First, assuming that you were in favor of the invasion of Iraq at the time of the invasion, do you believe today that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea? Why/why not?
I was indeed in favor of it. And it was a good idea. It remains a good idea. Unfortunately, I think the bullshit about why we went in there was annoying and stupid. In all truth, we were ten years into our war with Iraq, continuing from the time of their attack on our Kuwaiti friends. Once Afganistan had demonstrated just how much military capacity was required to occupy and maintain a rogue country we saw quite clearly that our standing manpower wasn't great enough to fight many battles at that scale at once. And, we had a significant amount of military might already tied up trying to keep Iraq bottled up. By opening another front in the region, we both exposed ourselves to getting into a multicornered affair if Iraq stepped up again and the potential of having to drop our coverage on Iraq to handle some second conflict.
As messy and horrible as it seems, completing the dissolution of Saddam Hussein's goverment and trying to institute a more rational (or temporarily crippled by internal affairs, at the very least) goverment so that we could effectively recover those forces in shorter order was the best solution. Leaving him in power unchecked would be unconscionable and deadly. Continuing to bottle him up for 2 or three more years while the possibility of a second Afghanistan remains extant would cripple our response or force us to do the unconscionable by abandoning Iraq. And worse, if another one crops up in that region we would wind up assaulted from multiple fronts and split up on the ground.
At this point, we could withdraw to respond to a second crisis. The results in Iraq would be nightmarish but they wouldn't be an immediate threat. And every week that we push toward restoring order, local goverment, and the resumption of international aid improves our ability to mobilize in the advent a second, real, terrorist threat.
Second, what reaction do you have to the not-very-upbeat news coming of Iraq these days, such as the stories I link to above?
They are the price of doing war. Anyone who is surprised that people are dying over there needs to read a book about war. We're not there to be policemen, we're not there to cuddle them, we're not fighting happy shiny people from planet goodtimes. We're there to crush the machine built by a tyrant and to shake loose the devil-dealers who thought they had room to operate under his umbrella. We are there because we beat them down and they wouldn't play ball when we told them what they had to do to make us leave. We won a war they started but couldn't get them to take the settlement plan we offered as a price of stopping where we did. Of course, we have an obligation to leave it better than we found it because doing less than maintaining and restoring civil order means trouble for ourselves down the road. Beyond that, we're humans and we owe it to our fellow people to not fuck them over worse than is required to save ourselves.
Right now there are a large number of people in the world who truly think that anything can be talked out and negotiated. I honestly believe they are basically, fundamentally, incorrect. Their world view, however, ensures that any setback or roadbump will be trimuphantly displayed as proof we should have been talking all along and not doing this shooting and bombing thing. At the basis of it all, they seem to believe that only positive reinforcement is required to shape a mind, that words and intentions are all that is needed to convince, that good hearts will be reflected everywhere they shine. I think the carrot is useless without the stick. To train any system, be it a mind, a political body, or culture you need to teach what must not be done as well as what one may do to be rewarded. And the worst thing you can ever do is reward what must not be done.
The people in that region have been assured by their leaders both political and religious that we are a fainting and core-rotten people who would crumble at the first sign of real trouble. Like the bushido of Japan in the 1940s, they really didn't understand how much of our strength comes from apparent weakness. As fractious as our culture is, as divided and weird as we get, we have a shared will born of our belief in our innate right to be fractious, weird and disagreable. As paradoxical as it seems, we really will die to defend our neighbor's right to make a quisling ass of himself. And a demonstration of how willing we are to kick their ass once we're good and pissed off is doing more than people think... unless we flip over and wimp out due to bad press and weak wills just as they expected.
If we finish this, regardless of the overall opinion of our godliness and peaceful intentions, no one in the region will soon be fooled into thinking we're too weak to suck up the casualties needed to bring the war right back to their yard scaled up beyond their wildest dreams. We must teach them that there is loss to their actions, not just that there is no gain. And we can't, ever, reward their terrorist, tyrannical ways lest we invite more of the same.
Third, what specific criteria do you recommend that we should use over the coming months and years to measure whether the Iraq invasion has been a success?
The number of troops we free up to pursue other terrorists. The number of years Iraq remains too peaceful, democratic, or discombobulated to threaten us. The number of terrorist factions who can't find a safe haven and have to go on the run from border to border to avoid their own people killing them to keep us from coming back again. The number of people in the region who when polled admit their own people have done more to get them killed than we ever did.
The goal of terrorism is intimidation, the imposition of will. In war, intimidation is merely a tool of a focussed will, a way to save resources for later. Right now, we conquer to take away capability, and attempt to control while rebuilding so that we might leave a non-enemy behind... but the real payoff will be the level of fear we instill in potential enemies. I don't think there is a criteria that will measure that. How do you measure how deeply you've convinced a foreign culture that sticking their bloody hands into our cookie jar will get it cut off and fed to them? As always, the real judgement will come from what actions they take, not from what words they speak, nor what is said about them.
Now... that came out even more hawkish than I thought. Hmm. Still, the fundamental points of why I support the war are there. It boils down to this... we spent ten years punching a tar-baby and getting suck worse and worse before the real wolf scared us into pulling our hands slowly free. But getting our hands free is the real goal. Doing so without losing too much face on the world stage and without just turning Iraq into another gangland nightmare isn't easy... but even doing so poorly is better than having our hands stuck when we find we need them swinging free.
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