How we go to war and what's next
Perhaps the most important unfinished conversation of our time is the question of why we went to war in Iraq. It is too soon for the question to have been grappled with by historians. It may never actually be revealed. We were given and continue to be given reasons, the now famous 'weapons of mass destruction'; to spread democracy, etc.. We transitioned to the 'democracy' justification after we found no WMD. One reason, discussed by Senator McCain at the Republican convention and espoused early on by this writer was that the containment of Saddam Hussein, a known tyrannical adventurer, was failing. Within a short period of time he would be free once more to attack his neighbors. If we could not successfully continue the containment process, we had no choice but to strike.
At the time I believed and now hear speculation that America simply wanted a large military presence in the Middle East. This was a suspicion of many critics of the war, that Saddam was a convenient tyrant who could be manipulated into giving us reason for a large continuing military footprint in the region.
Why would we want this and why didn't our government say so. After 9/11, we were clearly able to justify our invasion of Afghanistan to eradicate the Taliban and the Al Qaeda infrastructure. We were so justified that we were probably expected.
But having the military encamped in Afghanistan would not be enough. We wanted to intimidate certain regimes into pulling back all support of terror activity. What better way than destroying one of them? Does this all sound Machiavellian? No doubt and it gives some credence to those who criticize us as an expansive imperial power, but the hard reality is that the terrorist activity comes from this region and is sparked by the cultural environment of hatred for America that is tolerated, encouraged and ardently supported by the existing regimes. The only way to change that culture of hatred would be for those regimes to either change that culture or be changed themselves. The Bush administration could not lay out this strategy. The policy would be considered unamerican at home and possibly galvanize the Arab world against us. Europe would have been outright hostile.
So we are in Iraq. Even with the case I've laid out, I'm not sure I've really got to the bottom of it. I can only speculate, but I think the fundamental genesis for any war is that the leadership of one nation simply decides, possibly for personal reasons, it wants to and that it can. The reasons given by the Bush administration and others including my own speculation may contain some truth as issues, but the actual source of the war was in the minds and personalities of those who ordered it long before any of the issues raised by the administration were in the public consciousness. Indeed some of these people were writing about it and espousing it before the Bush was elected.
The clearest thing we can deduce from all the reports and all the books on the subject is that those with the power in the Bush administration decided early on to go to war with Saddam and that 9/11 provided the opportunity.
In hindsight we have learned enough that there was no way for Iraq to avoid war with the United States. There was no price the Bush administration was unwilling to pay for that war. The price included world-wide condemnation and the absence of most of our traditional allies. It included bitter division in the country.
Hindsight, while not a perfect guide, does provide us with a model by which to judge continued behavior. Watch now what is happening with Iran. In the next article I will discuss why I think the administration has decided to use military options in Iran.
Melvyn Polatchek
2:11:28 PM 
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