Unlike Ezra Klein, I did not support the invasion of Iraq. But I didn’t spend my energy trying to stop it because I saw it (correctly) as inevitable. I spent a good part of 2000 arguing that people should not vote for George W. Bush because he would invade Iraq. I believe that even absent 9/11, we would have started a war with Iraq. There were compelling reasons to do so, and those reasons were convincing to many people in our foreign policy establishment. The root of the problem was Saddam’s continuing existence in power which seemed to require an unending containment policy. But the support for that unending containment policy had eroded dramatically.
One by one, the allies that had stood with us when we launched the Persian Gulf War peeled off and began criticizing us. The French pulled out of the no-fly operations. The embargo harmed Iraqi civilians and actually served to make Iraqis dependent on Saddam’s aid programs, increasing his internal grip on power. The embargo also harmed the economies of allies like Jordan and Turkey that naturally wanted to trade legally with their neighbor. The UN inspectors may have successfully disarmed Hussein, but the degree of their success was unclear and they were no longer on the ground (until the Bush administration felt compelled to seek UN support for their invasion plans). In any case, the issue facing U.S. foreign policy leaders in the 1999-2003 period was whether we could sustain our containment policy, and, if not, whether we could trust Saddam Hussein not to rearm and seek revenge if we ended our containment policy.
At the outset of the Bush administration, Secretary of State Colin Powell was dispatched to the Middle East to argue for something he called “smart sanctions.” This was an effort to address the complaint, made by an increasing international consensus (including Usama bin-Laden), that our sanctions on Iraq were causing a massive increase in child mortality and were morally unsupportable. However, Colin Powell’s efforts failed after Iraq insisted on a complete repeal of sanctions and Russia refused to go along in the absence of Iraq’s consent.
It was the failure of smart sanctions that put the U.S. foreign policy establishment in a bind that made invasion an appetizing alternative to an unsustainable status quo. The sanctions were falling apart and had only made Hussein’s grip on power more intractable. The no-fly zones necessitated U.S. military forces be stationed in Saudi Arabia, which was already causing the rise of al-Qaeda and major security risks to our embassies, war ships, and personnel. Saddam was viewed as particularly evil and reckless, and not to be trusted with all the money that would flow to him in the absence of the Oil-for-Food program and other sanctions. The Oil-for-Food program itself was rife with corruption. The nail in the coffin was the decision of Hussein to offer oil contracts to all the non-Anglo permanent UN Security Council members, conditional on a lifting of sanctions.
Even prior to the September 11 attacks, the U.S. faced a very unappealing set of options. Politically, it was pretty near unthinkable that we would agree to lift the sanctions, watch everyone else get all the oil contracts, and just trust Hussein not to resume WMD programs or to seek revenge. Powell’s failure to get smart sanctions meant that the status quo wouldn’t hold. It seemed like the only way out was to remove Hussein from power, but nothing short of an invasion seemed likely to remove him.
It’s common wisdom to argue that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, but that can be misleading. Iraq had no operational role in the 9/11 attacks. But our invasion of Iraq in 1990 was what radicalized bin-Laden, and our ongoing military presence in Saudi Arabia is what rallied his troops. When he issued a fatwa against American citizens, he cited the death-toll of the sanctions as one of the reasons. If our policy options looked bleak before 9/11, the costs of continuing the status quo looked far too high after 9/11.
To me, it was obvious that we were going to invade Iraq and it was also obvious that we didn’t know what we were doing. I thought we were about to make a terrible mistake, but I had no doubt that the war could not be stopped. This put me in a very uncomfortable place. I didn’t have any solutions to offer. I knew that continuing the sanctions and containment would not work. I knew that politicians would never agree to let Saddam be and watch foreign powers swoop in and make all the money. I didn’t trust Saddam Hussein or want to see him have a free hand. And I definitely didn’t want to see our country invade and occupy an Arab country, particularly because it was clear that few people understood the dynamics of Iraqi society.
For me, the decision came down to whether to oppose the war even though I knew it was coming, or to focus on mitigating what I saw as a looming disaster. For a while, I argued that the UN should give its blessing because we needed the legitimacy, and invading without legitimacy would assure disaster. Yet, on the eve of the war, after the UN had refused to go along, a friend convinced me I had been wrong to take that approach. He said that it might be warranted under the circumstances in theory, but the Bush folks were sure to screw it up so badly that nothing good could come from it. I thought about it, and it struck me that he was right. I had been trying to mitigate a disaster, but it wasn’t the war that was inevitable. It was the disaster that was inevitable.
It then occurred to me that I might as well have spent all my energy just opposing the war. Lending any support for it was a mistake, even if my intention was only to prevent my country from suffering the worst consequences of its own pathology.
