It really is incomprehensible. It’s now been over three years since we invaded Iraq, and still, remarkably, no one can say with any certainty why we did it. There’s a tendency among political commentators (and I’m certainly as guilty of this as anyone) to discuss the Bush administration as if it were some monolithic entity, rather than a collection of people with differing priorities and different motives for lining up behind any given policy.
There were no doubt some administration officials–Paul Wolfowitz, for instance–who, from the beginning, subscribed to the neocon fantasy of bringing democracy to the Middle East by force, one country at a time. I suspect others–particularly Donald Rumsfeld–were just eager for the opportunity to test out our new "leaner and meaner" military. Still others–Cheney comes to mind–likely saw Iraq as an opportunity to demonstrate American strength, to, as Michael Ledeen put it, "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business." Karl Rove likely saw the war as an opportunity to further cement the President’s image as a strong wartime leader (he probably had the whole flightsuit/aircraft carrier photo-op planned out well before the invasion). There were clearly other factors at play as well, like Saddam’s supposed WMD, Bush’s desire to finish what his father had started, and the perceived strategic value of Iraq’s oil supply.
To this day it is still not clear, even to those of us who follow politics very closely, which of these various rationales was the "real" reason we went to war. And if it’s unclear to us, it’s really unclear to the average American, who doesn’t have the time (or desire) to wade through all the propaganda. The Bush administration’s public rationale for invading Iraq has gone through any number of iterations over the last three years. But at all points along the way, the message has been muddled and filled with rhetoric designed to confuse people and foster pre-existing misunderstandings.
In the lead up to the invasion, Bush and his surrogates repeatedly conflated Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda, and the events of 9/11, leading a sizable majority of Americans to believe that Saddam was involved in planning the 9/11 attacks. I haven’t seen any recent polling on this question, but I suspect this misunderstanding is still common. After all, a full 50% of Americans still believe that Saddam had WMD.
From the beginning, Bush’s public statements about Iraq have referred cryptically to "terrorists" or "our enemy" or "they," making little, if any, attempt to explain to Americans the differences between Al Qaeda, Sunni Baathists, Shiite militiamen, etc. I suspect that for a great many of those who support the war, the logic behind it has always been pretty simple: "they" attacked us, so now we’re attacking "them." And if that’s what you believe, the Iraq war makes every bit as much sense as the war against Japan in World War II.
We’d all like to assume that most people have a more nuanced understanding of foreign policy, but is there any reason to believe that’s true? I’m not suggesting that Americans are stupid, just that many aren’t really following the plot, so to speak.
But as Iraq descends into civil war, an increasing number of Americans are beginning to see the enormous disconnect between the events of 9/11 and the self-inflicted debacle that is the Iraq War.
This really is an entirely incomprehensible war. No one knows why we’re there. No one knows how to "win." And no one knows how to go about extricating ourselves without causing even more chaos and violence.
Former major league pitcher Jim Bouton announced Thursday the launch of an organization that will play by 19th century rules: The Vintage Base Ball Federation. Yup, back then baseball was two words.
