President Trump’s decision to help Israel destroy Iran’s most hardened nuclear facilities, combined with his promised resumption of military assistance to Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s war of aggression, has elicited criticisms from both the Democratic Party’s Left and the Republicans’ isolationist or libertarian Right. Although neither action involved the use of American ground troops, the critics typically warn of the supposed danger of involving the U.S. in “forever wars,” as exemplified by George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq (based on fears that Saddam Hussein was developing a nuclear arsenal) as well as Afghanistan.
But while the idealistic George W. Bush sometimes exhibited a misguided “mission creep” … there was plenty of legitimate justification for his original enterprise.
Setting the Afghanistan issue aside for the present, I maintain that warnings based on the Iraq case are misguided. Correcting the historical record in this instance is important, precisely because of its bearing on possible future military decisions. While acknowledging that significant strategic and tactical errors were made in the planning and effectuation of the Iraq invasion, I maintain that the decision to invade was a sound one, in light of the information that was available at the time.
And I will remind readers that the necessity of such an invasion was agreed on by leaders of both parties at the time, because of the justified fear that Iraq’s tyrannical and imperialistic ruler, whose previous invasion of Kuwait had to be repelled in 1991’s Operation Desert Storm, had renewed his longtime quest to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
I begin by stressing a critical point made by Henry Kissinger in his classic book Diplomacy: when decisions must be made about whether to stave off a likely, serious potential threat to their nation’s security, policymakers can rarely afford to postpone action until they have certain knowledge of the threat, at which time (as in the case of British and French appeasement of Adolf Hitler) it may be too late to avert disastrous consequences.
Rather, in crucial situations, statesmen must rely on the most probable estimate of a threat, based on as thorough information as time permits them to obtain. In such situations, a nation is more likely to suffer the consequences of failure to act, thanks to underestimating the danger of inaction, than of what may prove to be action founded on what turns out to have been the overestimation of a danger — or, at least, of its immediacy (as happened in the case of Iraq).
By the end of the Clinton presidency, there was bipartisan agreement between leading Democrats (including Clinton) and Republicans that Saddam’s rule had to be overthrown, not chiefly on account of his horrific treatment of his own subjects, but because of evidence of his past aggressive actions towards other nations, suspicions that he was engaged in renewed efforts to construct WMD, and the likelihood that he would use those weapons to endanger his neighbors,’ and the world’s security.
Belief in the urgency of deposing Saddam before such efforts could be completed was reflected in Brookings Institution fellow Kenneth Pollack’s 2002 book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (published by the Council on Foreign Relations), which exerted considerable influence on the Bush administration’s decision to invade in 2003. Notably, a decade before Desert Storm, Saddam had been engaged in constructing a reactor for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons at a site called “Osirak” in Syria, until Israeli air strikes destroyed the facility. (Remarkably, the reactor’s construction was financed by the French government, aiming to increase its influence in the Middle East.)
The successful attack was immediately denounced by the U.N. General Assembly and Security Council. Indeed, even President Reagan unwisely condemned the Israeli action as a supposed violation of international law. But subsequent research demonstrated that at the time of the attack Saddam, who had vowed to “drown Israel in rivers of blood,” was within a year of being able to produce nuclear weapons. And in June,1991, during a visit to Israel after the Gulf War, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney gave Major General David Ivry, commander of the Israeli Air Force, a satellite photograph of the destroyed reactor, writing on it, “For General David Ivri, with thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi Nuclear Program in 1981, which made our job much easier in Desert Storm.”
Following the completion of Desert Storm — which President George H.W. Bush ended prematurely, in the judgment of many informed analysts, by leaving Saddam in power and failing to disband his elite Republican Guard — the U.N. Security Council established a Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) with which Saddam Hussein initially promised to cooperate, aimed at discovering and eliminating any remaining programs designed to generate WMD. (Rapidly rearming after the war, the Guard was nonetheless widely reported to have used poison gas along with rape and murder to suppress uprisings by Iraq’s Kurdish minority.)
But while Saddam initially promised to cooperate with the U.N. inspections, he worked to undermine and circumvent them from the outset. Following the removal of inspectors in 1998, the Security Council substituted a Monitoring, Verification, and Inspections Commission (UNMOVIC), and inspectors from that agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) returned to Iraq in November, 2002.
But what was supposed to ensure Iraqi cooperation with U.N. inspections was a program of sanctions imposed by Western nations, notably restricting the regime’s capacity to earn revenue through oil exports. However, by 2002, America’s European allies had grown reluctant to continue the sanctions, leading U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to propose a set of “smart sanctions” that would ostensibly have the same effect while requiring less of the sanctioners. Yet there was little likelihood that they would succeed. (Pollack discusses the reasons for the inevitable failure of sanctions in the seventh chapter of his book, titled ”The Erosion of Containment.”)
Subsequently, in February, 2003, the highly respected Powell made a presentation to the Security Council providing what was believed to be definitive evidence of Iraq’s renewed development of WMD, and observing that “Iraq’s behavior demonstrates that Saddam Hussein and his regime have made no effort … to disarm as required by the international community. Indeed, the facts and Iraq’s behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction … These are not assertions. What we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.”
During the hour-long multimedia presentation, Powell narrated a video and slideshow of satellite images, recordings of intercepted phone calls, and illustrations showing trucks and train cars suspected of serving as mobile production facilities for bioweapons.
As things turned out, of course, the intelligence Powell cited to justify an invasion proved to be erroneous — as invading American forces were soon to discover. What had seemed to be evidence of Saddam’s concealing a new program of developing nuclear and other WMD was actually, it turned out, an effort by the dictator to intimidate both domestic political opponents and neighboring, potentially hostile states (such as Iran) by making them believe that he possessed such weapons.
In the end, the wily dictator proved to have been too clever by half. But having overthrown his rule, American authorities were left with the responsibility of somehow replacing it with a more respectable and responsible system of government. (Following Powell’s well-known “Pottery Barn” rule, “you break it, you own it.”) This task proved vastly more difficult than military or civilian planners had anticipated. Among other errors, one prominent Defense Department official reportedly expected that the Iraqi people would welcome the establishment of republican, non-tyrannical government, since prior to Saddam’s 1968 coup, Iraq had had one of the largest educated middle classes in the Middle East — overlooking the fact that much of that class had fled the nation well before 2002.
What lessons, then, are to be drawn from the Iraq invasion? Following Kissinger’s prescription, it remains the case that Saddam’s refusal to cooperate with inspectors; his highly suspicious efforts aimed at encouraging the belief that he had resumed developing WMD; his having attempted to develop a nuclear weapons facility in 1981; his reported continued use of chemical weapons; his 1991 invasion of Kuwait; and his never-ending expressions of determination to obliterate the nation of Israel added up to overwhelming reason for policymakers to conclude that it was necessary to overthrow his regime before it was too late.
A nuclear-armed Iraq would have posed no less a danger than a nuclear Iran would today. And given Saddam’s history, once the sanctions fully ended, in all likelihood, he would in fact have resumed his WMD program.
Subsequently, while Americans expended a great deal of blood and treasure in trying to establish a stable, quasi-republican regime among a people unaccustomed to self-government and torn by sectarian strife, Iraq to this date has not fulfilled the prophecy of some American pessimists that it would turn into a subsidiary of the Iranian regime (since both countries have Shi’ite majorities). And America did make a successful exit from Iraq (unlike the horrifying mad scramble conducted by the Biden administration in removing American forces from Afghanistan, abandoning many Afghanis who worked with us to the un-tender mercies of the Taliban, along with the strategically important billion-dollar Wagram air base and perhaps billions of dollars in military equipment.)
Victory, it is often said, has many fathers; defeat quite few. Hence one will find few Democratic spokesmen nowadays who will acknowledge their party’s original support for Desert Storm. But while the idealistic George W. Bush sometimes exhibited a misguided “mission creep” in proclaiming the core accomplishment of our Iraq invasion to be something like promoting the cause of democracy throughout the world, rather than simply defending the vital interests of civilized nations, especially the U.S., against potentially nuclear-armed aggressors, there was plenty of legitimate justification for his original enterprise. This justification exists no less today for Trump’s having assisted Israel in destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities, and (one hopes) enabling the heroic Ukrainians to defend their freedom against another vicious, aggressive tyrant.
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