The war debate, a year later

2004.05.01 — Government | War | by Derek Jensen

I was firmly against war with Iraq when the president first started overusing the term "weapons of mass destruction" and calling for action. I was astonished at the gung-ho attitude of the news media and general complacence of the Democratic leadership as well as most Americans. It was part of the reason I created this website.

To me, war with Iraq was a completely unnecessary and perilous exercise in American arrogance. It was gunboat diplomacy without bothering with the messy diplomacy part. Worse, it was a needless distraction from the real war on terror that would destroy al-Qaeda.

At this point a year ago, the president was declaring an end to war in Iraq and the beginning of occupation. Everybody knew that it would take many months—perhaps more than a year—to stabilize Iraq, rebuild its infrastructure, and set up a provisional government. Nobody was betting on serious battles going on at this point. Certainly not my sister.

As the war started, I engaged in a series of e-mail messages with my sister, a former Navy NCO and certified member of the military-industrial complex. She included me on her mailing list for the various cheerleading messages she passed along, the first couple of which I parried gently. But the Lonnie J Lewis letter got me to engage her more on the administration's weak rationale for war. Here is what I said about the Lewis letter on March 28, 2003.

Aside from the fact that I don't believe for a moment that this is really a
son's letter home to his "Hollywood" mother,...

The Lewis letter is authentic, but Lewis's mother lived near Las Vegas. The message that introduced the letter implied that she lived in Hollywood (and was therefore part of the Hollywood liberal elite with Tim Robbins and Sean Penn), but she was just an ordinary citizen intending to go there for the demonstration. She ultimately decided not to go to avoid offending her son. —DJ

...it perpetuates the convenient
myth that it has been proved that Saddam Hussein was involved in the
terrorist attacks of 9/11 or in Africa or elsewhere. Now, that may
eventually be shown to be true, but it hasn't been yet.

It proved not to be true. Saddam's ties to al-Qaeda were apparently similar to those of our ally Saudi Arabia. That is, he may have paid off al-Qaeda operatives to keep them from attacking his country. There have been allegations that he funded Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel, but I haven't seen decent evidence of that; anyway, the same charges have been leveled at some rich Saudis. —DJ

Of course, it has been proved that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy who would
like to destroy Israel, humiliate America, and conquer his neighbors, but
the world has known that for many years. For example, Donald Rumsfeld knew
it when he visited there in the 80s as part of Reagan's administration and
helped Saddam in his invasion of Iran.

The news media has not really explored this, in my opinion. Rumsfeld is the last guy we should have trusted when it came to dealing with Iraq. —DJ

We chum up to the worst sort of dictators when it is convenient for us, and
we knock them down when it is convenient for us. That's just hardball
geopolitics the way Republicans like it. The truth is that Bush has
concocted a reason to finally take Saddam out once and for all
and—hopefully—make the Middle East a safer and more stable region...not to
mention giving the US a nice fat parking lot for several hundred Abrams
tanks, gassed up and ready to roll...just in case Iran or Syria gives us any
lip.

This has unfortunately proven true. —DJ

[If] we can prove a country is a serious threat to world peace or even
regional stability, and if we can get the United Nations to agree—and if we
think [we] can do it with very light casualties, invading and decapitating a
tyrannical regime is praise-worthy. But Bush is skating on thin ice on the
first two of those conditions

It has turned out that Iraq did not have WMD and was therefore not a serious threat, we could not get the UN to agree, and we could not do it with very light casualties. —DJ

(I have absolute confidence in our modern
military to conduct this operation humanely and without extensive casualties
among Coalition troops or Iraqi civilians—there has never been a more
skilled or more humane fighting force in history).

Ooh, gotta go. Cartoons are on.

My sister replied with a kindly rebuke that Saddam was "eyeball deep" in terrorism and that I should "trust" her. She went on to say that Democrats were just as bad as Republicans in their own way. I won't name her or quote her here because she had a reasonable expectation at the time that the communication was personal and private, but my reply to her on April 2, 2003 was wary.

But "trust me" is all the White House has had to offer on the issue all
along. I can't help but be reminded of the Gulf of Tonkin fabrication.

Since then, others have found other reasons to compare Iraq with Vietnam, unfortunately.

Yeah, I know Johnson was a Dem; my point about GOP geopolitics was about the
voter in the street. We can't trust leaders from either party...which is why
I'd like more evidence of Iraqi involvement in terrorism and (current)
possession of chemical and biological weapons from the administration (or
the UN). We can't beat up people who deserve it if we can't prove they
deserve it.

Of course Saddam "deserved" to be removed from power, but my point here was that we couldn't prove our premise that he was an immediate threat to anyone outside Iraq.

Say what you will about the French (frankly, I won't be surprised if we find
records of some post-embargo sales of banned items to Iraq), if we're going
to invade another country, we ought to at least be able to justify it to the
Canadians.

Again, unfortunately, it has proved true that France, as well as Russia and others, were working underhanded deals with Saddam that circumvented the sanctions and perpetuated the misery of the Iraqi people. But I stand by my point about the Canadians. If we can't convince Canadians of some big international goal, we need to rethink our goal and methods.

My sister didn't reply to this message. She sent me one more message about the war (an American Enterprise Institute article about a poll of Iraqis conducted in September of 2003). I responded to that one, more gently again since it was already starting to look like (as Rumsfeld put it candidly) a "long, hard slog," and I was already starting to plan this website.

Being right about these things hasn't made me happy; it has made me depressed. I don't think I was prescient, just skeptical. Too few of us were skeptical.

My sister doesn't forward war-related messages to me anymore. What started out seeming to me to be a bad idea has become almost my worst nightmare. Osama bin Laden still walks the earth while 105 Americans sent to hunt him don't. In Iraq, Coalition dead will soon top one thousand, with thousands more wounded. There has been 100 billion dollars spent with no end in sight.

UPDATE: Jesus Christ, those figures sound quaint now. Don't they? To date: nearly 2,800 Americans dead, more than 20,000 wounded. And over $330 billion spent.

Iraqis have no government and an infrastructure just now returning to the pre-war level of "lousy." They hate the occupation and may collapse into civil war.

And are we any safer? Is Iraq even better off?

Not by much.

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