Was The Iraq War Worth It? >
'Biden Plan' Is the Most Realistic Solution in Iraq
The "democracy" mission in Iraq served primarily as a justification for U.S. forces
November 11, 2011
About Daniel J. Gallington:
Daniel Gallington is the senior policy and program adviser at the George C. Marshall Institute in Arlington, Va. He served in senior national security policy positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Justice, and as general counsel for the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
On balance, the answer is "no," but not for the mostly political arguments that continue to be made. Instead, here are the specific reasons affecting our national security directly:
9/11 response? The "right" response to 9/11 was strategic--an immediate, massive, and sustained attack against Afghanistan and the "ungoverned regions" of Pakistan. Paid for, literally, by the Saudi Arabian government, because of its historical relationship and financial support of the radical factions giving rise to Osama bin Laden, his followers, and the 9/11 attacks. Iraq, assuming it had a WMD program, was a legitimate "concern" at the time, but not the primary one.
[Condoleezza Rice Should Have Quit Over Iraq War]
Decision to invade? Nevertheless, we should defer to the Bush administration's determinations made on the then-available intelligence; this because it was a consensus determination of intelligence services around the world, not just a "slam dunk" finding on our part. So, despite the internal politics, finger-pointing and "20/20 hindsight" of the decision to invade, it was probably the "right" thing to do at the time; i.e., George Bush and the senators who voted to "authorize" the war were "right," and those who opposed it, including then Senator Obama, were "wrong."
After Saddam, and no WMD? Leave Iraq (except for some key strategic bases/functions) and support it's division into three, "semi-autonomous" regions: Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd. This was later called the "Biden Plan," after then Sen. Joe Biden.
Remaining for "democracy"? The "democracy" mission in Iraq served primarily as a justification for U.S. forces to remain after Saddam was dead and the WMD issue was settled. Rather than invest politically in this "new mission," we should have acknowledged that we were going to stay until we determined that the region was less, or no longer, dangerous for our national security.
[Is the United States Safer 10 Years After 9/11]
Paying for it? The war was paid with borrowed money because we would have not supported a 10-year war if we had been required to pay the "current" taxes necessary to sustain it. The "human" costs are immeasurable, and particularly painful to the regular, reserve, and National Guard units supporting multiple combat deployments over the past 10 years.
After we leave? Iraq will revert quickly to its traditional tribal and religious based "system" of pervasive corruption. Iraq is not a "country," never has been and never will be--this despite the billions we spent there on "democracy"--the "Biden Plan" is still the most realistic political "solution" there.
- Moving Forward from 9/11
- Dick Cheney's Book Is Less Memoir Than Caricature
- Obama Fulfills Campaign Promise in Declaring Iraq War Over
- Other Arguments
-
#113461
No — Expensive, deadly effort did not make the U.S. any safer
PHYLLIS BENNIS, Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies
-
#28859
No — It enhanced the narrative that the U.S. seeks to conquer and occupy Muslim countries
LAWRENCE J. KORB, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress
-
#46084
Yes — Arab culture is not the problem; absence of rule-of-law is
MICHAEL RUBIN, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
-
#54293
Yes — Hussein ordered the deaths of more people in the Middle East than any leader since the Mongol invasion
JAMES PHILLIPS, Senior Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Heritage Foundation
-
#631100
Yes — The Iraq war freed the world of a dangerous, determined, and irrational leader
ABRAHAM SOFAER, George P. Shultz Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
