Ugly War: Why America Should Leave Iraq

The latest news from Iraq shifts our attention from the fighting in Fallujah, Baghdad and Najaf to the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. 60 Minutes did the right thing to distribute those pictures, and the public reaction has been indignation: "How can that be? Who would have thought? This is an outrage. What's going on here?" How else can you react in public? Who will take responsibility for something like that?

So how do people think we are treating Saddam right now? Do we think he has a TV set in his cell and a weight room next door? If we found out that he was kept naked in a damp cell with a bag over his head, would we be too disturbed? How about Osama? Suppose we caught him? That's an even clearer case, because he's an enemy who actually attacked us. How concerned would we be over proper treatment if we were interrogating him?

The Israelis have used interrogation methods like the ones we've seen in Iraq for a long time. In fact, we learned these methods from the Israelis. What's the best way to wear a prisoner down without actually torturing him? We've never issued a word of objection to the Israelis' methods. We've adopted the same stance as the Israelis: when it comes to stopping people who want to blow up little children in shopping centers, the ends justify the means.

How do you suppose we've been treating the prisoners we caught in Afghanistan? Do we have congressmen who want to know what's been going on in Guantanamo? If we thought that torture would help us find the people who planned 9/11, or that we could stop a future attack with interrogation methods that clearly violate international norms, would we stop at humiliation? Who doesn't think that we've already used those methods to gather information from the people we've captured in Afghanistan?

The reason we're reacting this way to abuse of Iraqi prisoners is that we have a bad war on our conscience. Iraqis are not our enemies. For the most part, they are honorable people. We know that if an army invaded our country and then occupied it, we would stand up to them, just as they have stood up to us. We know that those Iraqi prisoners threaten us because we're in their country when we shouldn't be. That's far different from the case of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, who brought their war to us.

So now those contractors and reservists are going to pay, probably with prison time, for their acts. Someone has to pay, and the perpetrators will be the ones. They took pictures of themselves and their victims, ugly snapshots to show how much fun they were having. It's not often you get to treat other people this way! Let's have a party! But some of those guards, even though they're guilty, will be scapegoats nevertheless. We'll be so indignant about the acts of the guilty few, that it'll be easy to forget that wars are inherently ugly, especially wars that were wrong from the beginning.

In fact, we've been distracting ourselves from this question of right and wrong from the start. I've heard these arguments so often: "If our leaders say it's the right thing to do, it must be the right thing to do." And: "We have to get the terrorists." Well, who are the terrorists? Anyone we don't like and anyone we're afraid of? Where is the cold, ruthless focus on the people who actually want to do us harm?

The last big distraction from our guilt was several months ago, when it became apparent at last that we weren't going to find dangerous weapons in Iraq. We were all discussing whether the intelligence agencies were to blame for feeding bad analysis to the president and his advisors. The premise of the whole controversy was that if we had found weapons, our invasion would have been justified. As it was, we made a big mistake that hurt our credibility, and we have to find out who is to blame. But this effort to blame the CIA for bad information misses two important points.

The first one is that this war wouldn't be justified even if Hussein did have the weapons Bush said he had. We had already conducted air operations over Iraq for a long time, and if we discovered weapons or materials we wanted to get rid of, we could have done so easily, just as the Israelis did when they bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor a generation ago. We did not need to bomb Baghdad and send in 200,000 troops to get rid of dangerous weapons. We needed to do that to get rid of Hussein, and that was clearly our aim.

The other point we managed to miss during the intelligence controversy is that Bush clearly cooked up any argument he thought would succeed during the lead-up to war. He even said that Hussein helped to carry out the 9/11 attacks, and people believed him! When reporters challenged him to defend the war after we couldn't find any weapons, he said, "What's the difference?" For Bush, it didn't matter whether Hussein actually had any weapons. What mattered was that he wanted them, and in a post-9/11 environment, anyone who could be dangerous in the future has to be crushed.

It does remind me of an old saying that I read in grad school. George Kennan or someone of his temperament said that "Anyone is free to think the whole world is his enemy, and if he believes it long enough, it'll be true." Here again, though, Bush and his people have given themselves away. If they really believed in their own doctrine of preemption, they'd pull out of Iraq and go on to the next dangerous character on their axis of evil list. The list is pretty long, you know. In fact, they want to stick it out in Iraq, because their real motive was to get Hussein, and to make an example of Iraq to the rest of the world. See what we can do to a tyrant like that, and how we can reshape his country in our image? See what will happen to you if you mess with us?

Now a lot more people want to mess with us. And they will. They already have. We can't pull out of Iraq for fear that it'll become another Afghanistan, racked by civil war and home to radical Islamists who can train and plot and organize. We can't stay unless we truly want to become an occupying, not a liberating power. The measures we must use as an occupying power are a lot harsher than the measures used in Abu Ghraib prison. Ask the families in Fallujah who lost brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, what occupying powers have to do to "pacify" a defeated nation.

We have no business in Iraq, and we have already paid so much for our mistake. I don't mean dollars, either. Who can remember now the good will that flowed toward our shores in the weeks and months after 9/11? Tony Blair's was only the most eloquent voice: he spoke for the rest of our brothers and sisters all over the world, all those people who had themselves suffered the scourge of radical Islam and other vicious movements for decades. Now the United States, the most powerful member of the international community, could lead good and brave people everywhere in a cause that was right and necessary. Positive action had been too long in coming, but now the people who lay buried under the concrete of the World Trade Center required some response. Justice required punishment, prevention, and perseverance. We had the opportunity to fight a just war, and to do much good with the help of others.

It's almost a laughable understatement now to say that we squandered the good will that existed two and a half years ago. We wanted, needed, and had the support of good Muslims everywhere, people who recognized the totalitarian threat that Al Qaeda and its sympathizers posed to their own civilization. We had allies everywhere, people who would help us without our even asking for help. Among those who saw 9/11 not only as a tragedy but as an opportunity, moderate Muslims would see the possibilities for reconciliation and mutual assistance most clearly. Instead, we went nuts, to use a phrase that has come to mind altogether too often in the last year. We killed so many people who had nothing to do with the war we were involved in. So many people who wished us no harm, and nothing but good.

I need to make a few more points here. One has to do with the place criticism of this sort has in post-Vietnam America. The second, related to the first, has to do with the origins of my own judgments on this matter. The third has to do with what we should have done in 2002 instead of planning a war with Iraq, and what we can still do in our fight against Al Qaeda. And the fourth concerns what we have to do in Iraq right now, to keep a bad situation from reaching the so-called tipping point. For make no mistake, we could lose our special place in the world for good here. We could follow a course that will lead historians two centuries from now to say, "Here is where it started. Here was the beginning of the end for America's supreme position in the world."

Before I take up these points, though, let me recall another thought that has come to mind many times since 9/11. In the days after that shocking event, I said we need a Winston Churchill to lead us now. We need someone with his eloquence, his faith, his sense of aggressive perseverance, and his defiance. He was Europe's last great defender of democracy and freedom during a troubled time, and but for him, the Nazis might have established themselves across the continent for much more than four years. In late 2001, we needed someone like that, and I didn't see anyone able to take that role.

Then Bush gave his speech to the joint session of Congress, and one could feel a bit more hopeful about our leadership. The speech was well-written and well-delivered: Bush issued a resolute, decisive response to our enemies and a clear request for action to our friends. Then we went to war in Afghanistan, and for once we had allies who would actually fight. The northern alliance, as the soldiers fighting the Taliban were called, proved willing to fight hard, and the victory was theirs with our assistance from the air. Things looked better as we had the former rulers of that long-suffering country on the run.

After that war, we needed to plan what to do next. Who could have expected, during that time, that the administration had already set its military sights on Iraq, and had done so from the first days after 9/11? They even thought that Iraq could be a repeat of Afghanistan. Our agile force had succeeded so quickly in Afghanistan - we could do the same thing with our other enemy across the way, and finish off the work we had started during the Gulf War ten years ago. Richard Clarke said that Bush asked him right after 9/11 to find out if Hussein had some connection with the attack. Clarke was astonished. "But Mr. President," he said, "It was Al Qaeda." "I know, I know," the president responded, "But look into it anyway." Clarke wrote later that the war against Iraq represented colossal misdirection. It was as if the United States, after the attack at Pearl Harbor, had attacked Mexico.

Well, here's what we should have done in Afghanistan. We should have put a lot more troops on the ground during the war itself. We should have made sure the victory was ours, not a victory that could be claimed by the local warlords. Most assuredly we should have allied ourselves with them, but we should have directed the war from the ground, not primarily from the air. After the war, we should have consolidated our position there. We should have put 500,000 troops on the ground there, even if we don't have 500,000 troops on active duty right now. We should have found the people somewhere, and made Afghanistan an outpost, just as we did over the years with Germany, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. We could have achieved more progress against Al Qaeda from that outpost than from any other place, and most Afghanis would have welcomed us there. What an opportunity we had to bring peace and prosperity to much of south Asia, and to serve our own interests at the same time.

We didn't do that, though, and my vehemence about what we did instead so often gets the better of me. I have to tell people that I'm not one of those anti-war throwbacks, who recall the days of the anti-war movement during the sixties with a kind of warped nostalgia. Who would wish for that sort of political divisiveness again? Who would wish for a time when patriotism was dishonorable, and our military men and women received mockery and spittle in the face as they arrived home from their tours of duty in Vietnam? The memories of that time are still so vivid, that criticism of the war in Iraq comes under suspicion because the speaker is undermining our troops, not giving them the support they need.

It's not so: opponents of this war believe in the goodness, the abilities and the fortitude of our soldiers as much as ever. Now the families, the moms and dads of those soldiers are beginning to question this war and the reasons for fighting it, and I thank them for it. They've made it possible for others to speak more freely about the horrible thing we've done, without having to apologize because we're making our soldiers' jobs more difficult. Opposition to this war and support of our troops easily go together. In fact, opposition to this war and support of our troops have to go together, because we have to get our fighting men and women out of there. We can't support a government that puts our young people in harm's way for bad reasons. Our young people shouldn't have to pay for other people's mistakes and poor judgment. They shouldn't have to come home in anonymous coffins, victims of a war where, for the first time in our history, we are clearly guilty of aggression. If we have to have victims, let our battlefield casualties come from the mountains in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, where our real enemies are hiding, and fighting.

So I started to say why you should listen to me, why you shouldn't dismiss my opposition as a throwback to the anti-war rhetoric of the sixties. I studied international politics, and the ethics of war and peace, for a long time. I wrote my first book on the logic of conflict, and I spent a long time analyzing the Arab-Israeli conflict to find lessons and insights into international war. I thought, and taught, about mutual perception and misperception, the use of force, the significance of international law, the necessity for violence and the establishment of peace in relations among states.

More than that, I served in the Navy for over four years, during the period when we first sent ships to the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. I served in the Western Pacific when the Iranian hostage crisis began, and my ship was among the first to go to that remote part of the world's oceans. I know what it's like to serve in the military, how dangerous the job is, and the devotion our soldiers and sailors show in the execution of their duties. I joined the Navy in 1977, a year out of college, as a junior officer. This kind of thing was unthinkable among my peers. Our military defeat, loss of men and bitter humiliation in southeast Asia still hung over our culture, and especially over our youth at that time. Joining any branch of the military, especially if you were from the north and from the upper middle class, was not something you did. After the war in Vietnam, people regarded the armed services a little bit as they would a failed cult. It didn't come back to its place of honor and respect until the Reagan years, and Reagan himself can claim credit for that restoration. Patriotism and admiration for our armed forces have burned with a steady light since then.

So that's why the reports of abuse in Iraqi prisons pose such a threat to our self-respect. We don't have to go far in our memories before we encounter My Lai and other unpleasant legacies of Vietnam. It's not going to be enough to say that war is nasty, and that's what happens when you start one. It's not going to be enough to say that the perpetrators were following orders, that they weren't well trained or that they were poorly supervised. They're going to be made into scapegoats, and the self-righteous men and women who committed the greater crime will be self-righteous about these poor soldiers as well. And I don't say poor soldiers because I think what they did is okay, or because I think they don't deserve punishment for what they did.

I say it because at least some of those guards probably did what they did to go along with their buddies. Sadistic leaders wanted to soften the prisoners up for interrogation, or to punish them for getting out of line. They already regarded their prisoners as animals, and they would prove it. Now the only way for an underling soldier to do the right thing is to stand out from the group, to refuse to go along, to make yourself conspicuous for your disobedience. And that's about the hardest thing for anyone to do, because refusal to go along means ostracism, and when you're far away from home, away from your family and other anchors, and the only friends you have are the ones you work with every day, you are not going to stand out, you are not going to refuse to go along. You are going to do what the others are doing.

So I've taken a while to say what we should do now. The most urgent thing to do is change our leadership. Chamberlain had to go after Munich, and Bush has to go after Iraq. I won't say that Kerry is our Churchill, but he's our only choice. We know that Bush and his advisors won't do anything constructive in this situation. They're going to grant fake sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30, they're going to keep being dishonest with themselves, which means they aren't going to admit they've made any mistakes. Without that admission, we can't begin to put things right. And if we don't put things right, we'll be amazed at how much worse things can get.

If we were to pull out of Iraq tomorrow, a lot of interesting things would happen there. Not all of them would be good. I expect that by and large, and gradually, things would get better than they are now. We probably wouldn't see a lot of unity among the three regions of the country: the north, the center, and the south. We might see more warfare than we care for, and a lot of developments that look threatening to us. Yes, it could turn into the sort of haven for our enemies that Afghanistan became under the Taliban. On the whole, though, it's hard to see that conditions in Iraq would become much worse than they are now. The Iraqis want their country back. I don't think they're going to turn over any part of it to Al Qaeda, the way the Taliban did in Afghanistan. The Iraqis are too smart to do something like that - how's that for a helpful observation about national character? - and they're too smart to start a civil war, too.

That's kind of a flip way of saying they have too much else to do. If we were to leave there, I think we'd see a lot of interesting politics, equivalent in its way to the ten years or so after the British left their American colonies in the early 1780s. You'd see a lot of conflict, and a nation trying to refashion itself. We went through a cruel civil war before we worked things out, and we'd have to be willing to see Iraq go through something like that, too. But it would make a difference that the Iraqis were building a new state with a legitimate government, without an occupying army and foreign administrators around to interfere.

Well, we're not going to leave tomorrow, so we have to ask what would happen if we leave more slowly. And we have to ask what part the UN will play as we get out of there. More than one commentator, from Wesley Clark to a British official with the UN, has said that we need to pay close attention to the political process in Iraq as we try to disengage ourselves from the place. People who know Iraq know this isn't an easy job - they know the chances of failure are pretty good at this point. I won't try to summarize their line of argument right here - I can say though that their remarks on the radio came across clearly enough. We have sophisticated analysts out there who can help us: they serve in the UN and in other posts all over the world. We need their advice.

We are the only country in the world right now that thinks the UN shouldn't play a leading part in the political transition coming up in Iraq. We have given the UN its current advisory role only as a last resort: we couldn't see any other way out of the problems we created for ourselves. The UN is indeed our only way out now - out of our problems and out of the country. If we give real responsibility to the UN and to the Iraqis themselves, now, we could still redeem something from the situation, even if we have to admit our mistakes. But even if isn't the right phrase here: the only way to redeem anything from the situation is if we admit our mistakes.

Most importantly, intelligent disengagement means we would have a real opportunity to resume the war we should be fighting. We wouldn't be distracting ourselves with blame, when the truly big mistakes go unpunished and even unnoticed. We have made a horrible mistake here, and somebody has to say so. I don't hear Kerry saying so. Somebody with stature has to say it: this war is wrong, and we have to confess it. Then we have to seek forgiveness, atone if that's possible, and fight again. When we fight again, let's pick the right enemy.