QUOTE
Iraq May Be Stable,
But the War Was a Mistake
By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
August 15, 2008; Page A13
Sometime in May 2003, shortly after U.S. forces had taken Baghdad and President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier under the banner "Mission Accomplished," an old friend remarked that he thought the war was going pretty well so far. I shook my head and said I thought we were in for trouble.
I bet him that day that Iraq would be a mess in five years' time, a mess being defined as "you'll know it when you see it." I mentioned this bet to Bret Stephens three years later. He'd reviewed my book, "America at the Crossroads" in this newspaper1, accusing me, among other things, of turning against the war only when public opinion had shifted. Mr. Stephens wanted to take the wager himself. And as he wrote in his column earlier this month2, I conceded that he'd won by the narrow terms of the wager.
Iraq was a mess by any definition from the fall of 2003 to the beginning of this year. It is entirely possible that it will return to being a mess in the coming months and years. But I paid $100 to Mr. Stephens because a tremendous amount of progress has been made stabilizing Iraq as a result of President Bush's surge -- which has allowed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to establish control over Baghdad and much of southern Iraq.
Though Iraq remains a very troubled country, virtually all of the trend lines -- Iraqi and U.S. casualties, government provision of basic services, and the ability of Iraqi forces to provide order -- have been moving in a positive direction for the past year.
What I absolutely did not concede, however, was the fact that this change meant that the war itself was worth it. By invading Iraq in the manner it did, the U.S. exacerbated all of the threats it faced prior to 2003. Recruitment into terrorist cells shot up all over the world. North Korea and Iran accelerated their development of nuclear weapons.
Indeed, Iran has emerged as the dominant regional power in the Persian Gulf once the U.S. removed its major rival from the scene and put its Shiite clients into power in Baghdad. While everyone is better off without Saddam Hussein around, the cost was hugely disproportionate. If you don't believe this, ask yourself whether Congress would ever have voted to authorize the war in 2002 if it knew there was no WMD, or that there would be trillion-dollar budget outlays, or that there would be 30,000 dead and wounded after five years of bitter struggle.
There are deeper, intangible costs. The Bush administration this week rebuked Russia for its disproportionate military intervention in Georgia; many rightly suspect Moscow's real goal is regime change of the pro-Western, democratic government in Tbilisi. But who set the most recent precedent for a big power intervening to change a regime it didn't like, without the sanction of the U.N. Security Council or any other legitimating international body?
Of course, there is no moral equivalence between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Mikheil Saakashvili's Georgia. But the U.S. is scarcely in a position today to rally opposition to Russia on the basis of international law and norms constraining the strong from using force against the weak.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain says he was right in supporting the surge and that Democrat Barack Obama was wrong in opposing it. On this tactical issue I grant that Sen. McCain was right. But Sen. Obama was right on the much more important strategic question of whether the war itself was a prudent policy, and here Mr. McCain remains as wrong as ever.
Mr. Obama does not share McCain's instinctive reliance on hard power as the primary instrument for dealing with messy questions of terrorism and proliferation in the broader Middle East. This is one reason I support him for president.
Mr. Obama and other long-time opponents of the Iraq war are strongly disinclined to admit anything is going well in Iraq. Psychologically and politically, this is understandable: The smallest concession induces supporters of the war to argue that they were right all along, as Mr. Stephens did.
But Mr. Obama should fervently hope that Iraq is not a mess if and when he takes office, since only a stable Iraq will allow him to prudently fulfill the withdrawal timetable he has promised. The failure to acknowledge a bad reality back in 2003 should not lead us to make the opposite mistake five years later.
Mr. Fukuyama is professor of international political economy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of "America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy" (Yale, 2007).
But the War Was a Mistake
By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
August 15, 2008; Page A13
Sometime in May 2003, shortly after U.S. forces had taken Baghdad and President Bush landed on an aircraft carrier under the banner "Mission Accomplished," an old friend remarked that he thought the war was going pretty well so far. I shook my head and said I thought we were in for trouble.
I bet him that day that Iraq would be a mess in five years' time, a mess being defined as "you'll know it when you see it." I mentioned this bet to Bret Stephens three years later. He'd reviewed my book, "America at the Crossroads" in this newspaper1, accusing me, among other things, of turning against the war only when public opinion had shifted. Mr. Stephens wanted to take the wager himself. And as he wrote in his column earlier this month2, I conceded that he'd won by the narrow terms of the wager.
Iraq was a mess by any definition from the fall of 2003 to the beginning of this year. It is entirely possible that it will return to being a mess in the coming months and years. But I paid $100 to Mr. Stephens because a tremendous amount of progress has been made stabilizing Iraq as a result of President Bush's surge -- which has allowed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to establish control over Baghdad and much of southern Iraq.
Though Iraq remains a very troubled country, virtually all of the trend lines -- Iraqi and U.S. casualties, government provision of basic services, and the ability of Iraqi forces to provide order -- have been moving in a positive direction for the past year.
What I absolutely did not concede, however, was the fact that this change meant that the war itself was worth it. By invading Iraq in the manner it did, the U.S. exacerbated all of the threats it faced prior to 2003. Recruitment into terrorist cells shot up all over the world. North Korea and Iran accelerated their development of nuclear weapons.
Indeed, Iran has emerged as the dominant regional power in the Persian Gulf once the U.S. removed its major rival from the scene and put its Shiite clients into power in Baghdad. While everyone is better off without Saddam Hussein around, the cost was hugely disproportionate. If you don't believe this, ask yourself whether Congress would ever have voted to authorize the war in 2002 if it knew there was no WMD, or that there would be trillion-dollar budget outlays, or that there would be 30,000 dead and wounded after five years of bitter struggle.
There are deeper, intangible costs. The Bush administration this week rebuked Russia for its disproportionate military intervention in Georgia; many rightly suspect Moscow's real goal is regime change of the pro-Western, democratic government in Tbilisi. But who set the most recent precedent for a big power intervening to change a regime it didn't like, without the sanction of the U.N. Security Council or any other legitimating international body?
Of course, there is no moral equivalence between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Mikheil Saakashvili's Georgia. But the U.S. is scarcely in a position today to rally opposition to Russia on the basis of international law and norms constraining the strong from using force against the weak.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain says he was right in supporting the surge and that Democrat Barack Obama was wrong in opposing it. On this tactical issue I grant that Sen. McCain was right. But Sen. Obama was right on the much more important strategic question of whether the war itself was a prudent policy, and here Mr. McCain remains as wrong as ever.
Mr. Obama does not share McCain's instinctive reliance on hard power as the primary instrument for dealing with messy questions of terrorism and proliferation in the broader Middle East. This is one reason I support him for president.
Mr. Obama and other long-time opponents of the Iraq war are strongly disinclined to admit anything is going well in Iraq. Psychologically and politically, this is understandable: The smallest concession induces supporters of the war to argue that they were right all along, as Mr. Stephens did.
But Mr. Obama should fervently hope that Iraq is not a mess if and when he takes office, since only a stable Iraq will allow him to prudently fulfill the withdrawal timetable he has promised. The failure to acknowledge a bad reality back in 2003 should not lead us to make the opposite mistake five years later.
Mr. Fukuyama is professor of international political economy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of "America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy" (Yale, 2007).
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Iraq May Be Stable, But the War Was a Mistake - WSJ.com
