Mea Culpa

Four years ago, as the United Nations Security Council debated, dithered, and delayed, and as thousands of American troops prepared to strike at the heart of Saddam Hussein‘s decrepit regime, few supported the impending invasion of Iraq as ardently as I did. I was captivated by a very Big Idea; namely, that for America to be secure, the virulent pathologies of the Arab world must be forcibly supplanted by Western political and moral ideals. Only by transforming the Middle East from a medieval wasteland of radicalism into a beacon of liberalism and democracy, I believed, could America hope to avoid further terrorist attacks on the scale of those just eighteen months earlier. The war was to be the bold masterstroke that would deal Islamic terrorism a death blow.

Although just a college sophomore, I formulated sophisticated arguments in support of the war and the grand theories that underlined it. For every possible charge, I had a answer.

Anti-war argument: “Saddam is contained, he wouldn’t possibly be foolish enough to jeopardize his regime, would he?”

Me: “Saddam has invaded two of his neighbors in the last twenty years, and both invasions met with disastrous results. It would be foolhardy to place our trust in the restraint and strategic judgment of a man who has historically shown very little of either.”

Anti-war: “Saddam doesn’t have WMD.”

Me: “Saddam has spent the last twenty years trying to build and hide WMD. The UN weapons inspectors said he still had them when they were expelled from Iraq in 1998. If he was bent on acquiring WMD even while the inspectors were in the country, why would he stop producing them after the inspectors were gone?”

Anti-war: “The Iraqi people are not ready for democracy.”

Me: “After thirty years of enduring one of the most repressive rulers in human history, they couldn’t be more ready.”

Anti-war: “This is just a war for oil.”

Me: “I suppose you’d rather have Saddam in control of the oil then. One of our most implacable enemies with his hand on the lever of the world economy; that sounds real safe.”

Anti-war: “Only the UN can give a war legitimacy.”

Me: “So if an alliance of European socialists and third-world dictators give their blessing, then the war suddenly becomes right? That makes no sense.”

Anti-war: “We will radicalize and destabilize the Middle East.”

Me: “Heaven forbid we undermine the same stability that brought us 9/11. It’s time for a change.”

And so on and so on. Both strategically and morally, I firmly believed the war was the right thing to do.

And then, just when it seemed like those strange months of suspense and build-up might go on forever, it finally happened.

Initially, the first weeks of the war seemed to confirm everything I had been so passionately saying. Saddam’s iron rule quickly collapsed, to the apparent delight of most Iraqis. All the naysayers who had darkly predicted thousands of American casualties had been proven spectacularly wrong. The much-feared retaliatory terrorist attacks in the West never materialized. Even the chemical weapons that most observers, pro-war and anti-war alike, had assumed that Saddam possessed were never used against American troops. The Bush administration and its supporters, of which I was a proud member, were riding high.

The widespread looting that broke out in Iraq was the first indication that all was not right. Lacking orders to stop the looters and lacking the numbers to effectively do so in any case, the American military could do nothing but stand by as Iraqi government buildings all over the country were ransacked and plundered down to the last chair. Millions of potentially revealing documents were irretrievably lost just in the first few hours of the New Iraq. For Americans eager to sift through the former regime’s secrets, it was an annoyance. But for Iraqis, it was a momentous occasion that went far beyond the value of the looted goods. It was most Iraqis’ first exposure to life without Saddam, but unfortunately it left an indelible impression, one that the United States has been scrambling to overcome ever since: Freedom means chaos and anarchy.

Contrary to the expectations of many, the United States, and specifically Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, had no intention of staying in Iraq for longer than six months, nor was there any plan or inclination to provide security to Iraq’s lawless streets until an indigenous government could be established. Evidently democracy, respect for the rule of law, and tolerance were expected to spontaneously blossom in the desert once Saddam’s regime was ended. It was the first, and perhaps the most severe example, of many delusions to be exposed by reality on the ground.

I, like many others, had failed to understand just how traumatized and dysfunctional Iraqi society had become after decades of repression, brutality, and isolation. I mistook the obvious need for democracy for the ability to practice it. With far too little thought of the potential consequences, I had accepted a vision of liberty as a messianic, transforming agent in human affairs that had the power to cure most of society‘s ills, no matter what the background or circumstances. But perhaps even more egregious than my overestimation of democracy’s inherent wonder-working power and Iraqi people’s capacity to receive it, was my confidence in the American government’s ability to give it.

As the insurgency against American and British forces grew in strength, the Bush administration finally began to realize that its initial plan to decapitate Saddam’s regime, set up a friendly government of Iraqi exiles, and quickly withdrawal, could not be implemented. Coalition forces found themselves combating a fierce insurgency, but without enough troops to make any lasting gains. In Washington, Rumsfeld effectively killed any chance for a coherent counterinsurgent strategy by clinging to his pet project of high-tech military transformation. Now Rumsfeld is gone and a true counterinsurgency expert, General David Patraeus, is in command in Iraq, but I fear it is too little, too late for Iraq’s impending civil war to be averted.

In the four years since the war began, my views of the war have gone from enthusiastic support, to disillusionment, to resolve, and now to realization. What began as a war to liberate the oppressed of the Middle East has left authoritarian regimes stronger than ever and pro-democracy Arabs discredited. The same Iraqi Shiites that we fought to empower are now falling under the influence of an emboldened Iran. What was supposed to be a shining example of American power and goodwill has become a showcase of American incompetence and weakness. It is easy to say that the war has been grossly mismanaged. No one seriously disputes that fact anymore. It is far more to say that the assumptions underpinning the justification for the war itself were fatally flawed. Now I am saying exactly that--unfortunately, four years too late.