If hindsight indeed is 20/20, how come no one ever examines foreign-policy actions not taken, while those like George W. Bush’s 2003 decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein are forever second-guessed?
Thanks to a British public commission, we’re once again relitigating Iraq. According to John Chilcot, the principal author of a new British inquiry into the war, it was waged on the basis of unchallenged yet deeply flawed intelligence. There was no postwar planning, and diplomacy wasn’t exhausted in the lead-up to military action that should have only been used as “a last resort.”
As he released the 6,000-page, 12-volume, 2.6 million-word report Wednesday, Chilcot said his inquiry didn’t attempt to assign legal culpability. Nevertheless, he said, legal justifications for the war were “far from satisfactory.”
That will no doubt be used as ammunition by those who’ve long called for trying the British prime minister at the time, Tony Blair, on war crimes charges. And can Bush be far behind?
Politically, the Chilcot report will embolden those, like Bernie Sanders, who say Iraq was “the worst foreign-policy blunder in the history of the country.” Or Donald Trump, who just added Saddam to the list of his favorite foreign dictators. “Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, right?” Trump told a crowd in North Carolina on Tuesday. “But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so good.”
OK, leave it to Trump to ignore Saddam’s well-documented support of terrorists in the Mideast. Yet he’s reiterating a received wisdom: Saddam’s Iraq had “nothing to do with 9/11” and by overthrowing him, America and our allies have opened Pandora’s box, which bred the current Mideast mess and gave birth to ISIS.
True: Dismantling state organs after the overthrow of Saddam — known as de-Baathification — was a terrible mistake that deepened sectarian hatreds. It was based on a faulty, idealistic notion that once Saddam was gone, freedom would replace his despotic rule.
But remember when the decision to invade Iraq took place: two years after 9/11, the deadliest terrorist attack in American history, which didn’t at the time look like a one-off. Anthrax envelopes, a shooting spree and the fear of a follow-up attack put America on war footing.
Afghanistan was first, but it wasn’t enough. While al Qaeda was headquartered in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, its principals were Arabs and they were a product of the Arab world’s ills.
As in Saddam’s Iraq — where chemical weapons were used to put down resurrections; where sectarian enmities that bubbled under the surface were only capped by a ruthless, corrupt and megalomaniacal tyrant; where destructive weapons, including nukes, were in development in the past, were widely believed to still exist, and could easily fall into the hands of terrorists.
But Chilcot’s also wrong about a very big part of the report’s conclusion. Diplomacy with Iraq did, in fact, reach a dead end. At the United Nations, Russia and France were about to dismantle the sanctions regime that kept Saddam from resurrecting his chemical, biological and nuclear programs.
And while Bush made terrible mistakes after toppling Saddam, he eventually managed to turn the tide. Between 2007 and 2009, al Qaeda in Iraq was defeated, the Sunnis cooperated with Baghdad and Iraq was mostly peaceful.
President Obama’s decision, in 2010, to back Nouri al-Maliki — even though he’d lost an election — and, more generally, America’s vow to withdraw forces from Iraq threw Iraq back into chaos.
On Wednesday, Blair insisted that “Iraq in 2003 had no chance; Iraq today has a chance.” Well, maybe — though it’s hard to see it now. But clearly his and Bush’s decision to overthrow Saddam wasn’t the only reason for the current bloody state of the Middle East or for Sunni-Shiite enmity or the rise of Islamist terrorism.
History is much trickier than that.
George H.W. Bush’s decision not to overthrow Saddam after the first Iraq war in 1991 was just as momentous. Bill Clinton’s decision to largely ignore the 1996 attack on Americans housed in Saudi Arabia’s Khobar Towers signaled to Islamist terrorists that they could strike Western powers and get away with it. Obama’s avoidance of any serious military intervention in Mideast disputes prolongs war, mayhem and terrorism.
There’s a lot to criticize about how Bush and Blair led their respective governments — and the world — in the last decade. Their actions are endlessly dissected and investigated. But lack of leadership and inaction, while much harder to write lengthy reports about, can be just as bad, if not worse.
Because, errors and all, an America-led world is a better place than one led by Russia, China and ISIS.