Based on what U.S. officials knew 20 years ago, they were absolutely justified in taking military action to evict Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Twenty years later, the world remains, on rough balance, better off because they did.
Despite all the United States and its allies got wrong operationally in Iraq in the past two decades, it also did a lot of things right and for good reasons — and with some markedly good results.
WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON OF THE IRAQ WAR?
On March 19, 2003, there were several big reasons why decision-makers were right to order an assault on Saddam’s forces. And there were at least eight good results that flowed from the eviction of Saddam and the long-running allied presence in Iraq. Alas, not all those positive results lasted, largely because of bad decisions made after the initial fighting was won. Enough of them lasted, however, to make the overall effort, flawed as it was, still more salutary than allowing Saddam to remain in power.
The prewar reasons for military action, in rough order of logic rather than of moral import, were as follows. Saddam himself was a threat to world peace and human lives just by holding power. This understanding was reflected in a long series of increasingly explicit U.N. mandates and the goal of U.S. policy at the time, which recognized the necessity of forcefully evicting Saddam. (For an essential and comprehensive compilation of these laws and resolutions, with links to each source document, readers really should go to the website Operation Iraqi Freedom FAQ.) He was unalterably duplicitous, ruthless, and murderous. The next reason involved weapons of mass destruction: Saddam did maintain some stores of WMDs; he had not accounted for ones that had been degraded, secretly moved, hidden, or destroyed; and he had an ongoing (if impaired) program to reconstitute WMDs that he could soon ramp up if the already-tottering sanctions regime against him collapsed.
Then there was terrorism, obviously a preeminent concern after the attacks of 9/11. While Saddam didn’t instigate 9/11, his regime deliberately harbored and sometimes actively abetted dangerous terrorists such as Abu Musab al Zarqawi, Ramzi Yousef, and Abu Nidal, provided payments to the families of terrorists, and sponsored a terrorism training center at Salman Pak, near Baghdad.
Iraq was entering a humanitarian crisis, largely due to Saddam’s own repression and partly due to the necessary international sanctions. Meanwhile, historical experiences in Latin America, in South Africa, and in post-World War II Japan provided reasonable hope that ordered liberty could indeed take root in lands formerly unfamiliar with it.
Finally, Bush administration officials hoped that by making an example of Saddam, other rogue regimes would see his eviction as a deterrent and thus constrain their own worst instincts. Perhaps surprisingly to some, that last goal provided the most spectacular success of the whole operation: It is undeniable that Saddam’s inglorious fate played significantly and directly, even if not exclusively, into the decision of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to hand over large caches of arms and chemical weapon precursors. Better still, Gadhafi dismantled a nuclear program that was much more developed than many had realized. He also provided intelligence keys that helped the free world dismantle the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network.
Meanwhile, the elimination of Saddam himself was a boon to his country and the entire world. Crucially, his WMD programs were never reconstituted, whereas if he were able to outlive the sanctions regime, they almost certainly would have been. Together, the Libyan and WMD benefits, in and of themselves, may have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Several other positive results stemmed from the Iraq War. Massive tensions in NATO about the Iraqi oil-for-food program, and corruption pertaining to it, were voided once there was no need post-Saddam for the program to exist. The world economy was improved and poverty lessened, including in the U.S., by the restoration of trade, and oil flow, with and from Iraq. International terrorism was measurably deterred every time the allied presence in Iraq was active and engaged. (Terrorism abroad did temporarily but badly flare up when allied withdrawal led to a heyday for the Islamic State, but the U.S. military eventually, brilliantly trampled ISIS with Operation Inherent Resolve.)
Because of Saddam’s nexus to and material support for terrorism, not including 9/11, it is false revisionism to deny that the war in Iraq, in addition to its other rationales, was anything other than part and parcel of the free world’s mobilization against international terrorism. Too many Americans today take for granted how remarkably successful that mobilization has been — especially on the home front, which has not come close to experiencing another 9/11-like attack.
Although the last two partial successes are out of favor these days, it truly is important that the Iraqi people are free from Saddam’s yoke, both for their own good and for the international example they set. It is undeniable that the vast majority of Iraqis initially welcomed U.S. intervention, and the chance for republican government, with enthusiasm. The vision of millions of Iraqis proudly and excitedly showing off their purple-blue fingers after voting showed that the human longing for self-determination is virtually universal.
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Finally, the Iraqi example played a large role in inspiring similar movements elsewhere. People forget how thrilling the “Rose Revolution” was in Georgia, the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine, the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan, and even the much later “Arab Spring.” Even though their earlier promise was far from entirely sustained, millions of people found either temporary or permanent improvements in material and spiritual circumstances because the ideals of freedom emanated from Iraq and elsewhere.
None of this is to deny that U.S. leaders made tragic mistakes in and about Iraq, some of which indubitably made both Iraq and the world objectively grimmer. Yet it remains certainly reasonable, and I believe true, to contend that the risks of inaction were far worse than anything that happened because of the war and that some of the benefits of the war were tremendous indeed.
Quin Hillyer is a senior commentary writer and editor for the Washington Examiner.
