Iraq War: Shifting Rationales.

Dear President Bush:

We anti-war people were completely wrong, huh? Yes, we were wrong when we said that he had no WMD. And we were way off the mark when we said that invading Iraq would result in a civil war between the Shiites and Sunnis. And boy did we screw up when we said that the Iraq war would drain the resources needed to fight the actual terrorists. And it would create more terrorists, doing more harm than good. And the occupation would be a nightmare. And the Shiites don’t want democracy; they want an Islamic theocracy in the mold of Iran. Etc. Man, we really should be more careful next time.

Before I get to the current war in Iraq, I want to mention one thing that the media never mention. The REPUBLICAN PARTY, under Ronald Reagan, SUPPORTED SADDAM HUSSEIN, IN 1983, AGAINST IRAN. Sorry, I had to get that off of my chest. The MSM never see the need to point out your hypocrisy.

So, was Saddam Hussein a nice, pleasant fellow when he was our ally in the early 1980’s, when Ronald Reagan and Donald Rumsfeld armed him against our common enemy, Iran? I’m wondering, because many of the things that Bush has in recent years said about Hussein – torturing Iraqi citizens, invading neighbors, gassing people – are absolutely true; however, we already knew about them in 1983, when Rumsfeld, smiling, shook good’ole Saddam’s hand.

I'll write quite a few entries regarding the war in Iraq. This is just my first. In this post, I want to focus on your shifting rationales -- i.e. lying -- for war with Iraq. Your reasons for war evolved over time. At first, you just wanted to link Saddam with Osama bin Laden and 9/11. This is pretty funny, because you were counting on us to have amnesia. Do you remember why Saddam was our ally? Yes, because he was a secular leader, which is why bin Laden hated him. That’s right, they were actually enemies, Saddam and Osama, that is, and yet you wanted to make them out to be allies. Clever.

After that had been disproved, you stopped saying, directly, that Saddam and Al Qaeda were in cahoots to destroy America together. You were too smart for that. You would say something like, “Now Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, just like Al Qaeda, who attacked us on 9/11, and Saddam Hussein may give weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda, who attacked us on 9/11, so that Al Qaeda, who attacked us on 9/11, may have weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein, so when they, Al Qaeda, who attacked us on 9/11, attack us again, like they did on 9/11, they will have weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein, to carry out their 9/11-style attack on us, and the next 9/11 attack from Al Qaeda, who attacked us on the first 9/11, will be carried out using weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein. Now rather than seeing a mushroom cloud, let’s invade Iraq.”

It’s pretty impressive how you would link the two without really linking the two. (And some people say you’re not smart.) You would carefully choose your words so that no one could accuse of lying, but you were obviously trying to be deceptive.

So your next justification for war, proceeding directly from your first justification, was Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, which could be seen by your administration and absolutely no one else. I hate it when that happens. You know, when I was six, I had a friend named “Fuffles” who came from the planet Plupiter through my closet door to give me magic twinkies! But no one could see him but me!

So where are the weapons of mass destruction? That’s right: they weren’t there. Thus, you moved on to different rationales, as reported by Dana Milbank and Mike Allen of the Washington Post. On August 1, 2003, they wrote:

As the search for illegal weapons in Iraq continues without success, the Bush administration has moved to emphasize a different rationale for the war against Saddam Hussein: using Iraq as the 'linchpin' to transform the Middle East and thereby reduce the terrorist threat to the United States. President Bush, who has mostly stopped talking about Iraq's weapons, said at a news conference Wednesday that 'the rise of a free and peaceful Iraq is critical to the stability of the Middle East, and a stable Middle East is critical to the security of the American people' (Milbank & Allen, 2003).

The article continues, quoting several members of your administration basically saying, in slightly different words, that the regime change in Iraq will serve as a catalyst for change in the middle east, a lighting rod that will spread democracy throughout the region like a wildfire. Suddenly, every Muslim, middle-eastern nation will embrace human rights, political and religious freedoms and free elections. It’s some nice talk. However, aside from being roughly your third explanation for the necessity of war in Iraq, it’s also a bunch of crap. You know as well as anyone that this was an impossible dream. It simply was not going to happen.

Milton Viorst stated in the LA Times in 2003: “Iraq's Shiites, 60% of the population, most of them fervently religious, have stunned U.S. officials who gave us the war to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Not only do they reject our occupation, but they also dismiss the Western-style democracy that we were assured they would welcome” (Viorst, 2003).

Viorst argued then, and it has been proven since, that the majority of people in Iraq simply do not want a democracy; they crave an Islamic theocracy. Toppling Hussein – as evil a despot as he was – has ironically helped the Islamic theocrats, and thus the terrorists (Viorst, 2003).

This rationale evolved into the “liberating the Iraqi people” defense, and I have a few comments on this as well. First of all, this is so Wilsonian. I thought you Republicans were against nation-building; yet here we are, invading a sovereign nation in order to bring them democracy. In the process we will spend hundreds of billions of dollars rebuilding their infrastructure. I think I get it; you’re only against nation-building for nations without oil under their feet, right?

The Iraqis obviously don’t want us in their country, but we continue to spill American blood on Iraqi desserts, and continue to bleed our taxpayers’ money, on “liberating the Iraqi people.” My mind is numb trying to figure out how roughly 30% of the US population still believes you.

If this were true, and if we really are justified in invading Iraq because of our goal of “liberating them,” why wouldn’t we go through the UN? That’s a question I have. You argued that the “pre-emptive,” unilateral attack – in defiance of the UN – was necessary because Saddam was a direct threat to us. That premise was shot down like my pick-up lines at singles bars. So, if he wasn’t a direct threat to our nation, why couldn’t we go through the UN at that point? Why do we need to “pre-emptively,” unilaterally, “liberate” people who don’t like us, from a tyrant that we once supported, and then try to create stability among people who hate each other and hate us simultaneously. What, exactly, is wrong with you?

Sources

Allen, M., & Milbank, D. (2003, August 1). U.S. shifts rhetoric on its goals in Iraq. Washingon Post.
Viorst, M. (2003, May 25). Why they don’t want Democracy. The Los Angeles Times.