The Consequences Of Failure In Iraq

National Review: Giving Up On Iraq Would Be Devestating, Even For The War's Critics

(National Review Online)  This column was written by Victor Davis Hanson.

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Most Americans accept that if the United States cannot stabilize Iraq, and, in frustration and acrimony, withdraws in defeat, crises follow. The only disagreement is over how bad they will be.

Some point to the aftermath of Vietnam and, mirabile dictu, think the world eventually went on pretty much the same. In this rosy view, the preordained end of the Cold War made the communist postwar Vietnamese increasingly entrepreneurial, and thus more pro-American than friendly to their erstwhile Chinese patrons.

Others, more soberly I think, recall instead in the interval the million-plus of boat-people, exiles, the executed, and detained — and the aftershocks that killed millions more in Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Central America, once it was established that the United States would not, or could not, thwart Communist aggression. The Iranian hostage-taking and the rise of radical Islam itself were predicated on the idea that a post-Vietnam America would not intervene against terrorists, whether in Tehran or Lebanon. And Vietnam, of course, today is no South Korea, as millions there without freedom could attest.

The Ripple Effect

Be that as it may, we sometimes forget that there are also more insidious ripples that can emanate from Iraq. I can think of three for starters, all with post-Vietnam echoes.

The first will be the effect on the Democratic party itself, now riding high in its antiwar invective. Yet for a quarter century after Vietnam its antiwar hysteria warped its stance on issues such as the military, retaliation abroad for attacks on America, and the use of force in general.

Jimmy Carter's paralysis during the hostage taking, the sending of Ramsey Clark to beg Tehran for a reprieve, Bill Clinton's half-hearted responses to the attacks from the first World Trade Center to the USS Cole, all this, rightly or wrongly was seen as the legacy of the party that had imploded after Vietnam.

Now again we have gone from sizable majorities in the Congress warning about Saddam all during the 1990s and voting to remove him in October 2002, to essentially a single Joe Lieberman sticking through the messy reconstruction. Instead Howard Dean's once-pathetic yeehawing has now infected the likes of Senators Boxer, Durbin, Kennedy, Kerry, and Rockefeller, who have respectively rebuked Condoleezza Rice for childlessness, compared our troops to Pol Pot, Nazis, and terrorists, assured that our soldiers are no different from Baathist killers at Abu Ghraib, and suggested that things in Iraq were once better under Saddam.

All that may, like Vietnam-era street theater, play well to the media. But eventually Iraq, also like Vietnam, will be over — while the protocols and culture of hysteria and derangement, like low-lying marsh gas, will linger and smell. A Henry Jackson or JFK would have had nothing to do with a Michael Moore, who now has entrée with the Democratic elite. If the Republicans were once embarrassed of the Buchanan Right, and the Democrats of the Cindy Sheehan Left, now the Democrats have apparently both of them in their antiwar camp. Good luck…

Much also has been written about the post-Vietnam War military, as it struggled after the draft, the drugs, and the odor of defeat. I worry in the same vein about a similar loss of confidence in our ground forces. Before Iraq, wild-eyed reformers talked of a new military paradigm of sanitized war, following from wins in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Panama, or Serbia. Bombing from on high with GPS ordinance and a few paratroopers or special forces were the supposed future — not old-fashioned, everyday artillery, armor, and infantry.

That either/or dichotomy was, of course, absurd. But if we withdraw defeated from Iraq, like it or not, there will be the charge made that the United States should not commit sizable Army and Marine forces abroad on the ground — period, under any circumstances, at any time.

Vietnam and now Iraq will substantiate in greater detail what we tasted in Lebanon and Mogadishu — the impossibility of using large conventional forces in chaotic conflicts that will inevitably turn asymmetrical and terrorist. In that regard, an army on the shelf will fossilize, as we lose confidence that it can ever achieve anything worth its losses. Generals will promise victories in the sort of rare conventional wars they can easily win, and decline the more common messy ones they cannot.

In contrast, stabilize Iraq under horrific conditions, and the world is reminded that there is nothing that a brilliantly led and highly trained American infantry cannot accomplish. Win in Iraq, and there will be fewer future calls on the Army and Marines to repeat their victory; lose — and there will be far more need to do what they cannot.

George W. Bush, True Democrat

Third, there is a weird furor growing, on a bipartisan basis, at the Iraqis in general and the Arab world in particular. Prior to Iraq, there was some American guilt over past realism, whether stopping before Baghdad in 1991, playing Iran off Iraq, cozying up to dictatorships, or predicating American Middle East foreign policy solely on either oil or anti-Communism. Read the liberal literature of the 1990s and it was essentially a call for what George Bush is now doing — and being damned for. Then the liberal bogeyman was not Paul Wolfowitz, but Jim Baker ("jobs, jobs, jobs"/"F—- the Jews"). Now the latter is the model of Republican sobriety.

Arab intellectuals and much of the Western Left once decried Bakerism and called for a new muscular idealism that put us on the side of the powerless reformers and not with the entrenched authoritarians. But if we fail in Iraq, then again, fairly or not, the verdict will be far more sweeping than simply the incompetence of the Bremer proconsulship or the impotence of the Maliki government.

Rather, the conventional wisdom will arise that an infantile Middle East ipso facto — whether due to Islamism, tribalism, gender apartheid, sectarianism, engrained dictatorship, or corruption — is simply incapable at this time of consensual government. Anyone who seeks such reform, whether in the Gulf, Palestine, Lebanon, or Egypt, is to be written off not only as naïve, but as reckless as well. A Libyan dissident, a feminist writer in Egypt, or an Iraqi intellectual who decries Western indifference to their plight or American tolerance of regional dictatorships will be told to quit whining and get a life, by a been-there/done-that American public.

Both carping hothouse Arab intellectuals and Western liberals should be put on notice of this change to come. However imperfect, however flawed, however improperly explained our efforts in Iraq were, they nevertheless represented a costly American about-face to offer something in the Middle East other than theocracy or dictatorship — something we are not likely to see again in our lifetime.

Democrats and liberals should likewise realize that for all their hatred of George Bush and the partisan points to be gained by coddling up to the libertarian and paleo-conservative Right, George Bush’s embrace of freedom was far closer to their own past rhetoric than almost any Republican administration in history. And such an effort to foster democracy was in the long run smart as well, since ultimately a free Iraq would be the worst nightmare of the Islamic jihadists — as we read repeatedly in the rantings of Dr. Zawahiri.

In short, the next Democratic president who wishes to do something about the genocide in Darfur or another mass murderer in the Middle East, will find no support from Republicans, or — in no small part due to liberals' slurs against the war they voted for — from the country at large.

Yes, we may see thousands killed, displaced, and maimed if the United States flees from Iraq. And that tremor in the foundations of American power may embolden everyone from Hugo Chavez to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But that is only the half of it.

Leaving Iraq prematurely will also damage the credibility of the Democratic party, the reputation of American ground forces, and the idealism of American foreign policy — just those principles that the critics of the war oddly claim they will be saving by fleeing.

[kreuz4]

"THAT'S how you have to look at it nimrods.."

No, you have to do a cost-benefit analysis. Again, if we're going nowhere and throwing more lives and money at the problem will do us less good than another option, one more life and one more dollar is a waste, no matter how much it might pale in comparison to other more worthwhile goals.

"Who stands to benefit least from infusing the MiddleEast with Democracy? Islamic Radicalism."
Actually, they're benefitting the most right now. This is the problem, Democratic Peace Theory is a load of BS. It only works if you so narrowly define democracy as to exclude every functioning democracy in the world, including the US, and ignore the real world examples of its flaws. In the Middle East, years of dictators have repressed and undermined liberal reformers and crushed communist uprisings, meaning the only groupos with any organization that can dfunction successfully in a democratic system are the Islamic Radicals who were allowed to thrive because they were the one group it was impossible for the despots to crush. This is why Hamas and Hizballah are so powerful and why Moqtada al Sadr is the kingmaker in Iraq.

[kreuz4]

"then why exactly DID Clinton target Bin Laden with cruise missiles???"

bin Laden first emerged on our radar screens in late 1996, but was still at that time a second-rate terrorist with lots of money running around the Sudan (far behind the Iranians, Palestinians, Libyans, and numerous other groups we were worried about through much of that time). It wasn't until late 1997/early 1998, after he went to Afghanistan and subsequently declared the fatwa against the US in 1998 that he really became public enemy #1 for the US. The missile strikes were in reaction to the bombings of the African embassies in 1998, not for the WTC bombing.

"...and even IF you go with the recession starting in March of 2001 - can you really pin that on Bush having taken over in Jan of 2001??? Come ON guys - not even liberals can be THAT ignorant on economics"

If it was over by November, and Bush's first budget didn't fo into effect until 2002, how can you credit Bush for getting us out of it? C'mon, you conservatives used to claim the tech boom was the result of Reagan's tax cuts 15 years earlier, how could Bush's policies be working within a year (and, if you really want to get technical, we never even went into a recession, we had three quarters of negative growth that were nonconsecutive- a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth)?

[clemenhagen1]

If Captain Codpiece has captured so many terrorists, put them on trial, convict them of crimes, and execute them. Please! The problem: they have had no trials. Why? I have no concern for the well-being of terrorists; I simply wonder why there are no trials IF they are as guilty as you assume? And we are nimrods for suggesting the one trillion plus dollars being used to create terrorists in a country that had none before we invaded (indeed...Iraq was NOT a terrorist or Islamist country before the invasion)wouldn't be better off providing schools, roads, and security here at home. Finally, did you actually read the Clinton quotes provided to you by Kruez4? If you did you would see that Clinton used military force with Saddam to reinforce the weapons inspectors. The very same weapons inspectors who insisted, and have since been proven right, that Saddam possessed no WMD. He was merely bluffing to feign power he no longer had...dictator's have a tendency to do those sort of things. Clinton was far too smart to have blindly bumbled into a disastrous war with no discernible exit strategy. That turned out to be the genius of Bush. Apparently he picked up his military acumen while defending Alabama from attack during stints in the Air National Guard.

[dogsoul]

...and even IF you go with the recession starting in March of 2001 - can you really pin that on Bush having taken over in Jan of 2001??? Come ON guys - not even liberals can be THAT ignorant on economics... obviously it was well under way before Bush had time to clean out the White House closets!

[dogsoul]

Oh really... then why exactly DID Clinton target Bin Laden with cruise missiles??? Because nobody knew about him or Al Queda during his presidency? Ya think whoever they nabbed for World Trade Center I really comprised "the perpetrators"? Maybe, just maybe they were backed by certain Islamic groups? Clinton HIMSELF said he would have invaded Iraq were he in Bush's shoes... how much more do you need to know? HE WOULD HAVE - said so himself! And how many terrorists have been killed or captured under Bush???? Lemme get my calculator... but oh how you fret over the treatment of these poor innocent souls at the Guantanamo Hilton, desperately clamoring to cut them loose....

As to the war cost - again, you are such idiots - costs may be projected as larger than vietnam, but the country's GDP is exponentially larger today than that era:

"...the relative cost of operations in Iraq, at 2% of America's annual GDP, was less than either the Vietnam conflict at 12% or World War II at 40%..."

THAT'S how you have to look at it nimrods..

As to the Ollie North sideline - I'll accept that this was a hoax & retract that comment.

[kreuz4]

"In fact, Ollie North was chastised by Al Gore for suggesting the U.S. assassinate Bin Laden because he represented a major threat to the American people."

nope, didn't happen, Ollie North himself even said so. Maybe you should stop regurgitating the right wing echo chamber *** and read up on the facts for yourself:
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/north.asp

"Bin Laden DID strike the U.S. a number of times, INCLUDING the twin towers under Clinton! And what did he do???"
Brought the perpetrators to justice. bin Laden has only recently been associated with this plot, because this was before al Qa'ida became a terrorist organization in the current sense. bin Laden likely funneled money to Yusef through Khaled Shaikh Mohammed, Yusef's uncle, but there still is nothing definintive tying him to this plot. In all, five people were killed, while ten were brought to justice and sentenced to over 240 years in prison.

[kreuz4]

"3100 deaths & the war costs in Iraq pale by historical comparison to other conflicts"

1 death is too many if there is no defined end state and no plan to get there. Plus, the cost of Vietnam was about $600 billon current dollars, this war is projected to cross the trillion dollar mark.

"The recession was already under way when Bush took office"
The National Bureau of Economic Research places the US recession from March 2001 to November 2001, all under Bush's watch.

"Of course, Clinton slashing the military & intelligence budgets offered plenty of cost savings"
Actually, Bush 1 was responsible for most of the slashing of the military budget. By Clinton's first budget, the military portion had stabilized in the low $300 million range before rising again in 1998.

"I could plainly SEE the dissappointment on liberals' faces - I could see how it geniunely upset them that America earned a victory over terrorism on"
The interesting problem with this statement is the BRITISH thwarted that one...

I see a lot of "ifs" in your statement there, seems you're succumbing to the same wishful thinking that Bush did before the war began

[kreuz4]

dogsoul- Clinton launched strikes to restore UNSCOM to Iraq, he didn't launch a preemptive war to build a democracy in Iraq. Had Bush pushed for UN inspectors and been satisfied with that (his threats did get them back there, which is what the AUMF was supposed to be about in the first place), he probably would have been able to claim a great success and move back to winning against bin Laden. He dind't and his failures have cost the American people dearly.

Read the key passage of Clinton's speech:
"The international community had little doubt then, and I have no doubt today, that left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again.

The United States has patiently worked to preserve UNSCOM as Iraq has sought to avoid its obligation to cooperate with the inspectors. On occasion, we've had to threaten military force, and Saddam has backed down. "

UNSCOM was the check, Hussein kicked them out, Clinton used force to push the check back into place. He didn't unnecessarily escalate it into a regional war when we didn't have cause for one.

[usawarrior]

One way or another, I foresee a bad ending in Iraq. Just like in Viet Nam, our initial approach was wrong and the stubbornness of our political leaders seems to be our worst enemy. In both cases we embraced wishful thinking and ignored the history of the region, their traditions and the current reality on the ground. We cannot change the mentality of a country or a region in a few months or a couple of years. The idea that we can or we need to Americanize the world is totally absurd.

Since the end product will be one and the same no matter what we do, just like we did in Viet Nam, get the troops out now and deal with the ill consequences for years to come. This%u2026 is a no win situation!

[clemenhagen1]

Uh, they arrested and jailed the perpetrators of the first trade center attack. Remember? How many people has Curious George arrested, tried, and convicted? Oh, that's right, we're not IN to convictions. We're all about rounding up "suspected terrorists" and torturing them, denying them habeas corpus (you know, that antiquated concept that stems from the Magna Charta) and then detaining them in "secret" black-site prisons. Have a trial and convict them like the Clinton Administration did with the trade center? Nah, that would require us to actually produce some evidence. As for bin Laden? We would have him and the Taliban wouldn't be on the march again if we had focused on Afghanistan and al-Queda. But, alas, no money to be had in that game. Look at the profits of the war profiteers, look at the secret deals being hatched to divvy up Iraq's oil, look at the bases and embassies we're building in Iraq, and then quote me the "Freedom's On the March" mantra. But the key...can you chant it and goosestep at the same time!

[dogsoul]

I'm all for alternate energy sources for a variety of reasons, including environmental as well as oil supply limits & less reliance on MiddleEastern sources... but I think you're getting at the oversimplified "war for oil" mantra & its cousin conspiracy theory suggesting this is all just a ruse to keep the weapons manufacturers in the black. We're at war because Islamic Radicals not only want to kill us, but they have - and will continue to do so unless we can do something to stop them. Their aims are clear, and appeasement will not work in the long term. Who stands to benefit least from infusing the MiddleEast with Democracy? Islamic Radicalism.

[dogsoul]

Bin Laden DID strike the U.S. a number of times, INCLUDING the twin towers under Clinton! And what did he do??? Lobbed a couple cruise missiles in his general direction - missing obviously - and emboldening him to further action... In fact, Ollie North was chastised by Al Gore for suggesting the U.S. assassinate Bin Laden because he represented a major threat to the American people. You wanna forgive 8 years of Clinton slashing military budgets & taking hit after hit from Bin Laden & doing nothing about it to 8 months of a new president? Please... THAT is ridiculous. Where's Bin Laden? I dunno - are you suggesting that under a Democratic leadership we'd have found him easier? We can't find the b@stard.... WE can't find him liberal - that includes YOU assuming you still consider yourself Bin Laden's enemy - at least in principle...

[dogsoul]

idiot... "lied, they lied, they lied..." you really do just regurgitate don't you. Read up buddy - those "lies" were the same ones that Clinton & his cabinet believed during his own presidency... the same.... look down at the links I posted & you will read for yourself.

[clemenhagen1]

Right, Clinton "slashed" the intelligence budget and that's why George and Condi couldn't make sense of a presidential briefing entitled "Osama bin Laden Determined to Strike the United States." That is why Clinton formed a specific group to monitor terrorism, headed by Richard Clarke. That is why Condi and Bush refused to meet with or listen to Clark during the first nine months of Bush's presidency. Read Richard Clarke's book "Against All Enemies." Or do you neocons prefer fictional "docudramas" to actual history written by people like Clarke. Waiting for the Limbaughesque sliming of Clarke...

[dallison7]

dogsoul

What about those people who would 'not at all mind' the president lying to congress and the american people for the purpose of taking our young people into an illegal war to die for his own personal gain? Why can't you neocons just take a little time to read and listen? Iraq was not a threat! Iraq did not attack us! There were no WMD! Those balsa-wood planes that Cheney swore would drop bombs on the United States could'nt fly! Those 'mobile labratories' were just trucks! Those aluminum tubes were not of sufficient gauge for nuclear centrifuge use! No 'yellow-cake! The list of lies goes on and on!! No executive branch, not even these clowns, could be wrong about every piece of information they put forth. They lied and they lied and they lied. Now it is coming back to haunt them. They did not expect to ever have any oversight. THESE FACTS, SIR. NEOCON ARE THE REASON THAT THERE IS A MASS EXODUS FROM YOUR PARTY!!

WHERE IS BIN LADEN???????

[dogsoul]

In a post 9/11 environment Clemenhagen - yes, Republicans would have supported Clinton were he to have done what he said he would do & invaded Iraq based on the same intelligence data that had convinced him & other Democrats about Saddam's alleged weaponry capacities during his presidency. Republicans aren't nearly as "party over country" as liberal Democrats. And let's face it, Clinton would have had the support of his liberal mass media machine as well... So instead of emboldening radical Islamists, disheartening America against the mission, and desperately trying to achieve surrender - under Clinton, the media might well have supported the opposite approach.

[clemenhagen1]

Compare Clinton's job numbers to Bush's. Look at the actual growth of middle income wage earners in this new economy. Bottom line under Bush: the wealthiest at the top have prospered, the income gap has dramatically increased, real wages for the middle class have dropped, deficits have soared, and any economist worth his salt would take Clinton's record on both the budget and the economy over Bush's.

[clemenhagen1]

DogSoul: You and I probably do not agree on a variety of things. I see Scooter Libby and Karl Rove and Novak as traitors who deliberately revealed the identity of a CIA operative and exposed the CIA front company, Brewster-Jennings, in the process. Traitorous acts indeed! However, what say I propose a set of ideas and see if we cannot find some common ground. Would you support a non-partisan approach (notice I didn't say bipartisan) to initiating a "NASA" type program on alternative energy. We could spark all sorts of economic benefits as we sought and developed for mass distribution fuels that could make us virtually independent from the rest of the world when it came to the issue of oil. With that we could extricate ourselves from this mess in the Middle East because we wouldn't be reliant on their one vital asset. In the meantime, we truly invest in homeland security, which would mean genuinely secure borders, including more thorough and reliable inspection of goods coming into this country. Do you think an old red-blooded commie-lover like myself and you can agree upon that proposal?

[dogsoul]

Perhaps you ought to enroll in an economics course clemenhagen to see the actual effect of deficits on the macroeconomy of the United States. The recession was already under way when Bush took office - the dot.com bubble had burst & a lot of those corporate scandals that reached meltdown under Bush had achieved their bubbly height under Clinton. Of course, Clinton slashing the military & intelligence budgets offered plenty of cost savings - wonder if they were worth it? What's more, the cost of the Iraq War, Home Security & Katrina didn't exactly come clean as we keep hearing from you folks - yet despite this, we've rebounded from the recession, the economy has been humming for a while now, & unemployee has achieved historical lows... gee - wonder how THAT can happen? Bottom line, study up buddy... you obviously lack economic education - something liberal politicians count on from their constituency when it comes to talking dollars & cents(or sense as the case may be)

[dogsoul]

I recall when the gov't had semi-recently thwarted a major terror attack planned on the US, you recall - the one dealing w/ liquids on planes etc... I could plainly SEE the dissappointment on liberals' faces - I could see how it geniunely upset them that America earned a victory over terrorism on Bush's watch - heck, some claimed it was just a trumped up conspiracy before the mid-term elections. That's who we're talking about folks - people who would not at all mind a successful terror attack on the U.S., so long as THEY didn't personally get hurt & provided they could use it against Bush....

traitors