Posted by M. Wright | Filed in: War
For no particular reason, I have undertaken an effort to catalog and categorize the reasons why Americans disagree with the war in Iraq or have increasingly turned against it.
What it reinforces for me is that people who are “anti-war” do not present a unified front, and should not all be lumped together — it shows how critics appear on both the Right and the Left.
A person can be against the war for only one of these reasons, or several; everyone theoretically has a threshold under category three — a point at which even the strongest supporters of the war would conclude that the cost of action is too high. And it also suggests that those who disagree on every point, or agree on every point, are being insincere.
The outline vividly explains why support for the war continues on a downward trend, despite any successes and victories the U.S. coalition and Iraqis have achieved.
Breaking it down also helps me pinpoint where people are coming from and puts me in a better position to offer constructive counter-arguments.
Can you add to this list (PDF)? At some point I may take the trouble to code this thing in HTML; until then, deal.
February 10th, 2007 at 6:41 am
There is no unified anti-war front as such, at least not like what happened during Vietnam. It might be more accurate to label the overall group “anti-Iraq War,” because you’re not going to find many people who opposed both the Iraq War and the Afghan War.
February 10th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Maybe there should be specific sections under Tactical Strategy entitled: ‘preparation’, ‘timing’. Under preparation, perhaps subtitles like: ‘research’ - relating to the ancient strife between sectarian groups and how that might be handled in the aftermath. And ‘coalition building’ - examining how to use diplomacy to bring in regional countries to take a stake in the new Iraq, Desert Storm would be a good model coalition for example. Under ‘timing’ we could look at the result of what happened by invading without before a sizable coalition was ready and Iraq’s neighbors like Turkey and the Saudis were not on board. We might also discuss ‘net gain’ by looking at the fact that in 2003, unarmed weapons inspectors where roaming around Iraq securing and destroying weapons and a year later, Americans were being beheaded and Iran emboldened. Many aspects to this huge mistake, probably the worst we’ll see in our lifetime.
Former Republican House majority leader Dick Armey has some interesting things to say about the Iraq war resolution that passed on his watch:
Q: Your views on the Iraq war?
A: I’m not sure that it was the right thing to do. You might say removing Saddam from power was a right thing to do. Maybe it was, but was that necessarily then our responsibility to do that? And was it our responsibility to do that by invading a country that had in no way declared any war on us?
Q: You voted for the resolution to go to war.
A: I did, and I’m not happy about it. The resolution was a resolution that authorized the president to take that action if he deemed it necessary. Had I been more true to myself and the principles I believed in at the time, I would have openly opposed the whole adventure vocally and aggressively.
February 11th, 2007 at 8:34 am
I suspect the reason guys like Armey voted for the use of force had to do primarily with the WMD question.
But my problem with the “we should have never gone in” thinking is how things might have turned out had we stayed home. After Bush escalated forces in the region our hands were tied.
For example, in 2002 everyone agreed Saddam was a threat (consensus, like global warming). The only reason he allowed UNMOVIC to come back and inspect was due to the massive battle group steaming towards the ME. Blix has admitted this. Yet they all knew Saddam’s past pattern of obfuscation and deceit in this area.
When the inspectors turned up only a few proscribed shells Bush was in a pickle. If he allowed Blix to keep poking around and eventually declare Iraq “disarmed” it would have brought tremendous international pressure to remove the UN sanctions, with both Russia and France standing by to help (oil for food). Both Kay and Duelfer stated that Saddam was prepared to rearm if he could get the sanctions down.
I may be simplifying it, but seems the only way we could get Saddam to allow inspections was to threaten massive force, and once the inspections took place we were left with no real option but to take him out.
In hindsight perhaps we could have used other tools to pressure him into inspections, but short of international sanctions not sure what that would have been.
February 11th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Absolutely, we had time. Much less costly to intimidate with carriers and no fly zones than to invade with little help. We had time to do it right. Bad scene now.
February 12th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Absolutely, we had time. Much less costly to intimidate with carriers and no fly zones than to invade with little help. We had time to do it right. Bad scene now.
It’s probably silly to argue in hindsight anyway, but how long do you think we could have kept that many combat troops staged waiting for the UN to scour the whole country? And once Blix took the step of declaring Iraq “disarmed” we certainly couldn’t have gone charging in after that.
The result would be an Iraq left with an embolded Saddam, claiming final victory in the mother of all battles, and energized to bubble up some more VX.
I think I could agree with the notion that had Bush not massed forces and threatened Saddam into accepting inspections things might be different. But that’s a sort of merry-go-round, isn’t it?
February 15th, 2007 at 10:48 am
Emboldened Saddam? A 2-bit dictator with no airforce and a small rent-a-army- not exactly an imminent threat to the US, never was. We could’ve done it right, less costly, less death, more control and not the failed state we have today. People say leaving Iraq will create a haven for terrorists. Bush has already created that by his actions. Not only do we have an Iraq quagmire, we have an emboldened Iran - the haven for terrorists that Bush polices have created.