Plans to Win the Peace or The Endgame Game

We need to remember a few key facts:

1) Regime change in Iraq was the stated, and bi-partisan, goal of the United States.

2) France, Germany, and Russia were determined to lift sanctions as soon as politically feasible.

3) Sanctions and the Oil For Food program were both ineffective and damaging in human rights terms; and as it turned out horribly corrupt.

4) Saddam was clearly using delay and obfuscation to take advantage of the situation and live to fight again.

When you combine the above with the fact that Iraq was never in compliance with the cease-fire agreement that ended the first gulf war it becomes clear that the status quo was a dangerous situation. What has been lost in all of the arguments about WMDs and plans to "win the peace" is that the motivation to go into Iraq was composed of 1) the change in risk tolerance post 9/11 AND 2) the realization that the containment policy in Iraq was inherently unstable. Everything that happened since this realization can be categorized as attempts to rally others to our side. The fundamental national security calculations never really changed.

This is what makes John Kerry's litany of attacks so ludicrous. His obsession with allies ignores the fact that France and Germany were contributing factors to the original problem not potential allies in any effort to solve it. The same goes for the UN. The UN really had no interest in "solving" the problem in Iraq because they just wanted it to go away. Given their coddling of dictators and human rights violators, they were in no position to get rid of Saddam or to put Iraq on a long-term stable path. Please name a situation where the UN successfully removed a dictator and moved a country on the path to peace without the US playing the dominant, near exclusive role. Saddam himself was clearly an unreformed totalitarian dictator determined to dominate a strategic region against the national interest of the United States. The so called international community didn’t have the guts to take this issue head on.

Arguing that the status quo was preferable is not to deal with the problem but to put off a solution. I am not arguing that there was no other possible solution out there, but rather that Iraq was a problem that had to be dealt with in the near to medium term. Pretending that the status quo wasn’t a continuing national security and human right concern and that Bush’s decision to go to war was rushed and cowboyish is to ignore reality. Bush courageously decided to act in order to move us from uncertainty and the slow erosion of our position (one in which we would have to constantly be defending the no-fly zones, keeping troops in Saudi Arabia, and trying to keep the sanctions and inspections going) to a decisive plan to settle the issue.

It might be ugly and it might take longer than we think, but a decade elapsed between the first gulf war and the second invasion. I think our current path is much more likely to achieve significant levels of success whereas the status quo was likely to devolve into a serious threat at a time and place not of our choosing. There are plenty of things that can be noted as mistakes and/or missed opportunities but we should keep in mind that the pre-war situation was not peace. In this way Bush had a plan to bring peace not a plan to “win” the peace.