Live Event: Gideon Rose - NEW YORK TIMES
On August 20, Gideon Rose , managing editor of Foreign Affairs and an expert on national security and terrorism, far right, answered readers' questions about the bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and the United States occupation of Iraq.
A nice concluding question from a reader named Michael who asks: Knowing what we know today, did we make a mistake going into Iraq?
gideonrose - 05:02pm Aug 20, 2003 EST (# 16 of 19)
I don't think so, because the problem posed by Saddam Hussein never had a good answer, and so any course we chose would have been fraught with difficulties. I personally supported the war, for the kinds of longterm national security reasons Ken Pollack laid out in his book "The Threatening Storm," but I thought that the administration didn't have to go about the operation as hastily, tactlessly, and deceitfully as it did. While it would never have been an easy sell, if handled properly, a campaign to rid the world of one of its most evil tyrants and greatest menaces need not have provoked the backlash that it did. Had we gone about the whole thing in a more forthright and deliberate fashion, I think we could have brought more people on board. All that said, even now I think the war brought many major benefits, the most important of which has been the elimination of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime. That threat was real, even if it was also hyped, and so I'm glad it's been (almost entirely) dealt with. And the chance to help nurture the emergence of a successful modern democratic state in the heart of the Arab world is a great opportunity that could potentially have huge ramifications. The problems that have cropped up since the war could and should have been largely avoided, had more sensible and less ideological people been tasked with the postwar planning. Even now, I think that those problems can ultimately be brought under control. I think Bremer is a good man doing a good job, and deserves more support and backing. Whether it will all work out to the good in the end, we'll just have to wait and see.
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