How wrong was I a little over five years ago? Embarrassingly so, considering I had a frigging BA in Political Science. I’ve grabbed these from an old personal site, so I’m not linking it. In essence I backed the Tony Blair approach on Iraq. So based on what I said back then, if I’d been in the Congress I’d probably have unwisely voted for that accursed resolution.
The question here is can Bush be trusted? I’m willing to believe him on his intentions to rebuild Iraq but I don’t believe he’s willing to take substantial political risk to guarantee that it will succeed. Fortunately I believe there are still enough leaders left in America that it will not be allowed to fail...
Ultimately, I’m gonna sleep [fine] without Saddam Hussein or even a soft-autocrat in charge of Iraq. Let alone knowing that said leader won’t have access to weapons of mass destruction. It’ll also help that most U.S. troops are out of Saudi Arabia and thus all that much farther from Mecca. But most important, a rebuilt democratic Iraq will be a proving grounds for idealism in American policy. I have enough faith in current non-Bush leadership, liberal democracy, and America to think we’ll pass the test. Although if I’m wrong,or if Bush actually is just straight out evil, the price will be terrible. Here’s hoping I’m right...
Finally, I believe we’ll suceed [sic] in rebuilding Iraq if we have the will to do it. Although, as much as I knock the admin, at least they are being aggressively rhetorically pro-democratic. I just hope the misteps [sic] in regard to preparing for the next stage were mistakes and not indications of lack of concern...
In short my judgment on the biggest foreign policy decision of the past decade was terrible. I supported sending between hundreds of thousands and millions of Iraqis and 4,000 American troops to their death based on faith and not the analysis, available at the time, of the order of magnitude of the true cost.
So in short, I fell for the classical Green Lantern line of thought. With sufficient will we’d be fine. I’d seen a lot of humanitarian interventions that went from okay to not so impressive. These interventions were typically mediocre at best, although the incompetence of the start of the Iraq occupation was still remarkable.
However, I will not avail myself of the incompetence defense. The Iraq war was a horrific mistake, one that could have been and indeed was foreseen by many people including some friends. After having realized this mistake, I have left the ranks of liberal hawks as have many others.
I’m sorry. My form of penance is listening more to those that were right and trying to fix the problems the invasion caused. My read for the past few years is that the best first step is withdrawal from Iraq. What lessons have I learned? I think Timothy Noah is right, it's probably a better use of your time to focus on why some people got it right than what people who got it wrong think now.
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