One of the virtues of the political insurgencies of this presidential campaign has been that they have forced both parties to confront difficult questions that most mainstream politicians have preferred to ignore. On the domestic policy front, the unavoidable issue is the plight of the working middle class. On issues of foreign policy, the gorilla-in-the-room question is what to do about the Middle East, a question that is inseparable from the unresolved debate about the wisdom of the Iraq War.
Even though Donald Trump raised the shade of Iraq in typically bullying fashion, accusing former President George W. Bush of lying about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, he put a finger on a point of neuralgia for Republicans. Indeed, until conservatives can drive this Banquo’s ghost from the table, they will remain haunted, divided and unable to offer a governing alternative. As Michael Warren has observed, Trump’s is a “Code Pink” version of the Iraq War.
Even more deeply entrenched than this Bush-lied-people-died narrative is Barack Obama’s “stupid war” trope. Other than dead-ender Bush loyalists, conservatives and Republicans have very rarely challenged – and often agreed with – the idea that removing Saddam from power in Baghdad was a grave strategic blunder. There hasn’t been a spark of the kind of “revisionism” that revived debate about the Vietnam War in the Reagan era, no analogue to historian Lewis Sorley’s defense of Gen. Creighton Abrams’ counterinsurgency approach in his book A Better War.
Thus the other candidates’ responses to Trump’s attacks were manifestations of this “Iraq syndrome.” Jeb Bush rushed to the defense of his family but not his brother’s policies. When first confronted with the Iraq question, Jeb had said, “Knowing what we know now, I would not have gone into Iraq.”
But what we know now is that withdrawing from Iraq has been a far worse strategic mistake than the botched occupation following the invasion that toppled Saddam. Trump’s notion that the Iraqi dictator “killed terrorists” is ludicrous; Saddam was a kind of terrorist. Much more importantly, President Obama’s decision to “end” American involvement has been the precipitating occasion for a general collapse of U.S. power in the Middle East. This collapse, in turn, has framed a rising international anxiety about our willingness and ability to sustain a global leadership role. Europe, especially, is reaping the whirlwind of the Obama retreat, but even East Asians wonder what American “red lines” mean.
If anything, Obama’s blunders make the Iraq debate more salient and demand a more reflective discussion. President Bush and his lieutenants made profound – and avoidable – mistakes in their conduct of the war. But to anyone with a historical sensibility, such is war. It is far rarer to admit error and correct it as Bush did with the 2007 “surge.” That was not just a “better war,” but one that produced enough successes to create the conditions for a larger victory and a more favorable balance of power across the Middle East.
In sum, rather than running away from an Iraq debate, Republicans ought to be begging for one. To begin with, it can be a way to read Trump out of the party and return what Walter Russell Mead describes as the “Jacksonian,” nationalist element – who, in addition to their grievances against the corruptions of the elite, hate the idea that the rest of the world is kicking sand in America’s face – to the conservative coalition. Reframing the issue is also essential in the presidential contest itself, particularly if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic candidate; her for-it-before-I-was-against-it posture reveals that, while she’s had a lot of “experience,” she has not learned from it.
The Obama-era “Iraq Syndrome” is thus far proving more debilitating to the traditional exercise of American power and leadership than the “Vietnam Syndrome” was during the Ford or Carter years. Ronald Reagan believed that victory in Vietnam had been possible and forever saw the American sacrifice there not as immoral or foolish but as a “noble cause.” He sensed that to win the future he also needed to fight for the past. Which of his would-be heirs will do the same?
