Further confirmation?

This is an interesting bit of typically-conservative spin, if I’m not mistaken. Didn’t Donald Rumsfeld make the statement that we would be able to measure our success in Iraq by how often the Iraqis attacked those things that symbolized our success?

Yeesh. I wish I were a conservative, so that I could spin the truth 180 degrees when necessary to secure my own power.

Anthony, I disagree with your assessment of the anti-war movement. Indeed, I think that the decentralized nature of the movement makes it impossible to determine what it was “about” to any degree more than “it was about opposing war.”

Speaking from personal experience, I would argue that most anti-war activists, myself included, believed that the Administration’s reasons for going to war—oil, profit, empire, etc.—would eventually taint any potential benefits for the Iraqis. The fact that the US isn’t planning to withdraw its military until 2005 is rather telling. So is the fact that Bush’s buddies are getting loads of juicy reconstruction contracts without bidding. Or that the Bush administration has consistently tried to disguise and misrepresent its motives with regard to Iraq. (What is it trying to hide?)

No, the liberals I have known are very concerned about the Iraqi people. They simply do not think that a nation’s people can be properly aided through war, imperialism, and domination.

I’m one of the people Norm’s talking about; I’d be prepared to admit I was wrong after approximately two hundred years if either the Iraq war didn’t run out to be the first of a series of American imperial wars, or the American Empire turned out to be a good thing for the world.

Sorry, yeh, I meant “I’m one of the kind of people Norm’s talking about”.

My mates call me Danny or d-squared, but Dan is fine too.

This [discovery of WMD] was, and remains, the official casus belli, so I’d suggest that proponents of the war should admit error when they are prepared to concede that this isn’t going to happen.

Since I supported the Iraq war for a variety of reasons, then I fail to see why I should be held to the only reason that the UN would accept.

And the truth is that despite the commonly held myth, which much of the media glibly re-enforces, that no WMD was found in Iraq, even Le Monde accepts that it is not that simple.

I find this reasoning about what would vindicate the war a bit like saying that gambling is a virtue when you win and a vice when you loose.

So even when Iraq changes into a new Garden of Eden, some will still call gambling (this war) a vice.

I’d add that it seems appropriate to ask of everyone who seems certain of the rightness of their position on the war, whether there are any developments that would lead them to say, “OK, I was wrong.”

Many arguments against the war remain valid regardless of the outcome. To give an extremely lefty opinion as an example:

War as a political tool of the powerful against the powerless is wrong.

This opinion wouldn’t change because of the outcome of the war.

The specific reason that I opposed the war was the misinformation. I don’t run an intelligence agency so I did not know the thruth of it all, but I do know when i’m taken for a ride. This was clearly the case with the WMD ‘facts’. From the dodgy dossier in the UK, the aluminium tubes story in the US, to the prime minister in the Netherlands who had seen the WMD evidence, found it convincing enough to support the war, but somehow couldn’t tell us about the contents because of the secrecy. If there were WMD in Iraq the misinformation would still be there. And when the next war approaches I would still be against that war when presented with such lousy info.

To conclude, I think judging a war by it’s outcome is a bit too opportunistic for me.

See Joshua Marshall’s entry today for more in this regard.

Yes, apparently the media is allowed to bombard us all with wall-to-wall propaganda that distorts matters in favour of the hawks for months, but if we make just one post, just one little post that even hints at “Sorry, look, we told you this would happen!” it’s then “rejoicing in negative outcomes”.

[/sarcasm]

It’s completely unfair.

I find this reasoning about what would vindicate the war a bit like saying that gambling is a virtue when you win and a vice when you loose.

Except in gambling, we have a choice of whether or not to step up to the table and place our chips. In international affairs your chips are always on the table, there is no “non-gambling” neutral option. Inaction can be as dangerous as action, for both the Iraqi people and for us in the long term, unless people here believe that Saddam did not have weapons programmes that would have been reconsituted?

Jeremy says “Before the war, some people warned that the results of going to war would be highly undesirable.” Well, they were weren’t they and the worst of those have not come to pass. But are we seeing those people reassessing the risk-benefit of the Iraq war in the light of mass graves and lack of a huge conflagration in the Middle East? Thought not. If there is one thing we have learnt since Saddam fell, it is that he would not have fallen without action, and that inaction would have led to further suffering and potential future security risks.

Whereas instead we have the potential for something better and Libya re-engaging with the West and dismantling its weapons programme.

I just want to add a thought: why is it considered reasonable for educated people to act as commentators on the entire spectrum of political activity? Tom Friedman is a perfect example: he is very knowledgable about the Middle East, but his commentary on European politics is just laughable. I don’t know Hitchens background, but does he read Arabic? Has he studied Iraq’s history? Why does the WSJ present his drivel rather than the informed commentary of Juan Cole?
This lack of expert reporting, and people refusing to stick to their area, is a widespread problem in modern journalism.

But are we seeing those people reassessing the risk-benefit of the Iraq war in the light of mass graves

Why would anyone reassess the risk-benefit ratio because of atrocities which a) everyone knew about anyway and b) were ten years old?

The fact that there were mass graves containing around 200,000 bodies in Iraq has been well-established for years. They date back to the 1987-93 period of repression of the Kurds and Shia. To use those mass graves as justification for war now is a little bit dishonest; to claim that they represent a “risk” which made war a necessity is completely so.

If we had all known before the war what we now know about Saddam Hussein’s (lack of) WMD’s, then many of us who supported the invasion would not have done so – even though we thought there were lots of other excellent reasons for wanting the regime gone. That was a crucial part of the mix.

But we *didn’t* know, and perhaps *couldn’t* have known, ahead of time. The lack of WMD’s is a huge embarassment (and has effectively killed Bush’s preemption doctrine) but does not in itself prove that we made the wrong decision. For that, one would need to show that our suspicions were not only wrong, but unreasonable. That case has yet to be proven.

As for the *Schadenfreude* issue, I don’t blame those who opposed the war for saying “I told you so” every chance they get. It’s human nature. But I do blame them when they support policies (e.g., immediate withdrawal) that are guaranteed to produce the disaster they predict, regardless of the consequences for the Iraqi people and for the West alike.

Maybe the Iraqi people are simply incapable of maintaining a polity that is more humane and friendlier to the West than under Hussein. Time will tell. But to give up on them *now* would be the height of irresponsibility.

Why should there be an outcome that would change peoples minds.

You go to Vegas, you see the odds on a sports match (rugby – US v NZ). You see that the US are favourites and bet on the All Blacks to win, with a hefty 5 to 1 payoff.

The game ends up being a draw, does this mean you were wrong?

The ‘variety of reasons’ theme isn’t meant to be a way of dodging the issue. It’s a recognition that most things in this world happen for more than one reason.
It was my view that the Allies chose to focus on WMD because it was the only thing the UN would accept. You couldn’t go to the UN and say ‘let’s get rid of Saddam because he’s an evil swine who runs arguably the world’s nastiest government and has broken the 1991 ceasefire more times than you can shake a stick at’, because several of the UNSC would say to themselves, ‘some of our best friends are evil swine’, and veto it.
As for myself, I assumed that Saddam was up to no good over WMD – and even the Guardian agreed last year that the Kay evidence showed Iraq was in breach of UNSCR 1441 – but it was not my main reason for being pro-war. It was simply that the Iraqis wanted him gone. And it’s more than just some pollsters who support that: there have been several national polls in Iraq which all come up with roughly the same answer, i.e. just over 50% support for the war, 30-40% against. Oddly enough about the same percentages as in the UK.
It’s perfectly fair to criticise the war on the grounds that Iraq was not a clear and present danger and fair to point to the suffering it entailed. Bush and Blair deserve to take flak for their faulty predictions. But the critics should be candid about their own faulty predictions, e.g. Amnesty’s prediction of 50,000 civilian dead and half a million refugees.
There is also the consideration that the favoured regime change option of the anti-war pundits was a revolt by the Iraqis themselves. Setting aside the issue of whether that was possible, it could hardly have happened without a civil war in which events like the Fallujah killings would have been routine. But not televised, which would have been easier for non-Iraqis to bear.

I agree with warwhatisitgoodfor.

In my opinion the position of the pro-war left (basically: “we should invade their countries and convert them to democracy.”) was fundamentally wrong. No outcome could repair that.

I wrote about this a while back, “Warbloggers Circle Wagons, and I do think the obligation to predictively outline what developments would invalidate your views of the war (or any policy debate) should fall equally heavily on the proponents and opponents of any given decision. If three years from now, Iraq is a vigorous liberal democracy and many of its neighbors are pursuing, out of necessity, liberalizing policies, I would be the first to admit I was wrong.

It’s just that right now I view those events as highly unlikely for reasons that go far deeper than events in Iraq–it’s because I’m operating from a fairly deep and I think empirically very sound understanding of the conditions under which liberal democracies take hold that makes this event exceedingly unlikely in Iraq due to the particular circumstances of the US intervention there.

But everyone who wants to play this game honestly has to provision conditions of potential falsification. Most warbloggers don’t–when they lose the game, they move the goalposts. But so too do Chomsky and many others–Chomsky in particular provisions no possible point at which he would concede to other interpretations of contemporary events.

Vint,
Funny you mention expert opinion, since I mentioned that above. Scott Ritter is an expert on Iraq’s WMD capability, so his opinion there carries great weight. Outside of that area, his views carry less weight.

If it’s true what Hitchens says — that is, that war is justified against a country with a segment of the population willing to murder and desecrate the corpses of a group of innocent people just because of their race — then I’m sure he greatly regrets the fact that no one had the foresight to declare war on the U.S. in the ’20s. After all, those Americans were hateful and barbaric, and if I know one thing from reading conservative rhetoric over the last week, there is no hope of rehabilitation or improvement of a people who are willing to commit such crimes. Right? Right?

Everybody strongly suspected that Saddam had prohibited weapons – chemical weapons and possibly some anthrax or ricin – but these aren’t weapons of mass destruction.

It was a dead cert that Saddam had no nukes, and El Baradei confirmed as much before the outbreak of the war. Iraq suffered enormous infrastructural damage in Gulf I and the ’98 bombings, and anyone with half an ounce of brains knew that there was zero chance that Saddam was “days away from nukes”. This includes the US and UK government.

It was a very handy rhetorical trick to lump chlorine gas along with nukes under the catch-all “WMD”, as it allowed the US/UK to invocate images of “mushroom clouds” while allowing the discovery of rusty cannisters with traces of Sarin to serve as resounding proof of “WMD”, since the vast majority of pro-war types were not going to entertain any abstract discussions about the essential difference between chemical weapons and nukes.

Unfortunately even this vastly lowered bar has not been cleared: Saddam appears to have been squeaky clean, not only with respect to nukes, but also with respect to absolutely piddling stuff – even actual weapons programs were absent, and we had to endure months of blather about how the desire to some day start weapons programs was the moral equivalent of actually posessing enough nukes to terrorize Western civilization.

And this is something neither the pro- nor anti-war side expected: both sides expected that Saddam would provide enough technical loopholes for the Coalition – ever eager to grasp at motivational straws – to use as an excuse for justification. Any shard would have done – even two mobile bioweapons trailers would have been figleaf enough – and to everybody’s great surprise, including mine, *there has not been enough figleaf to satisfy anybody at all*.

“Anyway, for the time being, the standard of proof for WMD allegations is going to be extremely high”

Yes. Like a real smoking cloud, for instance. And *Iraq* was apparently worth that waste of credibility.

Bully for Vinteuil, but particularly for Anthony’s comments about the lack of a “no risk” option. If we view Iraq as a “state of concern” for the US, there are not really so many ways to go:

1. Invade
2. Aggressive force-backed-but-short-of-war attempts to deny a nuclear program/military build up
3. Support overthrow via domestic opposition
4. Sanctions
5. Nothing

The hawk view, essentially, was that the ” nothing plan” would lead to an unacceptable result: a nuclear-armed, Hussein-controlled regional power in 5-10 years. Further, hawks believed that the current sanctions regimewas rapidly resembling the ‘do nothing plan’ (and inflicted suffering on Iraqis into the bargain). Option three never looked too good to anyone given Saddam’s police state. And most hawks rejected the “war but not war” temporizing of option two as impracticable. Also, in the words of Michael Ignatieff, the military containment of Hussein still left “25 million Iraqis in jail”.

Of course, these judgement can be disputed. Maybe a nuclear armed Saddam in ten years ins;t so bad. Or maybe — as Micahel Walzer thought –option two had a real chance to work. That’s all fair game. But some of the frustration you see from the war-blogging hawks arises from suspicions that most war opponents didn’t then and don’t now present any positive solutions. They just want to attack Bush and Blair.

So let me pose this to the anti-war-leaning residents of this thread. If not invasion, what “solution” to the Iraq problem did you support?

bp: mostly right, but is “days away from nukes” actually a quotation? If so, from whom?

bp, can I put you down for the “do nothing” option then?

baa –
yep. I feel for the plight of the poor oppressed Iraqis, but I also feel for the plight of the poor oppressed sudanese, and I’m prepared to do squat all for both, as I suspect you are for the latter.

virteuil –
Pakistan has nukes. France has nukes. India has nukes. North Korea has nukes. The UK has nukes. Russia has literally enough nukes to wipe the US out of existence. Since they’re not sitting on vast resources in an area where the US feels compelled to exert an hegemonic influence, we rarely see people frothing at the mouth, or wetting their pants at the urgent danger they represent to the US.

baa: with respect to your option 2 above…does it *include* sanctions, with all the attendant innocent suffering? Or might it have been workable without them?

bp: ah, ok. If you think what set Iraq apart from France, India the U.K. and Russia was the oil, then I guess I’m less with you than I thought I was. Pakistan, of course, is another matter. I hope “constructive engagement” (obviously impossible with Hussein’s Iraq) will work there. We’ll see.

I guess “days away from nukes” was not a quote.

All:

I really can’t stress enoguh my desire to hear what other commentators thought was a better Iraq solution. I didn’t ask it in the spirit of being a wise-ass, I really want to know. Honest, Millian, marketplace of ideas and all that. I’ve already seen on this thread an excellent selection of sharp, informed, anti-war voices: Tim Burke, Chris Betram, John Quiggin, DD, etc. What was the positive policy you envisioned? And if you think “do nothing” is an unnecessarily polemical phrasing, I understand that “watchful waiting (the strategy advocated by Leon Fuerth, I believe) would be another way to put it.

Vinteuil:

That’s a great question. I don’t know exactly what “2” would entail — in large part because I’ve seen no one but Walzer discuss it at length. The practical problems seem to me very great. Nonetheless a scheme of force-backed disarmament does seem consistant with relaxation of santions/increased humanitarian assistance to Iraqis

bp: I think the Sudan and Saddam’s Iraq, while perhaps analogous in their brutality, are disanalogous in other ways. Specifically, I think Saddam’s Iraq posed a greater threat to US strategic interests as it was a) stronger, b) richer, c) more hostile, d) closer to nuclear capability, e) more prone to pan-arabist/ commander-of-the-faithful provocation vs. Israel, f) right next to Saudi Arabia.

baa –
No-one has explained why US strategic interests in the region matter, or why dictators won’t sell us oil, or why I should give a fig about the House of Saud, or for that matter why I should care whether the hegemon in the Middle East is Iraq or the US. If Saudi Arabia needs to defend itself from Iraq, let them buy nukes – heck, if that bothers you enough, pressure your local representative to get the US to sell them a couple. If MAD worked against Stalin, it’ll work against Stalin Junior.

bp: my position on “connections between al-Qaeda and Saddam” is the same as the administrations: skeptical. In any case, I didn’t bring it up. So please calm down.

In your answer to baa, you answered a whole pile of questions that he didn’t ask. It might be even more interesting to learn your answer to the one he *did* ask.

Which option? Or what?

virteuil –
You must have missed the part where I said “yep” when baa asked if he should put me down as a “do nothing”.

Let me be clear.

Do nothing. No thing. Not my business. Hands off. Leave it alone. Leave it alone the way we are leaving Sudan alone, and Zimbabwe, and a host of other places. If the Iraqis want our help, let ’em ask for it. They want Saddam out, let them kill him. What is he, Superman? He’s an old man with a bad heart: I bet he couldn’t bench press 20 pounds without collapsing. How many Iraqis are there, 25 million? How hard can it be?

Sorry bp, missed your “yep.”

Not even sanctions or “containment,” huh?

Well, it’s a position, I guess.

The logic of humanitarian intervention at any price, with almost no condition that would be deemed a failure, requires that we immediately occupy North Korea, Zimbabwe, Congo, Somalia, Equatorial Guinea, and several Central Asian states at a minimum.

Let me know when the Stop the War Coalition plan a march against French Imperialism in the Congo.

I’ve read the comments so far with interest because I am truly confused by hawks’ continued support of the war. We (by which I mean everyone without security clearance) now know that Iraq did not pose a clear, and present danger to the US. Why–and please be truthful–is it better for US interests that Hussein is no long in power? Yes, of course, he was a bad, bad man and the Iraqi people were suffering, may he and his burn in hell. But how does that relate to US national interests? (Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to buy the world a coke, and I myself would start in the Congo.)

Call me sentimental. It seems to me that with regard to Iraq’s ability to manufacture means to harm the US, the pre-Bush II policy was working. So, for you hawks out there, please clarify why this war was in the best interests of the United States. As a patriot, I’d like to know.

Baa:

That’s an interesting point. Let’s say that the national security argument as it typically was made in the run-up to war is in tatters, because it rested on the actual possession of readily deployable WMD or in the imminent possession of same.

The argument you make is a more intricate one and it takes us into some of the domains that were being explored before war by a few but which clearly need further exploration regarding two things, first, the degree to which Saddam Hussein and his inner circle were or were not rational actors and second, the degree to which it is possible to know even if you know the intentionalities of other state actors what the likely future course of events might be. What your hypothetical omniscience might have to note, for example, is not just whether Hussein would move to acquire nukes in the absence of sanctions, but whether said desire would result in real programs of acquisition, whether said program of acquisition would result in actual acquisition, and whether acquisitions would result in planned or threatened uses of same.

I think it’s reasonable, working backwards, to suppose that nukes in Hussein’s hands would have been a threat because of planned or threatened uses. But what’s now emerging from the WMD hunt is that the desire for WMD by autocrats cut off from reality and surrounded by sycophants may not translate into actual programs of acquisition, any more than the world needed to fear Idi Amin acquiring a intercontinental ballistic missile when he said he wanted one. But I agree this is easy to say now and hard to say then. What might be needed at this juncture from both war advocates and war critics is a reasonably honest, fair-minded conversation about how we know what other actors in the world might do, and about how good our general understanding of the architecture of states and causality in the world really is.

“Tis with our judgements as our watches; none go just alike, yet each believes his own.” Alexander Pope, “Essay on Criticism”

I believe that much of the sound and fury surrounding this debate is that we have no shared set of rules of evidence, no shared set of values.

This pro and anti war debate strikes me as so exactly wrong — both about the issues then and the issues now — that it has to typify some deep strain of wrong in the discourse of the “clercs.”

I opposed the war not because I supported Saddam Hussein. Far from it. I didn’t believe war was necessary to effect regime change, but I thought the U.S should be trying to effect regime change. But war at that time seemed inappropriate; it seemed to be constructed by the administration in power out of fantasies and lies; and the administration’s purpose seemed to be less the creation of an independent Iraq than of a satellite of the U.S with all the rhetorical trappings of democracy, and none of the stuffing. Chalabi was to play the role of Somoza, or the Guatamalan general, or any number of U.S. puppet figures.

This didn’t happen, partly because the defense department conned itself with its Con man, partly because of the resistance. Here we have a case where taking political sides using absolute good and evil as your guides would get you nowhere. Who could support a resistance that consists of thugs, torturers, and the power mad? Who could support an occupation that consists of exploiters, filibusterers, and the dregs of every rightwing lobbying group in D.C.?

But their clash actually created a good thing — an opening for Iraq to be a sovereign nation — with an emerging civil society. This happened between the two hostile parties, and it is still a fragile structure.

However, what is amazing is that people can cast their views in concrete at a certain instance and then throw mud at each other as the circumstances accumulate — without paying attention to the fact that these circumstances were predicted by neither side. It is as if, in the pro war/anti war fight, the Iraqis themselves don’t exist — they have merely a dramatic insistence, allegorical figures for the “true” battle between good and evil.

Which, down deep, is one’s most persistant reason for skepticism about western interventions. They still happen within an overwhelmingly racist context; the real people over whom concern is shown exist as children or monsters, but never as adults with their own reasons or interests; and the appeals for ‘neutrality,’ for shaping the discourse in terms of scientific proof, unconsciously imports into history that most unhistorical idea, that a principle can exist there without circustances — emerging ex nihilo, and referenced as a sort of supernumerary thing henceforth.

I can only shake my head, man. Wow.

I supported the war because Iraq had several violations of the 1991 cease-fire agreement. As a matter of policy, I believe the US should aggressively enforce cease-fire treaties.

According to the Geneva Convention, any chemical or biological weapon is automatically classified as a WMD. Obviously, ricen wasn’t the threat people where sold on. Most people where envisioning nuclear weapons.

The Middle East is important because of oil. Not for the reason the anti-war commentators frequently bring up. Right now, if the region collapses for any significant length of time, the world economy collapses. That is a fairly important national security issue.

I too would be interested in active, pro-active alternatives to war in Iraq.

My general answer to the pro-war people on this thread is that imperialism has its limits, and the Coalition of the Willing was not sufficient to materially (positively) affect the course of events in the mideast.

*if* the intervention had been truly one of humanitarian purpose then everything in its lead up would have been different, and I would have had a different appreciation of these altered facts on the ground from a year ago.

Recasting arguments to another time, not supporting US intervention for various authoritarian dictatorships in Saigon was not one of these “objectively pro-Ho Chi Minh” deals IMV.

Timothy:

If I’m going to be asked to approve a costly new program, I want to first have a conversation about the entire universe of good things that that money might be spent on rather than presuming that the first one raised is the right one.

I totally agree with you on this; my biggest problem with the Bush administration is their disrespect for the public. They act as though Americans would not be interested in such a campaign; I think they would be, and that it should be discussed. (Wolfowitz et al should keep blogs, in other words)

From my perspective, even if you approve of humanitarian or liberal intervention, Iraq was exactly the wrong room to clean first.

I would put it differently: Iraq was the most radical and revolutionary place to start. Domino democracy would not be out of the question if Iraq developed a thriving economy and open political system in the next decade, but it is far from certain that this will happen. Iraq carries the largest payoff for democracy along with the most ominous risks. In an earlier post (or the comments to it) John Quiggin noted that Kuwait would be a better starting place. As I said there it would certainly be the sounder option, but the effect would not have been as profound as the revolutionaries in the White House desire. As a side-note, it’s interesting to note that those who gravitate toward revolutionary ideology (read: ex-Trotskyist Hitchens) are often attracted to the neoconservative vision of full-fledged regime change in Iraq.

Finally, to Jeremy regarding distasteful metaphors: I’m usually careful about being insensitive, and I think this one was ok. A repugnant analogy is one that trivializes the life and death of civilians and soldiers: for example, Kissinger calling his bombing operations in Cambodia “breakfast”, “lunch” and “dinner” because of their timing. If anything, I’d say my analogy was on the same moral level as metaphors employed by realist theorists; i.e. states are a bunch of pool balls that occasionally collide with one another. They’re just trying to abstract the logic away from the emotionally charged zone of international relations.

John Quiggen wrote:
I agreed with the policy that was publicly stated until late 2002 – threaten Saddam with war if he didn’t declare his (putative) weapons and admit inspectors. On the evidence we had then, there was good reason to suppose he had all sorts of weapons. But once the inspectors went in, it became apparent that this was (at least) far from certain.

I would have continued as follows. Once Saddam admitted the inspectors, let them do their work. Once the inspectors found he was clean, drop all but purely military sanctions subject to a continuing inspections regime to prevent him restarting the programs he abandoned in the early 90s.

This would have been great, but the problem was that the irrational actor seems to have been the US, refusing to believe Saddam. I realize that Saddam didn’t give anyone much cause to believe him, but, really, what could he have done to prove that he had no WMD other than go into exile? Or to lie and say ‘you got me, I’ll destroy them’ and then quickly create some to destroy. Short of that, there was nothing that Saddam could have done to prevent the US invasion. And I have to think that the fact that there have been no WMD discovered (I should add that I supported the invasion on the premise that there were WMD and my impression of the portrayal of Saddam’s brutality was to demonstrate that he was not a rational actor, not as a reason for war) must give the ‘arab street’ cause to think that all the talk of bringing democracy is so much hot air. And what, exactly, could the US point to that would have them change their minds?

For instance, if there is a functioning and independent Iraqi democracy within two years, which lasts for at least a further five, then I think that ought to shake the convictions of hardened opponents.

If this takes place, I’m converting to Protestant Fundamentalism and joining the Cult of Bush. I’m not kidding.

As it happens, I asked Hitchens exactly this question when I got a chance to meet him. I wrote about it on my old site:

http://www.seewhy.blogspot.com/2003_06_01_seewhy_archive.html#95296673

The US invaded Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator.
But that can’t be true, because nothing that’s happened since the invasion aligns with that statement of purpose.
There has been no liberation, no relief from suffering, only more and more suffering, an almost official contempt, and less and less recognition of Iraqis as a people in need.
They have become the enemy.
The second-level, more cynical, reason given, was that the oil deposits that underly Iraq will become increasingly important as global supplies diminish and population and technological development both increase.
So the US invaded to guarantee a stable supply of petroleum.
But that can’t be true either, can it?
Because nothing that’s happened so far, and nothing that’s been proposed, seems geared toward a stable local economy, which would seem necessary to guarantee access to those oil deposits.
–
So why are American young people dying in Iraq?
Without seeing any hard data I’m confident the social strata represented in the death counts are virtually synonymous with big-box employee lists back home.
So number one, American young people are dying because their lives don’t matter anyway. Their lives are as disposable in Iraq as they are in Wal-Mart.
The next question would be – who benefits from things as they are, now, in Iraq?
And there’s only one answer to that.