means to an Iran backed by China.

The fantasy is that DC is run by superhumanly competent men, when evidently it's full of naive, lawerly, party hacks unprepared for the roughhouse of international affairs. It's rather weird that folks on the left buy into that West Wing dreaming just like Peebs does.

9-11 is part of an ongoing struggle for control of media space. It was a media event. Those Islamists seek control-through-fear just like the neo-Cons.

The competence in question is the ability to create power mythologies through media, at which Zawhri, Al-Zarquawi, Bush and Blair are experts. This is a primary force of ideological control. They must be good at it, as they successfully exert power.

Leftists seem to have a crude materialist view of the war as securing oil supplies. This is necessary but not sufficient. The war is, at root, ideological.

I've never seen West Wing. Who is Peebs?

 

[oi2002]

...Who is Peebs?

Pbman, one of our resident Dubya diehards.

I'd not confuse Karl Rove's spinmeister genius with other forms of competence. It's one thing mobilising the base to seize power and quiet another to be able to use that power. Grand strategy is about the very careful calculation of longterm risks the smoke and mirrors that gulls the masses is merely the icing on the cake.

But if you look closely at why Dubya has messed up so badly it is precisely because he's focused on manipulating public perceptions to conceal mistakes rather than actually fixing them. Dubya calls Rove the Architect and that's telling his whole administration is a confection of spin, all icing and no cake.

The Habakkuk paper I posted above and Wilkersons recent fulminations against the Cheney Cabal are all about competence corrupted by a tendency to self deception.

 

[Streathamite]

one big reason why the war was a failure; it removed the single biggest obstacle to a wholesale fundamentalist/militant Islam takeover of one of the most economically and politically important states in the region, so making such a takeover that much more likely

 

[oi2002]

Just to quote Habakkuk again:

Let us suppose that an investigation of the 'objective situation' in Iraq indicated that the Iraqi Shi'ia were essentially secular – as Paul Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives believed. It would follow that it was unlikely in the extreme that the regime in Tehran could have 'non-military instrumentalities' by means of which it could hope to establish control over all or part of Iraq. Of course, it might still be the case that the people in Tehran thought that they had such 'instrumentalities' – but if the 'objective situation' was such that they could not have, it would follow as a simple point of logic that they were wrong.

This should not have been a known unknown. Southern Iraq had been heavily penetrated by Iranian intelligence since the Iran/Iraq war, the principle Shi'a political groupings Dawa and SCIRI had both sheltered in Iran, after the destruction of the Iraqi army in Desert Storm Saddam no longer had a credible opposition and within the devout Shi'as of the Iraqi South the only moral authority was Al Sistani. This evident via public domain sources let alone simple contacts with Basra folk before the invasion.

DC has handed 80% of Iraq's oil to Tehran, they'll totally control the Basra field within 5 years. That will make them China's favorite and beyond DC's power. Those overlooked non-military instrumentalities could make Iran the dominant power in the ME.

 

[herman]

I stated in a post above that I did not believe that the US made any mistake I think I should have expanded on that a little so here goes.

If we are to believe the US governments publicly stated aims of regime change to bring about stability and democracy then by any measure this could be seen as a failure and therefore a mistake.

But there have been plenty of papers, some from official sources and published back before the conflict, that have suggested that what has been occuring is part of a strategic shift by the US in response to what the US perceives as emerging rival powers. It is interesting that even while conflict was occuring the US government publicly stated that existing contracts with the Baathist government would not be honoured post conflict, in effect lessening the influence of Russian, Chinese and European influence in the region from a strategic perspective.

Sometimes it is wise to take a look at a map to consider the strategic importance of an intervention.

Since there are undemocratic governments all over the world and not just in the region of recent conflicts we could first of all discount the democracy argument, indeed where undemocratic regimes serve the US well there is no such clamour for democracy.

The second popular argument is that the US went to war in Iraq for their oil, this is unlikely to be the case given that oil can be aquired on the markets and through trade without going to the extraordinary expense of conflict.

This leaves a number of alternative questions from a geopolitical standpoint.

Questions were raised for example regarding the desire of the Saddam regime to start trading oil in Euros- there has been much talk of the implications of this on News 24 this week and I will not rehash the arguments here, suffice to say that it would have a catastrophic impact upon the US economy should such a policy lead to the opening of the floodgates. Iraq were not and are not the only oil producing nations considering such a bold step.

Secondly there is the question of the transfer of oil and gas to the market, given that a number of powers are eyeing up oil in the Middle East, Caspian etc. The control of the flow of oil maybe one of the big strategic questions of the 21st Century, especially if there is as peak oil theorists argue to be diminishing supply.

Interesting when we view pipeline maps (including proposed future pipelines) recent conflicts dovetail with key conflicts in recent years (including Yugoslavia and Afghanisan and the "democratic" coup in Ukraine).

In the case of Afghanistan there were negotiations ongoing with the Taleban re the construction of pipelines (I believe from the Caspian Sea).

When we consider policy of the US in prosecuting the so called war on terror (for example regarding Georgia or in the Stans) there seems to be an overlap with states that are central to all regional powers (eg Europe, Russia, India and China) with the supply routes of oil and gas from the Middle East, Asia (including the Caspian region) to the major powers.

If this is the case then it should come as no suprise given the insistance by Bush that millitary and economic security are the same thing.

I would contend that the US is playing a longer game than one concerning democracy, regime change and the prosecution of a so called war on terror.

We know for example that China and Russia are trying (with some success) to regain the initiative in the Stans with governments in the region pushing the US bases out, the Stans are important not as major potential markets for consumer goods nor given transportation considerations as major hubs for US led manufacturing. In terms of pipeline politics however they are essential. These routes incidentally have an overlap with the expanding network of millitary bases, that may even have further function beyond oil politics altogether- eg Star Wars.

It is interesting to note that where European Eastward expansion has represented potential for the Us (eg Yugoslavia) then the US is supportive but where EU policy represents a direct competition to the US eg Gallileo over GPS the US are scathing. The US incidentally seems to be increasingly hostile to the notion of European army, an idea they supported as recently as the Clinton years. For this reason I would suggest that it is fair to place EU on the list of US strategic competitors (with China and Russia and in the coming years given growth levels probably India too).

If in the long term the US seeks to play up the rivalry between the powers and drive a wedge between them then the current policy makes a lot of sense- but don't let the failure to build democracies fool us. The US, given the lack of ideological impetus following the collapse of the USSR, does not do democracy building, indeed given what we know now regarding the foreknowledge of the US regarding Venezuela coup and the ouster of Aristide in Haiti- control seems more important than any democratic notions.

It may well be that Bolivia pays the blood price should they have the gall to vote the wrong way to US diktat.

My contention is thus: the US has not made a mistake but is playing a long term strategic game for bigger stakes than simply the democratisation of any single nation state. Reconstruction contracts for Haliburton may be a bonus, but are not the sole aim of intervention- its unlikely that War Keynesianism is the sole aim of the US.

 

[Dopermine]

all icing and no cake.
QUOTE]
Welcome to the modern world of control through media. CF Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. The Iraq invasion was in imitation of previous moments of US "greatness", beating the Nazis etc.
There is no cake anymore. Politics is all icing.

 

[nino_savatte]

all icing and no cake.
QUOTE]
Welcome to the modern world of control through media. CF Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. The Iraq invasion was in imitation of previous moments of US "greatness", beating the Nazis etc.
There is no cake anymore. Politics is all icing.

That's a good book. Hats off to Baudrillard.

The sign is all important and there are many in DC and in this country who accept the sign as real. "Iraq has a government, therefore it is a proper state and everyone is happy...except for these anti-Iraqis who keep blowing things up". It's all a media event.