In the constant drumbeat of negativity regarding Iraq (halted briefly by the recent vote on the Iraqi Constitution), it might be wise to put the situation in some historical context. This is not to excuse any mistakes or to paint a rosy scenario, but in the wake of the 1991 war and the relatively swift success in Afghanistan perhaps expectations were unrealistic in Iraq.
Let's take the prosecution of the war first. While perhaps being too rosy in his scenario, Todd Bevan makes some good points that there is a growing myth of incompetence surrounding the Bush administration's handling of Iraq. The virtue of Bevan's piece is that it reminds us that there are always alternatives, and there is no indication that alternative courses by the Bushies would have turned out any better than things are now. The main point I stress to my American Foreign Policy students is that foreign policy is hard. One should never say, "Well, obviously this course was wrong and this course was right." It's only obvious in hindsight, and maybe not even then. As things stand now, Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyl (who spells his first name correctly) are optimistic about Iraq, Larry Diamond less so, and this WSJ article points to a growing professionalization of the Iraqi police. Americans should be reminded that wars always contain mistakes and profound blunders. In the Civil War, the Union Army showed amazing incompetence at battles such as Second Manassas and Fredricksburg. In WWI, the British invasion of Gallipoli, dreamed up by Winston Churchill, was such a spectacular failure that they made a movie out of it. In WWII the first time the Americans encountered the Germans, at Kasserine Pass in North Africa, they were soundly defeated and discovered that much of their equipment was wholly inadequate. The British would lose the island of Cyprus to the Germans despite having nearly perfect intelligence. On the ground incompetence cost them the island. I think the greatest mistake the Bushies have made regarding Iraq is to stay with failures such as George Tenent and Paul Bremer long after they had proven ineffective. But I caution against attacking the Bush administration simply because they have made mistakes. Who wouldn't have? Those mistakes should be measured against the difficulty of the goal and success toward the goal.
What about the Iraqi Constitution vote? As Prof. Blanchard notes, the results were not unanimous. It turns out that a strong segment of Sunni Iraqis oppose this Constitution. But, of course, a stronger majority of the rest of the country supports it. And so what if there is a strong minority opposed? Was the American experience any different? The thoughts of those opposed to the U.S. Constitution, the Anti-Federalists, are still being studied. In fact, my beau ideal of a political scientist, Herbert Storing, wrote a book called What the Anti-Federalists Were For (since we all know what they were against) and edited a seven volume edition of Anti-Federalist writings. Those opposed to the Constitution nearly carried the day in important states such as New York and Virginia. In Virginia, leading lights such as George Mason and Patrick Henry led the argument against the U.S. Constitution. And as with Iraqi Constitution, support of many would be gained only by promising to amend the document once it was ratified. Those amendments, of course, became the Bill of Rights.
Again, nothing here is meant to white wash mistakes or to ignore the difficulty of the task. My purpose is to show that the goal in Iraq is ambitious and will inevitably encounter serious setbacks. History tells us that many outcomes only seem obvious in retrospect. It was not obvious in 1788 that the U.S. Constitution would be ratified or in 1862 that the Union would win the Civil War. It was not clear in early 1943 that the Allies could defeat the Axis, and certainly no one would have dreamed that the anchors of the Axis, Germany and Japan, would be, within a decade or so, transformed into thriving democracies. Just a reminder.
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