David Kilcullen writes:
Spencer Ackerman, in yesterday’s Washington Independent, claims I told him the Iraq war was “f*cking stupid”. He did not seek to clear that quote with me, and I would not have approved it if he had. If he HAD sought a formal comment, I would have told him what I have said publicly before: in my view, the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was an extremely serious strategic error. But the task of the moment is not to cry over spilt milk, rather to help clean it up: a task in which the surge, the comprehensive counterinsurgency approach, and our troops on the ground are admirably succeeding.
Not just Kilcullen, but several professionals I’ve spoken to think Iraq was a mistake. One senior coalition officer who served there thinks we don’t know (whather it was a mistake or not). I tend to agree. We won’t know for a while. But so as not to weasel out and because one has to risk being proven wrong, my own judgment is that the decision to take down Saddam will prove to be correct.
The idea that oppression and terrorism are correlated is a correct intuition. That the planners misjudged the readiness and ease with which Arab culture might transition to a less toxic political culture does not invalidate that basic correctness. I do not believe (and this is all opinion here) it is possible to return to business as usual: another Mubarak. another Shah, another Musharraf, another Saddam.
Second, I believe we are undervaluing the gains in information we have bought at so high a price. We now know that no WMDs will be developed in Iraq for the foreseeable future; nor any countries invaded from there. We do not know that about Iran; nor about Syria. But we do know it about Iraq today. The No-Fly Zones, the sanctions, the presence in Saudi Arabia was the price of not knowing about Saddam; just as the close watch on Iran and Syria are today’s price of not knowing what they will do. And while the gain of turning Iraq from an enemy to an ally may arguably not have been worth the effort put into it, there was a return and we don’t know the value of it yet.
A lot depends on how well the post-kinetic conflict with Iraq is handled: the Status of Forces, regional diplomacy, etc — all the decisions going forward will determine whether Iraq becomes a positive force in the region; provides a return on investment or not. South Korea once looked like a pig in a poke and could have been without wise diplomacy. The key was what happened after the ceasefire in 1952.
Because however you shake it, the Middle East is strategically crucial in ways that Afghanistan can never be. So Iraq has a potential to alter the political culture in the region that can never be achieved through Afghanistan. That’s why we are not yet sure whether Iraq, even in its “won” state, will turn out to be a mistake or not. I don’t know it will be worth it, but I think it was the only way to go because there was nowhere else to go.
