April 1, 2006

“Of course there have been mistakes [in the Iraq War]. But it was not a mistake to overthrow Saddam Hussein; it was not a mistake to unleash the forces of democracy in the Middle East.”  —Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

As you may have read in the news recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is gallivanting around the globe saying what a good thing the war in Iraq is. When challenged about the war, she always reduces it to Saddam Hussein being out of power. I agree that seeing Hussein out of power is a good thing, but Rice speaks as though all of the war’s other attendant elements — chaos, insurgency, factionalism, inadequate planning, inadequate funding, inadequate armoring, overblown misstatements about weapons of mass destruction — don’t enter into discussion. She seems to be saying that the ends (Hussein removed from power) justify the means, however excessive or egregious those means may be.

I would reply to Secretary Rice that, to the contrary, however noble one’s intentions may be, it is a mistake to initiate a war of choice if you don’t have adequate plans to win the peace. In choosing to go to war, the Bush administration relied on unrealsitic assumptions and best-case scenarios to plan for attacking Iraq. Any more pessimistic projections by more experienced experts were dismissed — if not the basis for retribution. Most famously, in 2003, when the Army’s then-Chief of Staff, Gen. Eric Shinseki, contradicted the administration’s optimistically small number of troop requirements after the invasion — saying that a more significant numer of combatants would be needed on the ground — the administration prematurely announced his successor to the office, effectively rendering Shinseki an irrelevant lame duck.

So, as good as it is to see an out-of-power Hussein, this single deposed dictator (when there are so many tyrants in the world) doesn’t justify the misleading and sloppy way that the Bush administration rushed to war.

But I’m sure that my argument will fall on deaf ears.