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Page added on March 23, 2015
Using Iraq and Libya as a Lens
Every presidential candidate should face pressure to answer, explicitly, these two questions: Given what we now know, was it right or wrong to invade Iraq in 2003 to oust Saddam Hussein and, eight years later, to help topple the regime of Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya? Force the contenders to skip the partisan talking points and make them provide an inkling of a would-be president’s instincts about military interventions. The Iraq invasion was undertaken by the brother of the leading 2016 Republican candidate. The Libya operations were advanced by the Democratic front-runner.
Today, both Iraq and Libya are dangerously dysfunctional countries where terrorism is pervasive. At the same time, the threat of the Islamic State has made war-weary Americans, at least temporarily, more receptive to American involvement.
Some prospective candidates have no trouble with these questions.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is a hard-liner on national security, says the world is “better off” without Mr. Hussein and Mr. Qaddafi. Jim Webb, the former Democratic senator from Virginia, decorated war hero and perspective challenger to Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination, says both interventions were a mistake, positions he has held from the start.
For a number of other politicians, noncandidates and candidates alike, it’s a more difficult call. At a recent Washington breakfast, Senator Ron Johnson, a conservative Republican from Wisconsin, initially waffled and then acknowledged that “in hindsight — again, Monday morning quarterbacking — while Iraq under Saddam Hussein was evil as a regime, there was stability.” At another breakfast, the usually self-confident Tom Cotton, a freshman Republican senator from Arkansas, tried to duck, insisting “you don’t get to go back and replay those decisions.” When it was pointed out that history does just that, he ultimately declared: “President Bush made the right decision when Saddam Hussein refused to come clean and disarm his weapons of mass destruction programs.” (The Iraqi dictator didn’t “come clean,” neither did he have such weapons.)
The questions are pertinent for the front-runners. Jeb Bush, the ex-Florida governor and brother of former President George W. Bush, brought up Iraq in politically charged terms in a Chicago speech last month. He admitted that the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, the rationale for the invasion, was flawed and that the occupation was poorly run. His brother, and most everyone else, acknowledged that long ago.
Playing the Republican card, he said the 2007 American troop surge in Iraq initiated by his brother was “heroic” and the problems today can be traced to Present Obama’s failure to leave sufficient American forces. We still don’t know if he thinks the original decision was a good one that he could replicate some day.
Mrs. Clinton, who voted to authorize the Iraq invasion when she was a senator, and defended that vote during her 2008 presidential campaign, has since said she made a mistake. She was, however, the Obama administration’s leading advocate for toppling Mr. Qaddafi in 2011; it was to be her signature achievement.
She has never been grilled on whether that was a mistake, too. Ironically, Republicans may spare her that question, as they focus instead on a subsequent event, lax security at the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where four Americans were killed.
To be sure, a candidate’s rhetoric, especially on national security, isn’t always a good guide to presidential actions. In 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson vowed he wouldn’t send “American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” A year later there were 184,000 troops in Vietnam. In 2000, George W. Bush promised a “humble” foreign policy; after Sept. 11, it was more hubris than humility.
Still, presidential candidates should be pressed; Iraq and Libya are good starting points.
4 Comments on "Using Iraq and Libya as a Lens"
Plantagenet on Mon, 23rd Mar 2015 6:35 pm
Those are good questions. Candidates should also be asked if Obama made a good decision when he pulled the US forces out of Iraq in 2009 and when he backed down from helping the Syrians topple the Assad regime in Syria. Obama’s poor judgement cleared the way for ISIS to grow in Syria and then invade Iraq, and now ISIS is spreading to Libya, Tuneisa, Nigeria, Yemen, etc.
paulo1 on Tue, 24th Mar 2015 8:30 am
This was in my email this morning. Suggest candidates read it….my country too!!
Message from Vladimir Putin to Muslims.
No wonder he was selected by Forbes as the most powerful person in the world.
This is one time our elected leaders should pay attention to the advice of Vladimir Putin.
I would suggest that not only our leaders but every citizen of USA should pay attention to this advice. How scary is that?
It is a sad day when a Communist Leader makes more sense than
our LEADERS here in the U.S.A. but here it is!
Vladimir Putin’s speech – SHORTEST SPEECH EVER.
On August 04, 2013, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, addressed the Duma, (Russian Parliament), and gave a speech about the tensions with minorities in Russia:
“In Russia, live like Russians. Any minority, from anywhere, if it wants to live in Russia, to work and eat in Russia, it should speak Russian, and should respect the Russian laws. If they prefer Sharia Law, and live the life of Muslim’s then we advise them to go to those places where that’s the state law.
“Russia does not need Muslim minorities. Minorities need Russia, and we will not grant them special privileges, or try to change our laws to fit their desires, no matter how loud they yell ‘discrimination’. We will not tolerate disrespect of our Russian culture. We better learn from the suicides of America, England, Holland and France, if we are to survive as a nation. The Muslims are taking over those countries and they will not take over Russia. The Russian customs and traditions are not compatible with the lack of culture or the primitive ways of Sharia Law and Muslims.
“When this honorable legislative body thinks of creating new laws, it should have in mind the Russian national interest first, observing that the Muslims Minorities Are Not Russians.”
The politicians in the Duma gave Putin a five minute standing ovation.
If you keep this to yourself, you are part of the problem!
Davy on Tue, 24th Mar 2015 9:49 am
Sounds great Paulo when you are slaughtering your minorities. Gives a good righteous feeling to the slaughter. I will say this he is ahead of the US and the sickening faux moral exceptionalism that is killing the Muslims with drones and tells them we are doing this for your own good. This is moral depravity from the Americans plain and simple. I respect Putin in this respect of being honest with the Muslim.
On a cultural level in the US we have done well to incorporate Muslims into our society and our society to adjust to theirs. This is under severe pressure now but still holding. I have some Muslim friends. We have a large Bosnian population in St. Louis. These are good hard working people. We don’t have any muslim problems in St. Louis. Our problems are with poor blacks.
The fear westerners have for Muslim fanatics is not well placed. You are more likely to be killed by the police or a criminal in the US then a Muslim fanatic. We have proportion distortion. It reminds me of the recent plane tragedies. How many friggen people die daily by gun violence, car wrecks, or war and nothing is said. Planes like cars are a human curse. In the end it will be the car culture that kills humans maybe in extinction.
I will say when BAU collapses those areas with homogeneous populations will probably fare better then multi-racial, multi-religious, and multi-ethical areas. In this respect areas of Russia will fare better than areas of the US like LA or NY in particular.
Anyway Putin’s speech while honest and to the point does not leave him off the hook for the slaughter of minorities in the Caucasus or his support for the murderous Assad regime for decades. In this respect he is just another thug like the thugs that run US foreign policy.
BobInget on Tue, 24th Mar 2015 2:04 pm
Another casualty of Bush’s Iraq invasion;
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest arms buyer, goes to war.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-23/saudis-ready-to-take-necessary-measures-in-yemen-if-talks-fail
Who will be surprised if Iran too ‘gets involved’ ?