This weekend marked the twentieth anniversary of America’s invasion of Iraq, and for those of us who spent time in the sandbox, it is a poignant moment.
When I first came back in 2005, I was having lunch with an old professor in the faculty club of the university I’d attended when Doug Feith, Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy for policy (and one of the notorious neo-cons whom General Tommy Franks had singled out as the dumbest of the lot), walked in. My professor’s face wrinkled as she snarled “nobody asked us before they hired him.” Then her expression softened as she turned to ask me if, seeing all that I had, whether I thought the war was a mistake.
I didn’t say ‘Yes,’ but I didn’t say ‘No’ either. We’d just had a reasonably successful election in Iraq and turned the government over to the Iraqis. Regardless of my own sweat equity in the project and this bias that comes with it, I still thought removing Saddam Hussein and giving the Iraqis a shot at self-governance was an accomplishment of some sort.
Nearly a decade later, I was back in Baghdad and overnighting at the al Rashid hotel when I realized to my shock and horror that it was impossible to get a drink. That was because Baghdad was no longer an independent capital, but rather a satrap of the next-door power, Iran. More awful than a sober night in Iraq was the recognition that we’d ‘liberated’ the country only to turn it over to our sworn enemy.
Now two decades after “shock and awe,” it is worth taking a moment to consider what in fact we reaped.
According to essayist Sohrab Ahmari, writing in the New Statesman Friday, the Iraq war made Donald Trump inevitable. Say what?
Think about it: the invasion is President George W. Bush’s legacy while turning the country over to Tehran is in large part the handiwork of his successor, President Barack Obama, who ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2011. Obama’s successor, Trump, won the U.S. presidency in 2016 by promising to build a wall and put America first.
Costly, far-flung wars like Iraq and Afghanistan cycled millions of Americans through these inhospitable countries and led tens of millions of Americans back home to question why we were there in the first place. Were it not for gathering sense of regret, current President Joe Biden would not have been able to get away with his bungled and humiliating retreat from Afghanistan in August 2021.
All of this said, the current Iraqi government still looks a little better than the Taliban to whom we surrendered in Afghanistan, but that is really just a question of degree. Historians of tomorrow may decide that it was in fact the over-extension of American power in 2001 that inevitably led to our weakened state today.
Last week, regional rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia shook hands in a peace accord brokered not by America, but by China. That was only possible, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Faisal bin Turki told France 24, because both sides see China – and not the U.S. – as an “honest broker.” We are falling off the map, either because America is simply no longer the global power it once was, or because we have learned our lesson about interventionism and have elected to pull back.
Ahmari’s point linking Iraq and Trump traces back to an iron rule of electoral politics. Free of pressure or duress, voters will always support the candidate they feel cares most about them. In our context, that is anyone who isn’t the globalist, military-industrial complex be it led by neocons or bleeding hearts. For further evidence of this, look at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ statement last week that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a regional conflict not in America’s vital interests.
Whether or not former Navy JAG officer really believes this or is simply trying to protect his right flank from Trump is less important than what his rejection of a global policeman role says about American politics today.
No one has ever won the American presidency by promising to entangle us in another country’s war – in fact our first president warned us against foreign entanglements in his farewell address. Even Bush the younger pledged a humbler America in his 2000 election campaign, despite the fact his subsequent actions were 100% to the contrary of that promise. Sure, 9/11 turned things on their head. But when the elites send the children of ordinary Americans to fight forever wars, the nation’s patience wears thin.
Knowing what you know now, would you have done that thing twenty years ago? In the case of Iraq – especially after never finding the weapons of mass destruction that were our casus belli, most of us would agree that it was a mistake. Of course we can’t undo the past, but we can try to make sure the next time we go to war it is for the right reason.