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Invading Iraq Was Necessary and We Would Do It Again
The revisionist history about why we invaded Iraq is on such rampant rise that Republican candidates, even men named Bush, have amnesia about it. Donald Trump has gone the full Code Pink and blamed George Bush for both 9/11 and wrongly invading Iraq. Good grief.
Jeb Bush was recently asked, assuming he knew in 2003 what he knows now, would he still support invading Iraq? He said no, which is the wrong answer.
The correct answer is, “If your question assumes Saddam Hussein still did what he did back then, of course we would invade Iraq.”
Let’s go back to the beginning, and the beginning isn’t 2003; it’s the end of the Gulf War in 1991.
Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf stood in the desert having successfully beaten Saddam Hussein’s grossly overestimated Republican Guard in Kuwait. The case could have been made for decapitating the Iraqi government by moving to take out Hussein.
Instead, America showed mercy, as she is wont to do. An agreement was made wherein Iraq had to release prisoners of war, rescind the annexation of Kuwait, pay for war damages, help find land and sea mines and keep troops away from the southern border to avoid skirmishes.
More importantly, the US agreed to leave so long as Iraq complied with a later-adopted UN resolution about dismantling weapons of mass destruction, cessation of WMD production, and allowing inspections.
Stop and note this well, because it’s important: The 1990 Gulf War formally never ended, by design. The ceasefire and promise not to unleash Schwarzkopf would last only so long as Iraq complied with the UN resolution. The sine qua non for the coalition’s restraint from conquering Iraq was Iraq’s compliance with the UN resolution on WMDs.
Now take a look at that very UN Resolution 687 (1991), passed in April of that year. You can read the lengthy part C for the detail, but essentially it required Iraq to get rid of all WMDs, including chemical, biological, ballistic, and nuclear programs, and compelled them to be inspected.
Also important is the final paragraph, wherein the UN retained jurisdiction over enforcement of the ceasefire, which evidences that the war wasn’t over, but ceased premised on a condition:
[THE UN] Decides to remain seized of the matter and to take such further steps as may be required for the implementation of the present resolution and to secure peace and security in the area.
So we essentially have a contract action: There will be no conquering of Iraq so long as inspections reveal no WMDs. The classic quid pro quo.
Saddam Hussein considered himself to have a problem, real or imagined. He believed that if Iran was convinced he had no such weapons, Iran would surely invade Iraq. He attempted a failed gambit: He made the world wonder if he had weapons of mass destruction, and subsequently believe that he did, out of fear of being attacked by Iran. As for the US decision to attack, it didn’t matter if he had WMDs or not. What mattered is that he made the world think that he did. That was his bad calculation. Schwarzkopf famously noted how prone to miscalculation Hussein had previously shown himself to be.
Over the next dozen years, Hussein bobbed and weaved the inspectors, while the world’s eyes belonged to Hans Blix, a man who had admitted Hussein had tricked him in the past.
It only took four months, in August of 1991, for the UN to have to pass Resolution 707 condemning Iraq as being in “material breach” for non-compliance with the inspections required by Resolution 687.
In October of 1992, the UN passed Resolution 778 condemning Iraq for not meeting financial requirements mandated by 687.
In February 1993, the UN passed Resolution 806 condemning Iraq for breaching the agreement regarding the southern border. In 1994, Resolution 949 did the same.
In April 1993, Hussein tried to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush, failing to show the courtesy Schwarzkopf had shown him three years earlier. In June of that year, President Clinton launched a cruise missile attack in response to the assassination attempt.
In June 1996, the UN passed Resolution 1060 deploring Iraq’s refusal to allow inspectors access to the sites and demanding he comply. UN Resolution 1115 in 1997 did the same. The UN did the same with Resolutions 1134 and 1137, both also in 1997.
UN Resolution 1154, in 1998, noted that the Secretary General had to secure a subsequent agreement from Iraq to stop interfering with inspections:
[The UN] Stresses that compliance by the Government of Iraq with its obligations, repeated again in the memorandum of understanding, to accord immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access to the Special Commission and the IAEA in conformity with the relevant resolutions is necessary for the implementation of resolution 687 (1991), but that any violation would have severest consequences for Iraq;
Resolution 1194 in 1998 condemned Iraq for suspending inspections. That same year UN Resolution 1205 implicitly threatened an invasion if Iraq didn’t allow inspections to resume:
[The UN] Determined to ensure immediate and full compliance by Iraq without conditions or restrictions with its obligations under resolution 687 (1991) of 3 April 1991 and the other relevant resolutions,
In December of 1998, the US and Great Britain bombed Iraq for four days over Iraq’s failure to comply with weapons inspections and “degrade” their weapons.
In 1998, President Clinton signed the “Iraq Liberation Act” into law, making it official US policy to work to remove Saddam Hussein:
It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace that regime.
In 1999, UN Resolution 1284 demanded Iraq meet its obligations regarding prisoners of war.
In 2000 there were debates about resolutions to condemn Iraq for breaches of the no-fly zone.
In the beginning of 2001, newly-elected President George W. Bush had on the agenda of his first two National Security meetings discussions about invading Iraq and removing Hussein, consistent with the Iraq Liberation Act signed by President Clinton. In September 2001, the administration’s attention was, naturally, turned toward al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
In November 2002, UN Resolution 1441 again found Iraq in material breach on both inspections and weapons destruction, and threatened armed action for non-compliance. This was Saddam’s final warning for non-compliance, 11 years in the making.
The invasion began March 20, 2003.
There is another extremely important fact, and its importance is eclipsed only by media’s willingness to ignore it in their reporting:
In June 2000, Saddam Hussein made a speech stating not only did he not disarm, but that he wouldn’t disarm unless other countries neighboring Iraq disarmed too; “… a rifle for a rifle, a stick for a stick, a stone for a stone.”
That speech ought to be the most oft-cited fact on this subject in all media reports. That it is so infrequently mentioned is a shining example of media malpractice. Did Saddam convince the world he still had weapons? See his June 2000 speech, quod erat demonstrandum.
The man who debriefed Saddam Hussein after his capture, FBI agent George Piro, talked to Hussein about his bad gambit of trying to trick Iran into thinking he had WMDs, knowing he would risk the ire of the United States. Piro said:
But he told me he initially miscalculated President Bush. And President Bush’s intentions. He thought the United States would retaliate with the same type of attack as we did in 1998 under Operation Desert Fox. Which was a four-day aerial attack.
There’s that famed Hussein penchant for miscalculation again, but at least he grew to admit it. Hussein also confirmed to Piro that he had every intention of restarting WMD production.
The only man who could have stopped the US from invading Iraq was Hussein, and his deceit and refusal to comply with the very UN resolution that saved his neck in 1991 makes him the only man to blame for the invasion.
This isn’t to say that George W. Bush and CIA director George Tenet didn’t have one bad gambit themselves: Sending Colin Powell out to maintain that Hussein definitely had WMDs was unnecessary, even if they thought it true. It was fanfare and window dressing, and when we couldn’t find them, it consumed and hid the real reason for invading, which was that Hussein wouldn’t let the inspectors verify the truth. That’s all Powell had to say. His sideshow about WMDs stole the spotlight from Hussein’s blocking of inspections, and sadly, men like Donald Trump are still tricked by it. Or perhaps Trump knows the truth but is pandering to the Michael Moore crowd, hoping they will vote for him, evidencing a severe retardation of political sensibility.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has publicly stated that the existence of WMDs was beside the point, and the coalition needed to invade regardless of them.
If only Blair were eligible to run in the Republican primary.
Published in General, History
Sanctions against tyrannical regimes usually have that outcome unfortunately.
I agree.
I find it tragic that we’re having a national debate about whether “Bush lied” instead of a serious debate about national security between two qualified candidates.
Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely!
And don’t forget we had no fly zones, one in the north and one in the south and from what I remember it was costing us billions per year to maintain them. It could not go on forever.
And maintaining an American military base at the center of the middle east would provide stability. And it was working. It was the very departure that caused the current instability.
Kudos for putting this together.
I share your frustration. We’ve just spent an entire weekend reading the tweets of an unhinged old man, making fun of his fingers, and mocking his spelling rather than outlining a guiding principle, vision, and specific policies to right our ship of state.
That national security doesn’t merit so much as a sneeze says a lot about how far we’ve fallen and how poor our choices for our standard bearers.
The title of your post says we would do it again. The problem is that no matter how justified the invasion may have been, the aftermath has made us so gun shy that I don’t think we will EVER do anything like that again, even if there were no doubt AT ALL. That’s the real long term result of the Iraq war: it will be impossible to summon the political courage or national will to do what is necessary when that course of action is called for.
I don’t know because nobody knows how it would have played out if we hadn’t. And Stalin did develop WMDs subsequently and prolonged the Soviet Union and we still live with that history today with Putin’s revanchism.
BTW Lend Lease was extended to the Soviet Union in October 1941, before Pearl Harbor and before Germany declared war on the US.
Tommy – thanks for the post. If you have a couple of minutes I have a few follow-up questions and would like to know your thoughts.
The invasion was a huge success. The aftermath was not. What is the lesson we should take from that? Should we have replaced Hussein with a U.S. puppet (and Sunni who would oppose Iran) and gotten out as fast as possible? Do we really need to leave our troops behind for many years after we overthrow evil leaders?
I have read that we did in fact find chemical weapons and that some of our troops have suffered illness as a result. I have also read that we did not find them because Hussein gave them to Assad in Syria. Do you have any idea if either of these stories are true?
On the bright side, for the foreseeable future, it doesn’t look like we’ll have a president we would trust to take us into war anyway.
Thanks for your great post, Tommy. I remember following the aftermath of the First Gulf War throughout the 1990s and being extremely frustrated at how Saddam was flouting the terms of the ceasefire. In particular, I was upset at how he was, as I recall, violating the no-fly zones by shooting at the planes we had patrolling the zones. In my mind, that was sufficient cause to suspend the ceasefire and finish the job we’d started in 1991. As you point out, it was, after all, a ceasefire – not a peace treaty.
There was only one Gulf War from 1990 until 2011 because ” A ceasefire (or truce) is a temporary stoppage of a war in which each side agrees with the other to suspend aggressive actions.Ceasefires may be declared as part of a formal treaty, but they have also been called as part of an informal understanding between opposing forces. A ceasefire is usually more limited than a broader armistice, which is a formal agreement to end fighting.”
The War should have ended in 1991 with an overthrow of the Baathist regime but the Sunni allies of the US declined and Colin Powell demurred on one hand because of co-religionist bias and in the other case: craven incompetence.
Because of something else that came up on Ricochet, I had reason to reread GW’s foreign policy speech that he made about the time he launched his first presidential campaign. I was struck by this paragraph, and it put the Iraqi WMD problem in a different perspective:
Clearly, Russia’s loss of control over a third of its nuclear arsenal after the USSR broke up in 1991 was of grave concern to both Bush 41 and Bush 43. Although Bush never said that this was his fear, I can imagine that intelligence reports about Russia’s friend Saddam Hussein not allowing the weapons inspectors into Iraq were extra alarming to GW.
Objection – nonresponsive. You never know the future.
In the 1980s we only knew what we knew at the time. We supported (to a point) Hussein’s Iraq.
In 1941-1945, knowing what you could know at the time, would you have supported Stalin’s Russia?
Given the lack of mention of 9-11 in your OP, is it your contention that the Bush administration would have launched the Iraq War even in the absence of the Al Qaeda attack?
Yes it is Mark.
In the 80’s it made sense to back Saddam, the Afghan mujahideen, and other unsavory allies in the larger context of our Cold War struggle with the Soviet Union. That all changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and changed still further after 9/11. George W. (correctly in my view) identified Islamic radicals as our primary existential threat and reoriented our whole foreign policy around the goals of:
The Afghan invasion supported goal #1 and the Iraq invasion supported goal #2.
I think there is and should be a moral component to our foreign policy. Reagan was right to call the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” and W. was right to identify Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as an “Axis of Evil.” But we have to prioritize, we tolerated Saddam to check the greater evil of Soviet communism, when that threat collapsed Saddam had outlived his usefulness and could now be safely dealt with.
Invading Iraq was not only the right call for reasons Tommy spells out effectively, it was strategically far more important to go after Iraq than to do anything whatever in Afghanistan.
And the idea that if only we had not disbanded the army, or outlawed the Baathists, or etc. etc., we could have declared victory and gone home quickly blah blah is sheer fantasy. Sometimes you need to create a vacuum- for sound long term strategic reasons- and to prevent that vacuum from being filled by the wrong people, you stick with it.
Iraq was not managed any worse than Lincoln going through multiple generals before he found Grant, Truman losing public support before putting Ridgeway in place, losing battles all over the Pacific from 1941 to 1943, etc. War is hard- very hard- and sometimes necessary- very necessary. The Algerian war against France lasted 15 years. Our 2nd Infantry Division is still based in the Republic of Korea- and not because we fear that the South Koreans are about to attack us.
Iraq was a bad place from which unacceptable risks abounded. It is right next to #1 problem Iran, and also borders Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. We should have kept 20,000 troops there under top level guidance from McMaster and Petraeus for 20 years if necessary- as listening post and tripwire in the most dangerous place on earth.
People like our beloved Jonah Goldberg- who proposed a large scale program long term in Africa back in the late 1990’s, and now pretend that Iraq was an awful mistake do fundamentally sound long term foreign policy a great disservice. Norman Podhoretz explained in WWIV why this will be an effort that rivals the 50 year Cold War. It is a shame that we have decided that the role of international leader is too great to bear, and instead fixate on the short term.
Sometimes grown-ups need to stick with something over the long haul. Today people get married and split up after two years, countries take action and get tired of the conflict after less than two years.
I don’t know if we would enter Iraq again- but we definitely should.
Tommy and anyone else interested in the details and justification that led to Operation Iraqi Freedom: A person named Eric (not a Ricochet member) contacted me off line to provide a website that goes into even more detail than Tommy did above. You can check it out, here, if you’re interested. The amount of detail is excellent.