The false pretenses were that the reconstruction would be easy and cheap
I never heard this from the administration. I think they were pretty above-board about it, that is, they simply didn't know what it would cost. The net cost won't be known for years, since there are certain benefits (in the form of expense relief and trade) that will come, as well.
and the Al-Qaida connection.
Certainly, the administration never in any way misled anyone about Al Qaeda. There clearly were some mild connections, and they represented them as mild connections.
The question is: If the American people and Congress had been told the truth (at least as I saw it before the war and as it has turned out to be), which is that the Iraqis would not all welcome us as liberators (though it seems like around half have), that 135,000 troops would not be enough (didn't Rumsfeld originally ask for only 95,000?), that we'd be there for years, it would cost over a quarter of a trillion dollars, that we would still have 20+ troops dying and 100+ troops being injured per week over a year after the war started, AND that Saddam had NO links to 9/11, would Congress have still approved this war so overwhelmingly?
I have no idea what Congress might have done; there were certainly members of Congress who supported the war (Biden, for example) who made some of the points you mentioned. But I surely don't think the cost of a war should be determinative. If it is righteous (and I believe it was, for many reasons) then it is regardless of cost. The same can be said regardless of the number of troops it requires, and to some extent, regardless of the number of lives it takes. Obviously, the last two items are subject to practical and political restraint; but conceptually, if there is something worth fighting over, it is folly to consider the cost of it IMO -- this is more of a Bill Clinton sort of rationale, rather than that of a true leader. |
