The Iraq Invasion, Ten Years On

The decision to invade Iraq in 2003 is not itself a mystery: Dick Cheney worked with Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith and their Office of Special Plans, that new department in the Pentagon with the Orwellian name, to "stovepipe" unvetted intelligence on Iraq to the White House, free of any complicating involvement of the CIA or other agencies trained in evaluating information.  This was "goal-seeking" intelligence work, designed to prove the case for an invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.  President George W. Bush was only too happy to go along, since it provided the opportunity to play out a Freudian drama, the wastrel, prodigal son completing the manly work his unmanly father was unwilling to finish while Bush the Elder was President.

To sell the war to the public, it was cast as an act of self-defense.  We were told that Saddam Hussein was loaded to the gunwales with weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, nerve gas and biological contaminants, and we were reminded endlessly that Hussein "had used poison gas on his own people," the Kurds of the north.  I confess that for a while the Administration had me going: surely they couldn't be lying about all of this.  I did not buy the argument that Hussein had anything whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks of 9/11, that line of baloney pushed especially hard by Dick Cheney and Richard Perl, with their "Iraqi agent in Prague" ruse.  In this respect, I differed from about two-thirds of my fellow American commoners.

Several months before the invasion, I became convinced that the WMD argument was also complete bullshit, and to draw my own historical line in the sand, I marched in February, 2003 in San Francisco in a demonstration against the war.  I remember telling my companion on the trip (a ferry ride to San Francisco, then the long hike up Market Street to Civic Center in the company of hundreds of thousands of other demonstrators) that the invasion itself was a foregone conclusion, but it was a nice way to spend a Sunday.  By the time Colin Powell destroyed his reputation once and for all with his unbelievable act of cowardice and complicity in his "United Nations" speech, I was pretty sure the entire WMD case was a fabrication from the ground up.

Contrary to the revisionist history that became popular after the invasion, and the failure to find any WMD in Iraq whatsoever, that "everybody thought" Hussein had such weapons, there was always ample evidence available to the general public that the rationale was a complete hoax.  That, indeed, is the amazing part.  Granted, the official organs of propaganda, including the New York Times and its Administration-aiding mouthpiece Judith Miller, sold the war with a vengeance.  A positive feedback loop of self-reinforcing bullshit was set up in which Cheney & Co. would leak stovepiped information from the Office of Special Plans to Judith Miller, who would dutifully write it up as fact-based narrative; then Cheney or Wolfowitz or Feith would appear on a compliant Sunday morning talk show to discuss the latest "findings" in the Times. 

Nevertheless, William Arkin, the chief defense writer for the Washington Post, stated categorically before the invasion that it was "almost certain" that Saddam had no WMD.  Scott Ritter, the UN weapons inspector, said much the same thing.  The UN inspector actually in Iraq before the invasion, Hans Blix, stated over and over that he could find nothing.  Blix was attacked by the truly awful Charles Krauthammer of the Post, both professionally and personally, and Bush & Co. belittled everything he had to say on the theory that Saddam was leading him around by the nose.  It occurred to me, in light of corroborating reports and the simple reality that Iraq had been hobbled by crippling sanctions for over ten years since the first American invasion, that maybe the reason Blix could not find any WMD was because there weren't any.

It was, as Lillian Hellman said about another era, a "Scoundrel Time."  For people who look at history and reality a certain way, the prelude to the Iraq War marked the death of trust in official organs of information, such as the national media of newspapers and television, and the birth of increasing reliance on alternative sources of information, mainly the Internet.  It was scary to contemplate, however, just how easy it was to convince a substantial majority of the American people of the truth of demonstrably false propositions, and it remains unsettling to think about the implications of such a truth for the viability of democracy.

A Reply to Barack

"Waldoswimmer-- Early this morning, the last of our troops left Iraq. As we honor and reflect on the sacrifices that millions of men and women made for this war, I wanted to make sure you heard the news. Bringing this war to a responsible end was a cause that sparked many Americans to get involved in the political process for the first time. Today's outcome is a reminder that we all have a stake in our country's future, and a say in the direction we choose. Thank you. Barack"

Dear Barack,

First of all, you're welcome. My mother did not raise an inconsiderate son, and it's important to be polite. With that out of the way...

Since you're my President, I would like to mention a few of my concerns and ask for your comments:

1. My understanding is that the December 2011 departure date was negotiated between George W. Bush and Nouri Al-Maliki a number of years back as part of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) talks. That is the case, isn't it? I think it's fine to reflect on what our military has been through in this awful war (it's something we should do), but there has been plenty of false self-congratulation surrounding this departure and maybe it's time for that to come to an end, too. Specifically, if Maliki had negotiated a different SOFA arrangement whereby American military personnel had continued to enjoy their immunity from local (Iraqi) legal jurisdiction, wouldn't you have pressed for a longer commitment in Iraq? From everything I've read on this point, it seems to me that the wily Nouri withheld this concession precisely because he knew that it would propel the Americans out of Iraq. That's the way it goes; it's important to remember that chess was invented in that part of the world.

I'm not suggesting that you're trying to take credit for a withdrawal from Iraq that was written in stone before you ever took office. On the other hand, I'm not suggesting that you're not.

2. "Bringing this war to a responsible end was a cause that sparked many Americans to get involved in the political process for the first time." Okay, here's my feeling on that one. Personally, I got involved in the 2008 campaign (even journeyed to Florida to work as a Voting Rights Lawyer for you) because I thought you were serious about returning the United States to a Constitutional form of government and one of laws, not of men. The drift toward lawlessness, disregard of the Constitution and open defiance of international norms of decency became very pronounced under your predecessor. The Iraq War was certainly part of that, but it was apparent before the election of 2008 that the occupation of Iraq had an expiration date.

Be that as it may, here is what I think is really necessary for a "responsible end." The news reports use the "standard statistics" for describing the costs of the war. The number cited for Iraqi deaths is always "100,000." It seems to me that if a country, such as my country, really wants to regain the ethical high ground that we ought to leave off with such convenient calculations and really go at the problem. The Johns Hopkins - Lancet study, using standard methodology for such epidemiological problems, calculated the number of Iraqi deaths at much higher levels, as many as one million "excess deaths" over and above normal mortality even under a dictator such as Saddam Hussein. George W. Bush dismissed this study with his famous "flawed methodology" comment, but of course (and with all due respect to our brilliant ex-Commander in Chief) this is not exactly definitive. We spend lots of money on "commissions" and panels of Blue Ribbon experts. How about just one more: a group of scientists and statisticians, modeled on the panel led by Richard Feynman to study the Challenger disaster, to delve very deeply into the question of "excess deaths" in Iraq. Let's find out how many people actually died. If we don't determine the true cost to the local population of these military adventures, it's just way too easy to justify interfering in a foreign locale whenever we perceive some interest of ours is being disturbed. I also think we owe the Iraqi people this measure of respect. If a million people in Iraq died as the direct result of an invasion built on false premises, let's own up to it. It's not as if they're not going to notice if we don't.

3. While we're at it, let's determine and publish a real number regarding American military casualties. This part is easy. We already have all of the statistics. Let's make public a full accounting of the injuries caused to American personnel as the result of the war, by body part, severity and life consequences. How many soldiers are brain damaged? How many lost one or more eyes? How many amputations? How many third degree burns? How many disfigurements? How many cases of post traumatic stress and/or insanity? Put it all out there as a counterpoint to the nonstop glorification of war once and for all.

I think doing all of those things is the minimal requirement of "responsibility," don't you?

4. "Today's outcome is a reminder that we all have a stake in our country's future, and a say in the direction we choose."

No question about that. As I exercise my "say" next year, I'll be watching to see how you handle my suggestions.

Merry Christmas, and by the way, basketball is my favorite sport, too.

Waldo

The Ungrateful Nouri shows us the door

A comment thread on Facebook recently explored, in a revealing way, the various attitudes that a certain cross-section of liberals display when it comes to President Barack Obama. His die-hard partisans wanted credit for Obama's "decision" to finish the Iraq War by bringing home all combat troops by December 31, 2011. The usual cynics (who, me?) pointed out that the Exit Sign was flashing red because time was up: the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) expires on December 31, 2011 and under the express terms of the agreement negotiated years ago by the Bush Administration, we have to be out.

The O Man did not actually want to leave; in order to stay, however, the USA needed continuing immunity (as currently enjoyed by U.S. forces) from the criminal justice system of the Iraqi courts. A lot of stuff has happened over the last eight-plus years, involving U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians, and it is highly probable that the continued presence of American soldiers in 2012 and after would engender more such unfortunate incidents. Glenn Greenwald has written extensively about a 2006 incident in the central Iraq town of Isahqi, where a group of at least ten Iraqi men, women (including the elderly) and children were massacred in a raid by American troops, and a U.S. airstrike was called in after the fact to obliterate the evidence. A coverup of the true nature of the event was then engineered by the military. The damning details were revealed by some of the Wikileaks cables voluminously released in May, 2011, to the great consternation of Message Control Central at the White House.

The Iraqi citizenry, on the other hand, are not subjected to the same level of Pravda-like propaganda as their American counterparts receive courtesy of the New York Times and Washington Post. The 2006 incident has become common knowledge in Baghdad, and if Maliki had any lingering misgivings about the SOFA and the 12/31/11 exit date, he lost most of his negotiating latitude when the Wikileaks cables hit the wires. Although I don't think that the Ungrateful Nouri actually had any such hesitations. It seems that even Mr. Greenwald has forgotten that the "immunity issue" has been around for years, and Maliki (and I confess here that I have long marveled at how this clever politician, involved as he is in completely "asymmetrical" negotiations given the disparity in power between Iraq and the U.S., finds ways to level the playing field) has used this issue precisely because he knows there is no way the Americans are ever going to turn over their own GI's to the tender mercies of the Iraqi mullahs.

Thus, Obama's "announcement" of a troop pullout was simply presidential campaigning, an extremely cynical exploitation of the profound ignorance of the American voting public concerning the historical record in Iraq. The Big Media went along with the gag, of course, except for some of the usual complainers.

We'll still have lots of "contractors" and mercenaries in Iraq, of course, but they will be taking their chances with the local legal system. It remains to be seen what happens with Iraq's oil, which was, after all, the main reason we invaded in the first place. The removal of all combat troops would seem to place our ability to direct the outcome of this vital resource in serious doubt. It also opens the door to much greater Iranian influence, and it should never be forgotten that Maliki spent a great deal of time in exile in Iran when he worked with the Dawa Party to undermine Saddam Hussein.

4,500 American soldiers dead; multiples of ten thousand grievously wounded, maimed, crippled; maybe a million Iraqis killed, millions more displaced; a trillion dollars spent; a huge burden added to an already unsustainable national debt.

This is the way the war ends: not with a bang but a whimper.