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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (23362)	10/23/2006 8:53:56 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

If we had known then... By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist The Boston Globe October 22, 2006 WAS IT a mistake to go to war in Iraq? The latest voice to say so is that of conservative commentator Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online's shrewd editor-at-large and, until last week, a supporter of the war. Goldberg hasn't become a John Murtha clone; he still believes that a precipitous American withdrawal would hand the jihadis a victory, and that finishing the job is preferable to bugging out and leaving Iraq a shambles. But he has concluded that invading Iraq was the wrong choice, however well-intentioned. ``The Iraq war was a mistake," he writes, ``by the most obvious criteria: If we had known then what we know now, we would never have gone to war with Iraq in 2003." Is that really how this war -- or any war -- should be judged? In 1812, Congress declared war on Great Britain, in part because of Britain's crippling blockade of US ports and the forced impressment of American seamen into the Royal Navy. But if Americans had known in 1812 what they found out in 1814 -- that the enemy would capture Washington and burn the Capitol, the Treasury, and the White House -- would they have gone to war with Britain? Perhaps not. Does that mean the war was a mistake? We know now that the War of 1812 ended not with a US defeat, but with Britain, a superpower of the day, fought to a stalemate by its former colonies. As a consequence, the young republic earned international esteem; never again would Britain challenge American independence. Indeed, never again would the two nations go to war. If Congress had known that in 1812, would it have voted for war? Quite likely. Maybe by an even larger majority. Wars are routinely botched, and the Iraq war is no exception. Overconfidence, intelligence failures, poor planning -- none of it is unique to the current war or the current administration. In 1944, the Allies were sure that Hitler was nearly beaten, that the Germans had no appetite for a counteroffensive, and that the quiet Ardennes Forest along the Belgian-German border was a good place to send rookie soldiers and exhausted units needing a breather. It took the generals utterly by surprise when Hitler threw a quarter of a million troops against the Ardennes, launching what would come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. It was the bloodiest encounter of the war for US troops -- five ghastly weeks during which 19,000 American soldiers lost their lives, and another 60,000 were maimed or captured. Today we realize that the Battle of the Bulge was Hitler's last gasp, and that the European war would be over a few months later. But at the time there were fears that the war might grind on for years. Doubtless some Americans found themselves thinking that the war with Germany had been a blunder -- one that could have been avoided ``if we had known then what we know now." Iraq is not the first war to plummet in popularity. At the start of the Civil War, many Northerners giddily anticipated a quick victory. Secretary of State William Seward ``thought the war would be over in 90 days," writes historian David Herbert Donald in his biography of Abraham Lincoln. ``The New York Times predicted victory in 30 days. " Had they had an inkling of the carnage to come, would they have cheered Lincoln's bid to save the Union? Long before the war's end, the cheers would turn to censure. By 1863, the war was being denounced in Congress as ``an utter, disastrous, and most bloody failure," while Lincoln and his administration were despised for their incompetence. ``There never was such a shambling, half-and-half set of incapables collected in one government," Senator William Pitt Fessendon of Maine said in disgust, ``before or since the world began." The point isn't that the violent mess in Iraq today is analogous to the Civil War in 1863, or to the Ardennes in 1944, or to the burning of Washington in 1814. The point is that we don't know. Like earlier Americans, we have to choose between resolve and retreat, with no guarantees about how it will end. All we can be sure of is that the stakes once again are liberty and decency vs. tyranny and terror -- that we are fighting an enemy that feeds on weakness and expects us to lose heart -- and that Americans for generations to come will remember whether we flinched. Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.

To: Sully- who wrote (23362)	10/23/2006 11:54:34 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35834

Sorry Jonah. It's always easier to say what you would have done in hindsight. The venomous snipers on the left side of the isle have that political ploy perfected. Besides, we have learned quite a lot about Iraq, the UN & liberals since Saddam's removal. What we know about Saddam now proves that his removal was more than justified. We know how utterly corrupt the UN & many of our alleged allies really are even when we are in a global war against shadowy, evil terrorists which Saddam conspired with, aided, funded & trained. What a strange new world we live in. It's downright scary. Re: Jacoby (Iraq was a worthy mistake) Jonah Goldberg The Corner I promised to respond to Jeff Jacoby yesterday, so that's what I'll do. But I don't want to belabor this any longer. So, this will just have to do for my final word for now. I'm a big fan of Jeff's and I think he makes a good case against my "mistake" column. Indeed, the argument he makes is almost identical to the one I made in defense of the Afghanistan War when that was supposedly looking grim. Moreover, as I said in the very column Jeff criticizes, if we win in Iraq the war won't be remembered as a mistake. So on that point I don't really see that there's that much distance between Jeff and me or between me and scads of angry and disappointed readers. But, look. I have always argued that the reasons to go to war were many. It was the press and others who wanted to confine the entire rationale to a single reason: Weapons of Mass Destruction. And it was the Bush Administration which foolishly over-emphasized WMDs. Their reason for doing that, however, made a lot more sense at the time. Since everyone knew that Iraq had WMDs and since most people agreed that post 9/11 that was a real problem, concentrating on the WMD issue seemed like the savvy political course. But most serious decisions are made for a lot of different reasons. Narrowing things down to a single factor is great for soundbites. But it's the height of stupidity in real life. Nobody walks into a car dealership and asks "do you have any red cars?...you do? I'll take it!" I agree with many of the reasons why we invaded Iraq and I think those reasons are still valid. Saddam applauded 9/11. The sanctions were breaking down. He defied the UN. We were never at peace with the guy. He sponsored suicide bombings. Etc etc. But other items on the checklist haven't panned out. The Iraq war for many of us was supposed to be part of the larger war on terror. It was supposed to have a series of demonstration effects. The first was that we could project our power at will and impose our aims when necessary. We got the first part, but not the second. It was supposed to demonstrate that the Arab street lives under the thumb of tyranny and, given the chance, it would embrace freedom. With many heroic exceptions notwithstanding, that's not exactly the lesson the world has taken away. The Iraq war was supposed to be a shot across the bow of Iran and North Korea. It may have been that, but the result has been the acceleration of their nuclear programs and mischief-making. America looks weaker to much of the world because of the Iraq war, and that's a big problem. I agree entirely with Jeff and other readers that if we pull out before finishing the job, we will look weaker still. For reasons I find unfathomable, we've kept the same size military we had on 9/10/01 and as a result our ability to threaten plausibly other regimes — which was supposed to be heightened by the war — has in fact diminished. This is a complicated issue and the "blame Rumsfeld chorus" is too simplistic. Democrats have never committed themselves to unity behind the war, which has resulted in a Tet-like political strategy among the insurgents. And many of our "allies" have seized the opportunity to behave in morally outrageous and strategically boneheaded ways. But the fact is that the Iraq war — to my mind — was always part of a larger global war on terror. Indeed, it was merely a battle in that war. I'm no military genius, but I think the phrase "choose your battles" has some merit. If we had to do it over again. We would have chosen either not to fight this one or — the better option — we would have chosen to have fought it in a very different way. That said, we're here now. And I agree entirely with Jacoby and many of my readers who think we have to see it through, somehow. My proposed solution of a national referendum is not some wooly romantic gesture. One of the things the US has really figured out is how to run elections in Iraq. Giving the Iraqis the choice of the abyss or of a unifying national decision to do what's necessary might be the sort of galvanizing event the country needs for a fresh start and the sort of mandate the US and Iraqi armies need to crack down on the militias. I should also note that liberals who complain — with varying degrees of honesty and dishonesty — that Bush's freedom agenda was an after thought and therefore illegitimate seem to forget that the civil war wasn't launched to free the slaves. It was launched to save the Union. Freeing the slaves came later, at least for many in the North. Whatever the alleged motives for making the Iraq war into a battle for democracy doesn't make the battle for democracy any less worthwhile. Anyway, maybe readers are right that Monday morning quarterbacking like this isn't productive. But, it seems to me that the current debate needs a shot of realism. And, personally and professionally, I felt the need to call it like I see it. corner.nationalreview.com boston.com nationalreview.com article.nationalreview.com