Was The Iraq War Worth It? >
Iraq May Become a Reliable U.S. Ally
Hussein ordered the deaths of more people in the Middle East than any leader since the Mongol invasion
November 11, 2011
About James Phillips:
James Phillips is the senior research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation. He has written extensively on Middle Eastern issues and international terrorism since 1978.
It is too soon to tell if the Iraq war was "worth it." That depends on whether Iraq can make the difficult transition to become a stable democracy and an ally against Islamist extremism, Iran, and terrorist groups. But on balance, the Iraq war was a risk worth taking in view of the dangers inherent in ignoring Saddam Hussein's support for terrorism, his serial massacres of his own people, and Iraq's suspected WMD programs.
Although flawed intelligence skewed the perceived threat posed by Saddam's regime, I think that the Bush administration made the correct decision to disarm Iraq and oust Saddam, given the information then available. Although Iraq's missing chemical weapons were never found, Saddam was caught red-handed hiding prohibited missiles and slaughtering his own people, both violations of U.N. Security Council resolutions as well as the ceasefire that ended the 1991 Gulf War.
[Condoleezza Rice Should Have Quit Over Iraq War]
President Bush was by no means alone in emphasizing the urgent threat posed by Iraq. President Bill Clinton justified a three-day U.S. air offensive against Iraq in December 1998 by warning:
Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again at his neighbors; he will make war on his own people. And mark my words he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them.
After 9/11, it would have been even more risky to ignore Saddam's provocations. If he had been left in power, he likely would have provoked yet another war. Saddam had a well-documented thirst for vengeance and a long history of using surrogate terrorist groups against his enemies. His regime even launched a failed assassination plot against former President George H.W. Bush in Kuwait in 1993.
[Dick Cheney's Book Is Less Memoir Than Caricature]
Few would argue that removing Saddam was an error. He invaded Iran and Kuwait, used illegal chemical weapons against Iranians and Iraqi Kurds, and ordered the deaths of more people in the Middle East than any leader since the Mongol invasion seven centuries ago.
After Saddam fell, Iran and al Qaeda launched their own wars against the U.S. in Iraq. But if Iraq ultimately becomes a reliable U.S. ally against terrorism and Iran, then the Iraq wars will be worth it.
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- Other Arguments
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#111751
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
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#27551
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
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#35756
No — The "democracy" mission in Iraq served primarily as a justification for U.S. forces
DANIEL J. GALLINGTON, Senior Policy and Program Adviser at the George C. Marshall Institute
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#45073
Yes — Arab culture is not the problem; absence of rule-of-law is
MICHAEL RUBIN, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
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#62286
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
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