empty rhetoric

Much has been written about Iraq, little of it complimentary to the Bush Administration, much of it extremely critical of their attempt to bring Democracy to Iraq. This torrent of criticism has, by and large, focused on a perceived injustice– namely, that the invasion lacked sufficient cause and did not further the interests of either Iraq or the United States.

In contrast, supporters of the war have often painted it in absolutist, rosy terms. Pressured by the tremendous criticism from the left, many on the right see wholesale support of the war (and those who prosecuted it) to be the only possible response. Meanwhile, Iraq flounders, its improvement only gradual, its future uncertain.

The middle ground is this debate is seemingly nonexistent. Very few are willing to admit to problems in Iraq while at once supporting the overall mission of bringing democracy to the region. Conversely, most, if not all of the critics now speak the rhetoric of withdrawal, demanding that the United States end the “Iraq adventure” as soon as possible, claiming defeat as their reason, and the incompetence (or greed, or evil, etc.) of the Bush Administration as the cause– without admitting to progress, which has been slow, but significant. Indeed, much of the rhetoric of the anti-war crowd has been exceedingly dishonest toward the Bush Administration, who have been accused of being alternately stupid and conspiratorial, architects of a foolish project to grab oil and without a larger post-war plan.

The discrepancy between what Iraq became after the initial defeat of Saddam’s forces and the promises of the Bush Administration certainly demands some sort of explanation– the question is what it will be. Critics call for Bush’s impeachment and suggest that the Administration either didn’t know or didn’t care that postwar Iraq would become a difficult, protracted struggle, while many supporters simply ignore the real problems and shrug off the cognitive dissonance that arises when one sees IED’s killing scores of Iraqis and U.S. troops.

The failure of the Bush Administration did not occur during the planning of the Iraq war, nor during the aftermath. It was not a war for oil, nor is it an imperialistic endeavor attempting to create a U.S. client state. At the time of the invasion, the WMD question was far from closed, and the Iraqi people were being oppressed by Saddam. The failure of the Bush Administration was to sell the war properly– to prepare the American populous for the difficulties that inevitably arise when the U.S. military is tasked with “nation-building”, or, for that matter, disarming.

To be fair, significant mistakes were obviously committed in Iraq– but shouldn’t that have been obvious from the start? Complicated endeavors involving mixed cultures and a society that had spent decades under the oppression of a dictator like Saddam mean that mistakes were inevitable. But with the death toll in Iraq beginning to slow its torrential pace and the change in attitude that will inevitably follow, sorting out what is simply endemic to war and what represents a failure by the leadership even in war is a difficult task.

It isn’t difficult to foresee that Iraq will not turn out as was promised in the lead up to the war– but the question as to whether this is a failure of postwar incompetence or a failure of promise is a question that is almost never addressed in the debate, so pervasive has the orthodoxy of defeat become. Is Iraq a policy mistake or a rhetorical mistake?

Given that Iraq was destined to be one of the most difficult endeavors in the War on Terror, it seems obvious what the answer to that question is. Much has been written by the left about how Iraq has nothing to do with 9/11. Such is not the case– after all, the link between Iraq and 9/11 is not practical but ideological. The ideologies of the Saddam regime were part of the cause of much of the anti-American attitudes in the Mid-East– indeed, it is precisely the lack of secular governments in the Middle East that has become the starting point of so much of the anti-American attitudes leading to 9/11. Iraq, many “neoconservatives” believe, was not optional, but rather, inevitable.

If we assume that Iraq was a problem that would eventually need to be dealt with, what do the failures of the Bush Administration become? They become rhetorical– they begin in how the war was sold, not in how (or when) it was fought. The Bush Administration cheerled the war– that much, I think is obvious. They made rosy predictions about its end, and about the ease in which the United States could win in Iraq. In a somewhat twisted logistical sense, they were right– Saddam’s military crumbled like the paper tiger that it was, and major combat operations were finished in an astoundingly short amount of time.

But what of the aftermath? There was little to no discussion about the reconstruction of Iraq– given previous “nation-building” experiments, the outcome of Iraq was not certain even as prewar planning reached its height– indeed, even as the first missiles began to fall on Baghdad. The American public was told that Iraq would be easy, simple– at the very least, they were not told that it would take years– and the blood of American soldiers– to ensure that extremism was defeated. These were not lies, inasmuch as most were framed as optimistic predictions about what Iraq could become– but did anyone really think it would come freely?

This, it seems, was the real failure: not emphasizing the importance of Iraq as a front in the struggle against extremism in the Middle East, and not assessing it for the difficulties it would inevitably produce. Thus, we find ourselves, four years later, wondering whether or not to abandon the undertaking, with polls sinking to new lows and real questions arising as to what the U.S. must do to succeed.

Many remain optimistic about Iraq, but few do so without tempering that optimism with the caveat that success in Iraq, however possible, will come at an easy cost. Even the Bush Administration has started to realize that it must give honest, tough assessments of the war in order to maintain its credibility, and thus the political means to carry out its vision in the Mideast. Neoconservatism is far from dead– and its supporters are not scattered on the winds. Rather, they are facing the fruits of too many months of rosy assessments and blindly positive rhetoric. They have, in a sense, dug their own grave– but they still have a choice whether to crawl into it.