The Incomprehensible War

Last week Digby wrote the following about Iraq:

[T]his 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.

It really is incomprehensible. It's now been over three years since we invaded Iraq, and still, remarkably, no one can say with any certainty why we did it. There's a tendency among political commentators (and I'm certainly as guilty of this as anyone) to discuss the Bush administration as if it were some monolithic entity, rather than a collection of people with differing priorities and different motives for lining up behind any given policy.

There were no doubt some administration officials--Paul Wolfowitz, for instance--who, from the beginning, subscribed to the neocon fantasy of bringing democracy to the Middle East by force, one country at a time. I suspect others--particularly Donald Rumsfeld--were just eager for the opportunity to test out our new "leaner and meaner" military. Still others--Cheney comes to mind--likely saw Iraq as an opportunity to demonstrate American strength, to, as Michael Ledeen put it, "pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business." Karl Rove likely saw the war as an opportunity to further cement the President's image as a strong wartime leader (he probably had the whole flightsuit/aircraft carrier photo-op planned out well before the invasion). There were clearly other factors at play as well, like Saddam's supposed WMD, Bush's desire to finish what his father had started, and the perceived strategic value of Iraq's oil supply.

To this day it is still not clear, even to those of us who follow politics very closely, which of these various rationales was the "real" reason we went to war. And if it's unclear to us, it's really unclear to the average American, who doesn't have the time (or desire) to wade through all the propaganda. The Bush administration's public rationale for invading Iraq has gone through any number of iterations over the last three years. But at all points along the way, the message has been muddled and filled with rhetoric designed to confuse people and foster pre-existing misunderstandings.

In the lead up to the invasion, Bush and his surrogates repeatedly conflated Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda, and the events of 9/11, leading a sizable majority of Americans to believe that Saddam was involved in planning the 9/11 attacks. I haven't seen any recent polling on this question, but I suspect this misunderstanding is still common. After all, a full 50% of Americans still believe that Saddam had WMD.

From the beginning, Bush's public statements about Iraq have referred cryptically to "terrorists" or "our enemy" or "they," making little, if any, attempt to explain to Americans the differences between Al Qaeda, Sunni Baathists, Shiite militiamen, etc. I suspect that for a great many of those who support the war, the logic behind it has always been pretty simple: "they" attacked us, so now we're attacking "them." And if that's what you believe, the Iraq war makes every bit as much sense as the war against Japan in World War II.

We'd all like to assume that most people have a more nuanced understanding of foreign policy, but is there any reason to believe that's true? I'm not suggesting that Americans are stupid, just that many aren't really following the plot, so to speak.

But as Iraq descends into civil war, an increasing number of Americans are beginning to see the enormous disconnect between the events of 9/11 and the self-inflicted debacle that is the Iraq War.

This really is an entirely incomprehensible war. No one knows why we're there. No one knows how to "win." And no one knows how to go about extricating ourselves without causing even more chaos and violence.

UPDATE: A commenter below writes:

That's quite an accusation to make -- "those who disagree
with my political conclusions are idiots." Its hard to support,
however. The war enjoys supporters from across the political
spectrum from former trotskyites (Hitchens) to
neoconservatives (wolfowitz) to reddest of red states old syle
conservatives (Cheney).

Look, I wasn't suggesting that there aren't intelligent, informed people who support this war (even today). But I think you're kidding yourself if you think that most Americans who support this war do so for the same reasons as Christopher Hitchens or Paul Wolfowitz. The polls just don't bear that out. In 2003, 70% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was involved in the events of 9/11. 70%! And 50% of Americans still believe Saddam had WMD. You can pretend, if you want, that the average war supporter believes deeply in the idea of creating a "beachhead for democracy" in Baghdad, but I just don't think that's accurate. That doesn't, of course, prove that Hitchens or Wolfowitz are wrong (though I think reality does at this point). But my point is that the war is all but incomprehensible to most people (myself included), and much of the lingering public support for it is premised upon a simplistic and/or misinformed understanding of the basic facts.