This week marks the twentieth anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. As usual, the navel gazing elites have begun their dissection of whether or not the war was justified. If only, if only, if only, it were as simple as scribbling notes. If only it were as easy as a tabletop exercise at a war college. Writers like Brett Stephens and Gerard Baker sit in comfortable surroundings and cogitate on whether their positions from twenty years ago were correct. How privileged they are. How banal their arguments.

I remember the pro and con arguments about going into Iraq. We were in Afghanistan already. Our reasons for that war were clear. Afghanistan provided training grounds for Al Qaeda in and around Kandahar and Kabul. We need to end the training grounds/safe havens. Our intelligence agencies believed that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which could be used on his citizens or neighbors or sold and used to destabilize other parts of the world. We had gone into Afghanistan and Iraq with the world at our sides. Coalition something, something. Twenty years later, they are taking a look back at their decisions.

Remember that prior to the Iraq invasion Saddam Hussein was seen as a despot and a bully to the nations in his region. Numerous United Nations resolutions had been passed. The Western world saw Saddam as a threat to peace and stability. The “Coalition of the Willing” engaged.

THE CONS

Gerard Baker, in the Wall Street Journal, finds it hard to defend his support:

Much worse is the damage the war did to the fabric of American democracy. The American people were terrified by their government into war, with the bogus menace of nuclear weapons wielded by a man with bogus connections to the 9/11 terrorists. They were promised a war that would be a cakewalk followed by an occupation in which their sons and daughters would be greeted with sweets and flowers.
This cloud castle of fictions did incalculable damage to the bonds of trust between Americans and their leaders.
There is a direct line between the deceptions worked on the American people about the war and the angry popular disillusionment with the performance of American political leaders that led the rise of Donald Trump and for that matter the deep reluctance many Americans feel about support for Ukraine.
Worse still is that there has been no accountability for the architects of the debacle. The political leaders have mostly moved on, but with Olympic-level chutzpah, many of the so-called intellectuals who advocated it are still out there, lecturing the American people that it’s treasonous to oppose immersing America into other conflicts.
Is there a word for the complete lack of self-awareness you need to possess to denounce Donald Trump and the new conservative populism even as you are principally responsible for the disasters that ignited it?
A better course for those of us who supported that terrible misadventure is to admit our shameful error or, failing that, take an oath of respectful silence.

I disagree. I don’t remember being terrified by the stories the government told. I do remember that VP Dick Cheney trumpeted that our military would be greeted as liberators. Mostly, I remember the hash made out of Iraq by Paul Bremer, the Coalition Provisional Authority, who disbanded the police and military. Big Mistake.

THE PROS

Writer Brett Stephens does not regret his support for the Iraq War:

Ultimately, the choice for the United States and our allies in early 2003 wasn’t invasion or containment. It was invasion or, over time, the quasi-rehabilitation of Hussein’s Iraq. This was a Hussein that, as the Duelfer report on Iraq’s W.M.D. noted in 2004, “wanted to recreate Iraq’s W.M.D. capability — which was essentially destroyed after 1991 — after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized.”
Finally, there is the argument that George W. Bush and his administration lied about the intelligence. I think they sincerely believed the (mis)judgments of the C.I.A., which, as the bipartisan Robb-Silberman report concluded, sincerely believed in them itself. “The intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction,” the report noted. But it “was what they believed.” The consequences of this confusion are dangerous.
Critics of the war now make the point that the intelligence fiasco wrecked America’s credibility. It’s true. But no less damaging was the never-ending “Bush lied” charge that, 10 years later, morphed into the “Obama lied” charge when it came to Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria or the suggestion that President Biden is lying about last year’s sabotage of the Nordstream pipeline. One conspiracy theory tends to beget another, in ways that are destructive to all sides.

Readers will want to know whether, knowing what I know now, I would still have supported the decision to invade. Not for the reasons given at the time. Not in the way we did it. But on the baseline question of whether Iraq, the Middle East and the world are better off for having gotten rid of a dangerous tyrant, my answer remains yes.

AND TUCKER CARLSON

Tucker regrets:

After watching this video, you do realize Tucker could be fired for saying this. Given how he really feels, I’d say HE’S GONE from Fox within a year. Seriously, if his heart is saying this, how can he stay in legacy media‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/0ArAZhJjpA

— Bobby D (@BobDunlap9477) March 14, 2023

You have got to be kidding me?

MY TAKE

Every single thing about the administration of the Iraq War was bad. Most of the Pentagon, the Generals, the State Department, Paul Bremer. The war was right. In the end. The men and women who deployed did the right things for the right reasons (Abu Ghraib was an anomaly). They gave everything they had, literally.

My friend Bernie lost her son, Lance Corporal William C. Koprince, Jr., on his third deployment at the age of 24, in 2006.

The Iraqi people are better off for our having been there. The men and women who deployed are the best of us. Just like those at Abbey Gate at HKIA. They do the right things and make the world a better place. They deserve better leadership.

Featured Image: Used with the gracious permission of Bernice W. Koprince