[Originally published in the Valley News.]
With the Bush administration’s justifications for the war in Iraq not having stood up to post-invasion examination, the question arises: What was the real reason for removing Saddam Hussein from power?
The policy of invading Iraq clearly belongs to the administration’s neoconservatives who occupy prominent positions in the White House and Pentagon. Many neocons – including Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Pentagon adviser Richard Perle, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and Director of the Office of Special Plans Adam Shulsky – trace their philosophical roots to Leo Strauss, a professor and philosopher at the University of Chicago. Some observers view Strauss as essentially benign, but others see him as an intellectual elitist who believed that he and his followers had the duty and the right to rule the unwashed masses of the world in a cynical, Machiavellian fashion.
According to Shadia Drury, author of Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999), Straussian elites believe “the masses are too ignorant to comprehend what’s happening, so lie to them. Actually it‚s more than OK to lie to them – and herein lies the true joy of Strauss for the neocons – Strauss said lying to the masses protects them”.
That may prove crucial to understanding how the administration sold the invasion of Iraq to the public. It’s now clear from former administration officials such as Paul O’Neill and Richard Clarke that the White House decided to bring down the Bath regime in Iraq long before discussing it publicly. Their true goal, if not their method, was noble. It seems likely that they truly believed that the only important goal in Iraq was to install a representative democracy there and use that change as a catalyst for transforming the Middle East.
According to that scenario, the many repressive, undemocratic, Arab regimes would fall in classic domino fashion to the legitimate aspirations of their people. In the long run, Israel would be far less threatened, and the funding of terrorist organizations would become much more complicated and therefore easier for the United States to deal with. Democratic regimes replacing repressive Arab regimes would no longer take a hands-off attitude toward the support and funding of terrorist organizations, as Arab regimes do out of practical necessity today. With restive, angry, anti-Israeli and anti-American populations, today’s regimes would likely be overthrown if they were to crack down on the indigenous support of terrorism.
There is nothing wrong with any of those goals. What is missing, however, is a heavy dose of objective reality and a shot of humility. Many government experts who are steeped in the realities of the Middle East see the Arabs as among the world’s most unlikely candidates for representative democracy. Even if the old, repressive regimes are overthrown, who can guarantee that they will be replaced by regimes favorably disposed toward the United States?
If the neocons’ policy proves wrong, it is most likely because their intellectual arrogance didn’t permit them to sufficiently consider the views of the many experts who disagreed with them. The neocons apparently relegated these analysts to the ranks of the unwashed masses – simply because the message they brought to the table contradicted what the neocons wanted to do in Iraq. In retrospect, though, the experts’ many warnings about the pitfalls of reconstructing post-war Iraq have proved prophetic.
Certainly humility is not a characteristic of the neocons. They are intellectually arrogant (watch them on TV) and, in the case of Iraq, strikingly uninterested in the views of others with a stake in the matter. Given their elitist philosophical roots and their political proclivities, it is a small wonder that they led us into Iraq for all their “noble” reasons.
The negative ramifications of our invasion are real and measurable. The costs in blood and money are frightening. The damage to our existing international alliances has been bad and is getting worse. Our reputation has been severely damaged. We are no longer admired or trusted. In the Arab world, we are even more reviled. Few want to emulate our democratic model.
Worst of all, this adventure has contributed nothing to the war on terrorism. It has distracted us from the real issues – hunting al-Qaida and its allies through the strengthening of international alliances. Finally, it has given a major boost to terrorists’ recruiting efforts.
Only time will show who is right, but the evidence so far has not been favorable to the neocons’ side. Iraq is and will continue to be an incredibly expensive and potentially disastrous experiment. This is one area where the neocons and the Bush administration might well have heeded the word of the experts who had been dealing for decades on a practical level with the Middle East and terrorism.
Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Beirut and Tehran and was chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.
Rural Ruminations 