Iraq War: Incomprehensible?

"I think we are winning.  Okay?  I think we're definitely winning.  I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05

"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.

I like Digby's Hullabaloo blog.  Good writing, good links.

But with an opening like that, you know there's a criticism coming.  In Ungrateful Wretches 08/17/06, she writes about Bush's seeming confusion over the lack of gratitude from the Iraqi people for bombing, shooting and torturing them into the country's current state.  She continues:

And I suspect that a whole lot of other Americans are just plain confused.  It's very hard to finesse all that and it's one of the reasons why the occupation has been such a disaster. Nobody really knows what we're doing there, not us, not them.  Now Iraqis are boldly demonstrating in favor of terrorists and even Bush can no longer hide his own confusion and dismay.

In that sense, this war makes Vietnam a moment of foreign policy clarity.   It was certainly a mistake to put so much importance on the idea that the US could not afford to fail in a small proxy war or risk communism taking over the far east.  But at least everyone understood the premise and could either agree or disagree with it.  This war in Iraq is totally incomprehensible to everyone.  We invaded for dozens of disparate reasons none of which were entirely compelling and all of which have been proven to be mistaken.  We are throwing away hundreds of billions and yet there are now many more terrorists in Iraq than there were before the invasion and many more all around the world because of it.  Oil prices are sky high and rising. The middle east is more unstable than its been in many decades. Lots and lots of people are dying.  (my emphasis)

I'm generally receptive to hearing about the general senselessness of war.  But I have a concern about presenting the Iraq War as totally incomprehensible.  Bush lied, people died; what's so hard to comprehend about that?

More specifically, I think it's a mistake to give our Republicans the alibi that nobody really understood the premise and that it's "incomprehensible".   In fact, Congress passed a specific authorization for war in October 2002.  I've commented on it before, first time here in 2004.

John Dean in his Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush (2004) summarizes the requirements of that resolution:

To avoid having to return to Congress for more debate on Iraq, Bush had pushed for and received authority to launch a war without further advance notice to Congress.  Never before had Congress so trusted a president with this authority.  But in granting this unprecedented authorization, Congress insisted that certain conditions be established as existing and that the president submit a formal determination, assuring the Congress that, in fact, these conditions were present.  Specifically (and here I am summarizing technical wording; the actual language [is in section 3(b) (1) and (2) of PL 107-243]), Congress wanted a formal determination submitted to it either before using force or within forty-eight hours of having done so, stating that the president had found that (1) further diplomatic means alone would not resolve the "continuing threat" (meaning WMD) and (2) the military action was part of the overall response to terrorism, including dealing wtih those involved in "the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."  In short, Congress insisted that there be evidence of two points that were the centerpirce of Bush's argument for the war.

The Cheney-Bush administration relied most heavily on the claims of WMDs in Iraq, and used the alleged Al Qaida connection to Saddam to link the invasion of Iraq to 9/11.  And Congress, responding to his request for a war resolution, incorporated both those requirement into the resolution.  War was authorized only if all other means had been exhausted to deal with Iraq's WMDs, which were non-existent, *and* if the war was shown to be a part of the war on terrorism including those involved in the 9/11 attacks, a connection which was also non-existent.

The administration's claim about both those things were false.  Bush lied, people died.  Why mystify it into "incomprehensible"?  Let Bush and his Party explain why they went to war on this basis.

"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovern and Jim McGovern 06/06/05