The media's favorite trap question for Republican presidential candidates these days concerns the 12-years-ago invasion of Iraq, and whether each candidate - had they been president at the time - would have invaded and removed Saddam Hussein from power "knowing what we know now." The premise of the trap, of course, is that "we know now" there were no WMDs, and "we know now" that the task of stablizing Iraqi democracy proved exceedingly difficult, and further that Iraq is now in jeopardy as ISIS rampages across the land.
So the media's presumption, of course, is that the Iraq War was a terrible mistake, and they want to know if the prospective next Republican president will criticize the last Republican president by saying so. If he will, they'll shout to the heavens that GOP candidates are throwing George W. Bush under the bus. If they won't, they'll rip them for defending a war that conventional wisdom long ago decided was a disaster.
That's why it's a trap. It seems that you can't win no matter what you say. And Republican candidates are making themselves sound ridiculous trying to split the difference between the two answers. Most try to rely on the fact that the intelligence about Saddam having WMDs was accepted by everyone at the time, and that Bush had to make a decision based on the intelligence he was given. That's true, and it's a very effective defense against the left-wing nonsense that Bush "lied us into war," but it's not an answer to the question. The question is whether they would have invaded Iraq "knowing what we know now."
And there is a good answer to that question, but it's not the one any of them are giving. Here it is:
Invading Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right thing to do, but there were several things wrong with the way it was done - and just about everyone on the American political scene has culpability there.
The first mistake was basing the entire case for doing it on Saddam having WMDs. That was not really the main reason he needed to be removed. Going back to the 1991 Gulf War cease fire, Saddam agreed to a variety of conditions that the U.S. demanded in order for him to remain in power. One of them was regular weapons inspections. Another was adherence to the no-fly zone. Throughout the Clinton Administration, he thumbed his nose at these requirements and was made to pay very little price, all the while continuing to brutalize his people. Especially egregious was his refusal to document the destruction of his weapons as required. The U.S. had more than enough cause to go back to war and take him out based on these things alone.
Add the realities of the post-9/11 time period, and it no longer seemed like such a low-risk proposition to allow Saddam to operate in this manner given what we knew about the way Al Qaeda had used its safe harbor in Afghanistan to stage the attacks. He had already started two wars. He had already used chemical weapons against his own people. If the U.S.-imposed terms of the cease fire meant anything at all, Saddam had to go - and with the U.S. committed full-bore to the destruction of every regime that might aid and harbor terrorists, we were well past the point where we could just abide Saddam's behavior and claim we had him contained.
That was all we needed. The 1991 UN Security Council vote combined with the cease fire violations give the U.S. all the authority it needed to go in and take him out. But the Bush Administration, probably at the urging of nervous allies who wanted more political cover, decided to seek a second UN Security Council vote, and the argument that Saddam posed an imminent threat because of his WMD programs was viewed as the best way to get it. I'm not saying they didn't believe he had the WMDs. They did believe it. But they still made a mistake using that as their primary justification. I don't even think they believed that was the main reason Saddam needed to be removed. But they thought that was the best way to sell it to the UN.
That decision turned out to be a disaster. The UN Security Council vote was 9-7 in favor, but France and Russia exercised their vetoes and the U.S. was denied authorization. Bush correctly declared that the U.S. did not need the UN's permission to act, but that only made the decision to spend so much political capital seeking it in the first place look that much more foolhardy. Plus, the challenge of "finding the WMDs" became the measure by which the media and the Democrats assessed the legitimacy of the war. It was no longer enough that Saddam had refused to document their destruction. Now it was on the U.S. to find them, and if we didn't, then the whole war effort was viewed as tainted.
The second major mistake, of course, was the failure to anticipate the challenges of the insurgency and the difficulty of establishing a western-style democracy in a nation that had no tradition in it. I disagree with those who argue it couldn't have been done (or that it couldn't be done even now), but it required a lot more commitment to the nation's security than I think the Bush Administration realized would be needed. We also didn't make very good decisions in the people we chose to run things there. Jay Garner was a disaster, and while Paul Bremer was better, some decisions that seemed to make sense at the time - like the disbanding of the Iraqi army - ended up biting us in the # when the insurgency reared its head and the Iraqis weren't able to contribute as much as they might have to the fight against it.
Ultimately the 2007 surge, which should have been undertaken at least two years earlier, put Iraq on the road to peace and stability. And that is where Bush deserves credit and where we need to fault some other people.
I have always believed that the Iraq War was one of the Democratic Party's most shameful moments - and that's saying something, because they've had a lot. Their votes were essential in authorizing the war in the first place, and they abandoned the effort politically as soon as it got difficult. They saw it as a political opportunity to defeat Bush in 2004, and that was more important to them than seeing the troops succeed in their mission. They took every chance they could get to tell the American people that we were losing and that our troops were committing atrocities. They fought Bush's attempts to properly fund the war effort, and they bitterly opposed the surge.
Taking their cue from the Democrats as they usually do, the media began sensationalizing every problem in Iraq and ignoring every success. Yes, there were problems, but they made the war sound like a lost cause in 2005-2006 only to see Bush defy them and essentially win it with the surge strategy that begin in 2007.
All this was because their best chance to win back the presidency for the Democrats in 2008 was Iraq War fatigue among the voters, and even when things turned in our favor, they took every opportunity they could to make sure the voters did not recognize this.
By the 2009/2010 time frame, Iraq looked on the road to success, but they needed an ongoing U.S. presence to help it maintain its security. That's when Barack Obama screwed the pooch by refusing to finalize a status of forces agreement, because his political and ideological commitment to leaving Iraq entirely was more important to him than Iraq's future. When ISIS emerged, Iraq was helpless to defend itself because the U.S. had left. That is 100 percent on Obama and not at all on George W. Bush.
So to sum up the answer Republican candidates need to give:
- Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right thing to do, but using WMDs as the rationale for the action was a huge mistake. It was justified based on the 1991 Gulf War cease fire agreement and on the realities we faced in the post-9/11 world.
- We made many mistakes in the aftermath of Saddam's removal, and no one should deny that, but we also put Iraq on the road to success with the surge.
- Democrats and the news media very intentionally sought to undermine public support for the war effort for political purposes, and they have much blood on their hands as a result.
- As difficult as the war effort proved to be, Iraq was headed for success before Obama prematurely abandoned the effort in 2011 and set the stage for ISIS to overrun much of the country.
That's the right answer. It's not the one political consultants probably like, but it's the truth. It's the answer every Republican candidate for president should give. And they're welcome.
