As one of the first and most consistent critics of our Iraq policy — especially as a reaction to the 9/11 attack — I am motivated yet again to scold our most senior policymakers (past and present) for the awful mess they have gotten and kept us in over there. Not only that, it’s getting worse every day in Iraq, mostly as a result of the seriously flawed policies of the Bush and Obama administrations; in fact, the word “incompetence” describes most of it.
Going In: Dumb — but understandable? Going after Iraq — especially as a response to 9/11 — was basically apples and oranges. They had little or nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.
However, were there other reasons that justified the second invasion?
While there is continuing debate on this, we may have to defer to the “collective wisdom” — even though it was wrong — of the world’s intelligence services, including our own, that Iraq had an active WMD program, including nuclear weapons programs.
That this conclusion was based mostly on faulty or contrived human intelligence is beside the point now, albeit critical at the time. In other words, we probably have to accept George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, because he believed — as did most in Congress and elsewhere — that a nuclear WMD there was a “slam dunk.”
But it wasn’t — and not even close.
Staying there: Dumber. From this point on I have consistently argued that — after Saddam Hussein, his thug sons and immediate political minions were dead and/or neutralized — and the WMD hunt ended up empty — we should have simply come home, leaving the Iraqi Army mostly intact with new and vetted leadership.
Instead, here’s what we “accomplished” in more than a decade of large scale presence in Iraq:
•	Allowed the Shiites to take out their bloody revenge on the Sunnis — and this is still happening
•	Dismantled the standing Iraqi Army
•	Spent billions of our dollars on another totally corrupt “political system”
•	Created — and paid dearly for — an amateur, incompetent and ineffective army and internal security system, as demonstrated by its recent routings by the Islamic State
And, perhaps most egregious, all of this was done pursuant to our (then) “new” policy of “democracy,” which quietly replaced WMDs as the reason for the invasion and extended occupation.
It was almost as if someone at the Bush National Security Council suddenly realized: “OMG, we invaded Iraq because of WMDs and there isn’t any, so now, how do we justify staying there so we don’t look totally incompetent? I’ve got it: We’ll change our mission from WMDs to ‘democracy,’ and we will never mention WMDs again. Politically, of course, the Democrats will love it because it sounds a lot like the ‘nation building’ they always talk about.”
In this context, and at the time, even the so-called “Biden Plan” would have been far more creative and successful: Recall that [then] Sen. Joe Biden urged that we support three semi-autonomous regions in Iraq: Kurd, Sunni and Shiite, together with a loose federal structure empowered primarily to equitably share oil revenues. That probably would have worked then — especially with the support from some key allies in the region.
Leaving precipitously: Dumbest. After having invaded Iraq — then staying around for a decade watching and supporting the creation of yet another corrupt and religious-based regime (perhaps even more dangerous to us than Saddam’s) — we then abruptly leave, allowing the situation we created to quickly boil over into a full scale civil and religious war.
And, how we could have been “surprised” at what happened after we left Iraq defies believability.
Should there remain any doubt whatsoever, the rise of the Islamic State in the region is directly the consequence of our decision to precipitously leave Iraq. It was clearly not at all close to reaching any degree of internal stability.
Of this conclusion there can be no doubt. In fact, it’s hard to imagine how we could have screwed up the latest chaotic situation in Iraq any more had we set out to do it.
While hindsight is always 20-20, we clearly should have not stayed in Iraq past Saddam’s regime change and the negative WMD search. Disbanding the Iraqi army was another critical mistake. The only practical political solution at the time was probably the “Biden Plan.” In fact, the recent violence and unrest was clearly facilitated, if not caused, by our precipitous departure, and appears to be headed to a violent partition of Iraq and the further destabilization of the region.
Daniel Gallington served in senior national security policy positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Department of Justice and as bipartisan general counsel for the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
