Review Mugged By Reality, The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions

Agresto, John, Mugged By Reality, The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions, New York: Encounter Books, 2007

 

John Agresto worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority from 2003-2004 as the advisor to the Ministry of Higher Education. The book covers two themes. The main one is the author giving a neoconservative argument for why he supported the Iraq War. The second is what were the root causes for the failure of the U.S. occupation sprinkled with anecdotes about the people he met in Iraq. The book is about how the author struggled to hold onto his ideas as they were confronted by the occupation. Some of his criticisms are poignant but too many times he rambles on and contradicts himself.

Review The Regime Change Consensus, Iraq In American Politics 1990-2003

Stieb, Joseph, The Regime Change Consensus, Iraq In American Politics 1990-2003, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, New Deli, Singapore: Cambridge University Press, 2021

 

The majority of books on the Iraq invasion focus upon the early days of the Bush administration and then how 9/11 changed its perceptions and led to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Few have analysis and most just recite the history. Joseph Stieb in The Regime Change Consensus, Iraq In American Politics 1990-2003 is one of those rare releases which focuses upon the ideas that led the conflict with Iraq. It discusses how the first Bush administration created a containment policy around Iraq after the Gulf War and how that broke down in the 1990s so that by the time 9/11 happened the only real debate within the American political establishment was not whether to invade Iraq but how.

Review A Pretext for War, 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies

Bamford, James, A Pretext for War, 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Auckland: Doubleday, 2004

 

A Pretext for War, 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies by James Bamford is a very flawed book. The first problem is the author loves telling stories which takes him off on extended tangents. Second, the last third of the book covers the causes and lead up to the Iraq War and is completely wrong blaming Saddam’s attempt on the life former President George Bush and neoconservatives for the invasion. The best part is its coverage of 9/11 but that can be read in other books that don’t have so many issues.

Review Arrows of the Night: Ahmad Chalabi and the Selling of the Iraq War

Bonin, Richard, Arrows of the Night: Ahmad Chalabi and the Selling of the Iraq War, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Auckland: Doubleday, 2011

 

Arrows of the Night: Ahmad Chalabi and the Selling of the Iraq War by 60 Minutes producer Richard Bonin was the second book on the controversial figure. Much of it is based upon conversations the author had with Chalabi. The book highlights his greatest achievement of helping to convince the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein to his many faults from his financial corruption to his turn towards sectarian politics. The book starts off giving Chalabi’s view of Iraq and then becomes more critical as it progresses.

Review The Assassins’ Gate, America In Iraq

Packer, George, The Assassins’ Gate, America In Iraq, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005 

George Packer of the New Yorker wrote The Assassins’ Gate, American In Iraq in an attempt to explain the ideas behind the 2003 U.S. invasion, and how they came undone. He begins with Iraqi exile Kanan Makiya and the neoconservatives who argued for creating a democratic Iraq using American military force to overthrow Saddam Hussein. He then explains all the problems America faced when it occupied Iraq starting with the fact that it had no strategy and quickly lost the trust of Iraqis. Packer was a believer in the war having been won over by Makiya’s conviction. Afterward however he became disillusioned feeling that no one from the Americans to the Iraqi exiles really wanted Iraq to succeed.  

Laurie Mylroie’s Iraq Conspiracy Theory Was Debunked By Captured Baath Documents

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was a big fan of Laurie Mylroie and her theories about Iraq. In April 2001, during the first discussion of terrorism by the new Bush administration, Wolfowitz brought up Mylroie’s claim that Iraq was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and therefore Baghdad not Al Qaeda should be the focus of any counter terrorism strategy. In June, the deputy secretary tried to get the CIA to look into Mylroie’s theory. On September 17, 2001 Wolfowitz sent a memo to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld advocating for the United States to attack Iraq in retaliation for 9/11. He said there was a better than 10% chance that Baghdad was behind the strikes on New York and Washington D.C. He included the 1993 bombing. Later, he sent former CIA Director James Woolsey to England to find evidence to support Mylroie’s story. Finally in November 2001 Wolfowitz wrote Rumsfeld again saying that Iraq was probably involved in 9/11 based upon Mylroie’s ideas of links between Saddam and Al Qaeda from 1993. Mylroie’s theories about Iraq and terrorism were popular amongst neoconservatives like Wolfowitz, but were totally convoluted and later proven false by captured Iraqi documents.

Review The United States And Iraq Since 1990, A Brief History With Documents

Brigham, Robert, The United States And Iraq Since 1990, A Brief History With Documents, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014

The United States And Iraq Since 1990 by Robert Brigham was written as a short college textbook covering America’s long experience with Iraq. It covers four broad periods starting with the Bush administration and the Gulf War, then the Clinton administration, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and finally the American occupation. After each chapter there are a few primary source documents with questions about them. The book provides a good introduction to America’s Iraq policy, however there are some issues in the second half.

Review Losing Iraq, Inside The Post War Reconstruction Fiasco

Phillips, David, Losing Iraq, Inside The Post War Reconstruction Fiasco, Westview Press, 2005

Losing Iraq, Inside the Post War Reconstruction Fiasco by former State Department official David Phillips argues that the United States failed in Iraq. Phillips was involved with the Future of Iraq Project, which brought together Iraqi opposition figures to plan for a post-Saddam Iraq. He adds important information about what the State Department was doing before the 2003 invasion, which has largely been overlooked for the activities of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the White House. Phillips believes that Washington didn’t plan for postwar Iraq, and made things worse during the occupation.

Review The Future of Iraq, Dictatorship, Democracy, or Division?

Anderson, Liam and Stansfield, Gareth, The Future of Iraq, Dictatorship, Democracy, or Division? New York, Hampshire: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004

The Future of Iraq, Dictatorship, Democracy, or Division? by Liam Anderson and Gareth Stansfield is part history, part prescription for what the U.S. could do in Iraq. The history part is decent, but suffers from the western obsession with ethnosectarian divisions in Iraq arguing that has always kept the country from being unified. The second part predicted many of the problems the Americans faced during the occupation, but then becomes dated as it talks about democratization since it was originally written in 2003.

Review State of War, The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration

Review Risen, James, State of War, The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Free Press, 2006

James Risen of the New York Times focused upon the war on terror in State of War, The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration. The book covers the fight against terrorism after 9/11, the Iraq war, and spying on Iran and its nuclear program to name a few. Risen argued that more things went wrong then right for the Bush presidency, and that there were abuses along the way.

Bernard Lewis And The Invasion of Iraq

(Princeton)

In May 2018, renowned Princeton Professor Bernard Lewis passed away. He was one of the West’s leading scholars on Islam and the Middle East. He also threw in with the neoconservatives, and contributed to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Review The Road to Iraq, The Making of a Neoconservative War

Review Ahmad, Muhammad Idrees, The Road to Iraq, The Making of a Neoconservative War, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd, 2014

Muhammad Idrees Ahmad set out to explain how the neoconservatives inside and out of the Bush administration set the stage for the 2003 war with Iraq. Every serious scholar agrees that the neoconservatives played a large role in that process. As Ahmad writes, it’s not just those at the top like President Bush and Vice President Cheney that set policy, but those that influence the decisions that should be studied as well. Ahmad correctly argues that the neoconservatives are often mentioned, but widely misunderstood. He sees the group as having institutional power through think tanks, foundations, lobby groups, media outlets, and positions within the White House. Using those assets was how the neoconservatives helped shape the debate for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Ahmad then goes off track in two important cases. First, he claims that the neoconservatives had no real ideology, but were rather a collection of individuals with similar histories and goals. Second, he gives the neoconservatives far more power than they had within the administration to push their agenda, especially when it came to intelligence on Iraq.

Review America at the Crossroads, Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy

Review Fukuyama, Francis, America at the Crossroads, Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 2006

Neoconservatives were one of the main groups behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq providing much of the ideological justification for the war. The term was thrown around a lot in the media, yet few actually knew what it was about. For example, there was some talk about Leo Strauss and graduates from the University of Chicago where he taught, but what that meant in real terms or how it related to the Iraq war were largely left unexplained. That’s the reason why Francis Fukuyama’s America at the Crossroads, Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy is important because it provides a short and concise summary and analysis of just what neoconservatism is and how it was connected to Iraq.

Review Wanting War: Why the Bush Administration Invaded Iraq

Review Record, Jeffrey, Wanting War: Why the Bush Administration Invaded Iraq, Dulles: Potomac Books, 2010

It’s odd that 15 years after the Iraq war there is still discussion about what caused it. Was it the weapons of mass destruction, the oil, neoconservatives, or other factors? Much of that is due to the Bush administration whose stated goals WMD and Iraq’s connection to Al Qaeda both proved to be based upon a house of cards. Jeffrey Record’s Wanting War: Why the Bush Administration Invaded Iraq is one of the best attempts to answer the question of why the U.S. invaded Iraq. Rather than having a grand strategy, Record found that there was a confluence of different personalities and ideas within the White House that all converged on Iraq. These were roughly divided into two main camps, neoconservatives that wanted to spread democracy via overthrowing Saddam Hussein and others that wanted to maintain the supremacy of the United States in the world after 9/11.

Fouad Ajami’s Flawed Argument For The Iraq War

Fouad Ajami is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, and a long time commentator on Iraq. For the last several years he has argued that the Middle East’s autocrats gave rise to Islamist terrorists, and that was what led to 9/11. Because Saddam Hussein was a perfect example of that type of dictatorial rule he advocated that he be deposed to stop future terrorism. This was an idea based upon changing the entire Middle East and North Africa, not necessarily taking on those that were directly responsible for attacking America. Ajami shared many ideas with the neoconservatives, and helped provide an ideological justification for the war in Iraq. Recently, he wrote an article claiming that Iraq was a good fight, but the American public and President Obama gave up on it. His own writings provide one example of why that happened. His argument for transforming the Arab world through the use of force was not how the invasion was sold to the public, and has not found many adherents either in the U.S. of the Middle East.

Fouad Ajami of the Hoover Institute argued that Arab dictators were what caused 9/11 and therefore Saddam Hussein was a legitimate target for the United States (Hoover Institute)

In March 2013, Fouad Ajami had an oped in the Wall Street Journal on the 10-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion to re-iterate his main points about the war. He wrote that Iraq was the right response to 9/11, because the terrorists that struck that day were not Afghans, but Arabs. They were a result of the despots that ruled the Middle East, supported by imams and financiers in the Arab world. He went on to claim that terrorism is terrorism, and therefore there was no difference between secular and religious groups that practiced it. That was why he didn’t see any difference between Iraq and Al Qaeda. He then lamented that there were few war supporters like him left when the invasion was popular when it first began. The Congress voted to allow Bush to use force against Saddam, and over 70% of those polled in the United States on 3/19/03 supported the overthrow of Saddam as well. He then admitted to the fact that the failure to find WMD led to a drop in support. President Bush then turned to building a democracy in Iraq as the rationale for the war. Ajami claimed that Iraqis could not free themselves from Saddam, so the war was just, and Americans were hypocrites for failing to maintain their support for it. Those people that turned against the war helped get President Obama elected to office, and the result was that the new administration did not care about Iraq. He finished by saying that the White House’s neglect has led Baghdad to become a close ally of Iran, and the U.S. has thrown away all of its hard work and lost lives in Iraq. These are the same ideas that Ajami has been making for quite some time, and that he presented to the Bush administration before the 2003 invasion. He has written extensively on how he believed that Saddam Hussein was a perfect example of the type of Arab dictator that caused terrorism, and kept the Middle East behind the times. Ajami believed that the U.S. offered an alternative future for the region, which was modernity. This was very similar to ideas held by neoconservatives such as Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. There are several problems with Ajami’s view. First, Iraq had not supported any anti-American terrorism since the 1990s. His argument therefore was not about directly responding to 9/11 or any threats to the U.S., but rather what he saw as the root cause of instability and stagnation in the region, Arab dictators. This would not have won over many supporters as the proper response to the 2001 terrorist attacks, and was not how the Bush administration posed the invasion of Iraq either. Yet, he is now disappointed that so few Americans today support his view. Second, Iraq has not been held up in the region as a model for change, but rather as an example of what not to do such as rushing a constitution, sectarianism, etc. It has therefore failed to be a transformative event in the way Ajami envisioned it. Third, claiming that Iraq had fallen under the sway of Iran, and blaming it on Obama reads like partisanship and sour grapes by a person that lost the war of ideas over the war, and actually contradicts his earlier writing. In 2010 for example, Ajami had an articlewhere he argued that Iran would never control Iraq, because it was wearier of Tehran’s influence than any other country since it was right next door, and that Shiites were Arabs first. Now Ajami has suddenly changed his opinion because there is a different president in office, as if that would make Iraqis view their neighbor differently.

There is no problem with wanting change and democracy in the Middle East as Fouad Ajami has advocated for. The argument that kind of transformation can only be done through force, because Arabs are incapable of doing it themselves however, seems to be contradicted by the Arab Spring, and the current fighting in Syria. It also begs the question of why Arabs would accept having their country invaded by the U.S., and then occupied for several years as it did in Iraq as an acceptable model for change. Finally, Ajami’s claim that the U.S. needed to go to war with Arab autocrats, and not the actual terrorists that attacked America would not have won over much political or public support in 2001. Saddam Hussein, and his wars with Iran and Kuwait seemed to be a driving force for people like Ajami, rather than Iraq being a direct threat to the U.S. Like President Bush and others within the administration, Ajami was caught up in the past when arguing for a new future in the Arab world.

SOUCES

Ajami, Fouad, “Another Step Forward for Iraq,” Wall Street Journal, 3/2/10

- “Back to the Future,” U.S. News & World Repot, 12/4/06

- “A Decent Outcome for Iraq,” U.S. News & World Report, 10/5/07

- “Fouad Ajami: Ten Years Ago, an Honorable War Began With Wide Support,” Wall Street Journal, 3/18/13

- “Iraq and the Arabs’ Future,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2003

- “What Obama Left Behind in Iraq,” Wall Street Journal, 12/17/11

Battle, Joyce, “The Iraq War – PART I: The U.S. Prepares for Conflict, 2001, Timeline,” National Security Archive, 9/22/10

Benjamin, Daniel and Simon, Steven, The Next Attack, New York: Times Books, 2005

Clarke, Richard, “’Against All Enemies,’” New York Times, 3/28/04

Elliott, Michael and Carney, James, “First Stop, Iraq,” Time, 3/31/03

Packer, George, The Assassins’ Gate, America In Iraq, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005

Ahmad Chalabi Was Not President Bush’s Man For Iraq

In January 2004, President Bush gave his State of the Union speech. Part of the address was about the war on Iraq. Afterward, many pointed out that Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) was seated in the gallery right behind First Lady Laura Bush. Commentators took that as an endorsement by the White House. In fact, despite many in the administration being fans of the INC, the President felt the exact opposite. Bush did not believe that Chalabi should be the next ruler of Iraq.

Ahmed Chalabi at the 2004 State of the Union standing in the back left next to Foreign Minister Zebari back right, front row center First Lady Bush, front row right Iraqi President Pachachi (White House)

Originally, Ahmad Chalabi was not supposed to attend the State of the Union. When he found out that the Adnan Pachachi, who was then the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, was going, Chalabi added himself to the entourage. At the event, Chalabi was seated next to Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, and right behind First Lady Laura Bush. During the speech, the President said, “And tonight we are honored to welcome one of Iraq’s most respectable leaders, the current president of the Iraqi Governing Council, Adnan Pachachi.” One TV cameraman then confused Chalabi for Pachachi, and gave the former a close-up. The next day, at a meeting of the National Security Council, the President asked Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage how Chalabi got into the speech. Armitage said he didn’t know, and neither did anyone else at the meeting. Bush was perturbed, because he did not like Chalabi, and did not think that he should have been there.

The press immediately seized upon Chalabi’s appearance. Five months later for instance, Ray Suarez of PBS’ Newshour said, “As recently as January, Ahmad Chalabi held a place of honor at President Bush’s State of the Union address. The former Iraqi exile was seated just behind the first lady.” This fed upon all the stories that had already come out about members of the administration promoting Chalabi to take over Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. At the top of that list was Vice President Dick Cheney. Others included Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, chairman of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle, and Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis Scooter Libby. Since the late-1990s, Chalabi had been courting members of the Republican Party, and when President Bush was elected it seemed like that work paid off. He had several high-level members of the new administration supporting him, and he believed that was a means to gaining power in Iraq. These feelings were widely known throughout the media, which was why they all took Chalabi sitting behind the First Lady as just another example of how the White House backed the INC.

The truth of the matter was far different. Rather than being a supporter of Ahmed Chalabi, the President was consistently critical of him. In January 2003 for instance, Bush said that Iraqi exiles would not rule Iraq after the invasion. In March at a meeting of the National Security Council the President reiterated that point by saying, “The people in Iraq have suffered under Saddam Hussein, and they will have some resentment towards those Iraqis that were outside the country during Saddam’s rule.” Bush later stated that he was not going to pick the new leader of Iraq. That same month, Bush complained about American support for Chalabi. He told Rumsfeld that the U.S. assistance to the INC should be stopped. After the invasion, people like Feith would blame the State Department and Perle the CIA for not supporting Chalabi, and claimed that was a reason why things went so bad immediately after the fall of Saddam. They never acknowledged that Chalabi lacked the approval of the most important person, the President of the United States.

Rather than being a sign of support, Ahmad Chalabi’s appearance at the January 2004 State of the Union speech was an act of opportunity. Chalabi attached himself to Adnan Pachachi's delegation, and by accident was shown on American TV. Because so many prominent members of the Bush administration were advocates for Chalabi, the press thought that he was supposed to be at the event. Instead, the President was a constant critic of the Iraqi National Congress, and did not want him to take power after the 2003 invasion. Very few seemed to notice that fact even to this day. That’s why those for and against Chalabi still accuse each other for the problems with Iraq. They overplay the role of the INC, and oddly overlook the centrality of the President in decision-making.

SOURCES

Gordon, Michael and Trainor, General Bernard, The Endgame, The Inside Story Of The Struggle For Iraq, From George W. Bush To Barack Obama, New York, Pantheon, 2012

Isikoff, Michael and Corn, David, Hubris, New York: Crown, 2006

Landay, Jonathan and Strobel, Warren, “No real planning for postwar Iraq,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, 9/11/03

Packer, George, The Assassins’ Gate, America In Iraq, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005

PBS Frontline, “Interview Gen. Jay Garner,” Truth, War and Consequences, 10/9/03

- “Interview Richard Perle,” Truth, War and Consequences, 10/9/03

- “INTERVIEWS Elisabeth Bumiller,” Bush’s War, 3/24/08

PBS Newshour, “Former Friend: Ahmad Chalabi,” 6/2/04

Roston, Aram, The Man Who Pushed America To War, The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi, New York: Nation Books, 2008

Strobel, Warren and Walcott, John, “Post-war planning non-existent,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, 10/17/04

Suskind, Ron, The One Percent Doctrine, Deep Inside America’s Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11, Simon & Schuster: New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, 2006

Woodward, Bob, Plan of Attack, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Simon & Schuster, 2004

- State of Denial, Bush At War, Part III, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Simon & Schuster, 2006

“We Will Be Greeted As Liberators,” Why The Bush Administration Saw Iraq As A War Of Liberation

Before 2003, many members of the Bush White House held a rosy image of what the Iraq war would be like. Kenneth Adelman of the Defense Policy Board for example wrote an op ed for the Washington Post entitled “Cakewalk in Iraq.” Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC’s Meet The Press that Iraqis would see the Americans as liberators. These scenarios were based upon several factors including advice officials received from Middle East scholars and Iraqi exiles. Most importantly, President Bush and others were driven by their conviction that what they were doing was right, and therefore would have a positive affect in the end. The reality of what the invasion wrought in Iraq would quickly change Washington’s view of things.

Professors Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami were key in convincing Vice President Cheney that Iraq and the Middle East were ripe for democratization and a war of liberation (Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa)

The Bush administration was largely bereft of any high officials that knew about Iraq. There were several who were involved in the 1991 Gulf War such as Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, but actual knowledge of Iraq’s internal politics was lacking. Following the attacks on 9/11 Vice President Cheney attempted to fill in some of these gaps by asking experts to brief him about the Middle East and Islam such as Princeton Professor Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami then of Johns Hopkins. Lewis and Ajami held the view that the Middle East was a backward region, because of its dictatorships, corruption, extremists, and lack of cultural and economic development. They held Saddam Hussein as a prime example of the problems facing the Arab world. The two advocated the use of American military force to overthrow Saddam, and begin the process of modernization and democratization of the entire area. This would be greeted by locals they argued, because Arabs knew they had difficulties, but could not solve them themselves. In August 2002, the Vice President went public with some of these ideas in a speech at the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region. When the gravest threats are eliminated, the freedom-loving peoples of the region will have a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace. As for the reaction of the Arab “street,” the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are ‘sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans,’” said Cheney. This dovetailed with beliefs held by neoconservatives that the domestic policies of countries determined their foreign agendas. Countries that were run by autocrats who did not care about their own populations would not care about other countries, and were therefore more likely to cause problems in the international system such as wars. They also believed in the forceful promotion of democracy and human rights around the world using the American military. The ideas of thinkers like Lewis, Ajami, and the neoconservatives gave some ideological support to the President’s agenda of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. They gave moral weight to the administration’s argument that the invasion of Iraq would help not only the Iraqi people, but the region and the world in general.

Iraqi exiles also assured the president that Iraq would welcome the overthrow of Saddam. On January 10, 2003, author and member of the Iraqi National Congress Kanan Makiya, head of the Iraq Foundation Rend Rahim, and head of the Iraqi National Movement Hatem Muklis met with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and White House representative to the Iraqi opposition Zalmay Khalilzad in Washington. Makiya said that the invasion of Iraq would change America’s image in the Arab world from being a supporter of dictators to one of liberators, and that Iraqis were modern professionals who were waiting for the yoke of oppression to be thrown off them. He told the gathering that, “People will greet the [U.S.] troops with sweets and flowers.” Muklis on the other hand believed that if the Americans did not win over the public immediately after the overthrow of the regime they would turn on them, a warning that went unheeded. Cheney would later mention this meeting an interview with Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet The Press in March, just before the invasion. Russert asked the Vice President what would happen if the public did not welcome the Americans, and Iraq turned into a long and bloody occupation. Cheney responded, “I don’t think it’s likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. I’ve talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. … The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want is to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.” The meeting with Makiya, Rahim, and Muklis reassured the president and other administration officials that their course of action was a righteous one. For Cheney, their views only supported what he had already been hearing from Lewis and Ajami. Iraq was prime for regime change, something that the Iraqis themselves had been waiting for a long time.

Other members of the administration shared these ideas. In early 2003 for example, the CIA believed that the Shiites of southern Iraq would greet the Coalition forces after years of harsh treatment by Saddam. Operatives at the Agency even suggested that American flags should be sneaked into Iraq so that they could be waved as U.S. troops entered the country. That would be filmed and used as part of a propaganda campaign in the Arab world. The plan never got off the ground. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told Congress in February 2003 that post-war Iraq would be easier than the invasion, because Iraqis would embrace America. “I am reasonably certain that [Iraqis] will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep [post-war] requirements down,” he remarked. “We can say with reasonable confidence that the notion of hundreds of thousands of American troops [being necessary for post-invasion Iraq] is way off the mark,” the Deputy Defense Secretary continued. His comments came in response to Chief of Staff of the Army General Eric Shinseki who warned Congress that America’s experience in the former Yugoslavia pointed to a large occupation force being necessary to maintain order after initial military operations were over. Wolfowitz was a neoconservative who was one of the strongest advocates of spreading democracy throughout the Middle East by invading Iraq. CIA Director George Tenet threw his support behind the President’s Iraq policy, and set up several groups within the Agency to deal with it. This showed that both true believers in the war, and some members of the long-term bureaucracy saw post-war Iraq as being the easy part of the war, because the Coalition would be embraced by the public opening the way for a quick conflict and an early exit.

Polling of Iraqis after the 2003 invasion showed that many did welcome the U.S, but quickly turned against it. In April 2003, nearly 50% of Iraqis saw the Americans as liberators. Half a year later in October, that had dramatically changed as only one in six held that view. In April 2004, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup survey found that 71% of Iraqis saw the U.S. as occupiers, 46% said that they had done more harm than good in Iraq, while only 19% said the U.S. were liberators. In June, only 2% of the public had a favorable opinion of the Coalition. As the polls showed, many people were happy that Saddam was overthrown. The post-war chaos that followed in the wake of the Coalition forces quickly spoiled that mood. It seemed as if Muklis was prophetic when he warned the White House that Iraqis would quickly turn on the Americans if they didn’t see immediate benefits from the invasion. 

President Bush believed in the liberation of Iraq and the spreading of democracy. Several members of his administration such as Vice President Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz shared those views. Middle Eastern experts and Iraqi exiles assured the White House that Iraq was ready for freedom, and could transform the region. Those predictions proved partially true when Coalition forces were initially welcomed in Iraq. The problem was the United States had no plans for what to do after the fall of Saddam, and things quickly turned sour. With no authority running the country anymore, Iraqis took matters into their own hands, and started looting and murdering as the Iraqi bureaucracy and police disappeared. Chaos was what the Americans ended up bringing to Iraq, which cost them any good will that might have initially been generated. This change in mood took a while to work its way up from the U.S. soldiers on the ground to Washington, but the White House did eventually give up its vision of Iraq as a quick war of liberation, and thereafter saw it as a long-term occupation that would hopefully end in a democracy in time.

SOURCES

Arquilla, John, “Evolution Of Attack,” San Francisco Chronicle, 8/21/05

Battle, Joyce, “The Iraq War – Part I: The U.S. Prepares for Conflict, 2001,” National Security Archive, 9/22/10

Benjamin, Daniel and Simon, Steven, The Next Attack, New York: Times Books, 2005

Cheney, Vice President Dick, “Vice President Speaks at VFW 103^rd National Convention,” White House, 8/26/02

Diamond, John, Keen, Judy, Moniz, Dave, Page, Susan and Slavin, Barbara, “Iraq course set from tight White House circle,” USA Today, 9/11/02

Elliott, Michael and Carney, James, “First Stop, Iraq,” Time, 3/31/03

Fukuyama, Francis, America at the Crossroads, Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 2006

Gordon, Michael, “’Catastrophic Success’ Poor Intelligence Misled Troops About Risk of Drawn-Out War,” New York Times, 10/20/04

Hertzberg, Hendrik, “Cakewalk,” New Yorker, 4/14/03

Meet The Press, “Interview with Vice-President Dick Cheney,” NBC, 3/16/03

Packer, George, The Assassins’ Gate, America In Iraq, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005

San Francisco Chronicle, “Majority of Iraqis eager to see foreign troops go, poll finds,” 5/1/04

A Neoconservative Laments Trying To Create A Democracy In Iraq And Transform The Middle East

In recent years, several supporters of the war in Iraq have changed their tune. One is neoconservative John Agresto. In 2003, he put his words into action when he went to work for the Pentagon as the senior adviser to Iraq’s Higher Education Ministry. He would then go on to help found the American University of Iraq in Kurdistan. In 2007, he wrote Mugged By Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions where he aired some of his misgivings about how the United States handled Iraq. Then in December 2012, he authored an article for Commentary magazine, “Was Promoting Democracy a Mistake?” It dealt with democratization as a philosophical matter, not the nuts and bolts of what the Bush administration did right or wrong in Iraq. Agresto came to the conclusion that Muslim culture is a major impediment to the creation of free and democratic societies not only in Iraq, but the Middle East in general. This is an argument that has been made before, and overlooks the changes that have happened in democratic theory over the last several decades. That means while Iraq may look grim today, it still has many possibilities for its future.

The neoconservative movement in the United States started in the 1930s as a rejection of leftist thought. Then, a group of socialist and communist intellectuals became disillusioned with those ideologies, because of Joseph Stalin’s brutal dictatorship in the Soviet Union. They took a turn to the right as a result, and supported World War II as a struggle against fascism and the Cold War as a fight against communism. Eventually, they forged a platform for U.S. foreign policy that opposed the two major belief systems prevalent in the country, realism and idealism. The former believes that countries should follow their national interests, while the latter holds that international bodies like the United Nations and international law can help bring about a sense of order in the world. Neoconservatives came to promote four major ideas as alternatives. One was that the internal politics of countries matter, because they can determine their actions on the international scene. Two was the need to promote America’s morals, namely democracy and human rights around the world, because those beliefs make wars less likely. Three neoconservatives distrusted international law and organizations to solve anything. Four they believed that social engineering in other countries does not work. These beliefs were synthesized into a 1996 Foreign Affairs article “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy” and a 2000 book Present Dangers both by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. Those two authors called for “benevolent hegemony” where America would promote democracy around the world and deter its opponents through overwhelming military force. By the 1990s, many neoconservatives also shared a belief that Iraq was a country that needed to be dealt with. While there are many that have argued that neoconservatives were the main reason why the United States invaded in 2003, that role has been overblown. There were plenty of members of the Bush administration, namely the president himself that were not neoconservatives, but were equally troubled by Saddam Hussein. Still, many in the White House came to believe in the neoconservative belief that the U.S. could create a democracy in Iraq, and that could help transform the entire Middle East.

John Agresto came from that school of thought. He believed that freedom and democracy were natural rights, and that democratic nations were less likely to wage war. Out of these beliefs, flowed the idea that establishing a democracy in Iraq would therefore be relatively easy, because Iraqis would want freedom more than most after years of brutal dictatorship, and that would help change the whole Middle East. Iraq did take steps towards becoming a democratic society with three elections in 2005, and a new constitution that same year. The problem for Agresto was that Iraq has not developed into the peaceful and free society that democracy is supposed to foster since then.

Agresto tried to explain this anomaly by arguing that not all democracies are alike. Some are good and some are bad. He used the examples of the American versus the French Revolutions. One led to a peaceful transition once the British were thrown out, while the other led to bloody purges and executions once the French monarchy was deposed. Agresto wrote that Americans overlook these differences through ahistorical thinking. They tend to believe that the world works and acts like the United States. It ignores messy affairs like the French Revolution, and universalizes the American experience. As a result, the U.S. often fails to understand how hard it is to create a democracy in another country, which was what Agresto and others were guilty of with regards to Iraq.

Agresto then looked at the example of the Middle East, which he argued was not open to democratic principles due to its culture. There, some people wanted to be religious rather than free. Some wanted safety rather than freedom. Some wanted strong leadership rather than liberty. The issue of freedom is not just about the individual, but whether they also believe in freedom for others as well. In the Middle East, women, secularists, and Christians are discriminated against, which to Agresto meant they did not believe in minority rights. He postulated that while everyone deserves freedom that doesn’t mean everyone wants it. To him, that was especially true in the Middle East, and places like Iraq. In that part of the world, elections could bring about governments that oppressed others. Countries going through transitions like Iraq, and those that went through the Arab Spring also have deep fissures between the old regime, the military, secularists, liberals, and religious and tribal groups. The competition between them could bring instability and repression, and even give rise to the return of autocrats.

There were three major problems with Agresto’s article. First, neoconservatives like him ignored part of their own ideology when advocating the transformation of Iraq. Francis Fukuyama, a former neoconservative himself, pointed out that while neoconservatives want to promote democracy in other countries, that ran counter to their beliefs that social engineering does not work. Neoconservatives don’t seem to understand that problem. They think freedom and democracy are universal wants, therefore all that needs to be done is for the U.S. to throw off the yoke of oppression, and people would naturally move towards a democratic system. Agresto at least figured out that making a democracy actually takes a lot of time and work, and was not easy like he originally thought. Second, Agresto’s belief that Muslim culture runs counter to democratic ideas was ironically an argument made by some for why the United States should have invaded Iraq in the first place. Middle East scholars such as Bernard Lewis of Princeton and Fouad Ajami of John Hopkins hypothesized that the Arab world was a backward one full of dictatorships, repression, and extremists. The U.S. therefore needed to step in to drag that part of the world into the modern era, and that could be achieved by deposing Saddam Hussein. What people see as the problems with Arab culture therefore can be used in many different ways, not just to say that the area is stagnant politically, and is thus immune to change. Finally, Agresto has not kept up with theories about democracy. It was not that long ago that political scientists thought that only countries that were like the United States or Western Europe with large middle classes, market economies, etc. could become democracies. There used to be those that argued that culture and religion like in Catholic countries with their reverence for the hierarchical church were not open to democratic ways. That all changed in the 1980s-1990s when large swaths of the globe became democracies. Agresto wrote that the Middle East could change, but through his writing basically said that the door was closed. If Catholic nations, African countries, and others could transform their systems, and become democracies, why couldn’t the Arab world? Agresto, overlooked part of his own ideology, the arguments of his fellow war supporters, and how the world and democratic theory has changed over the last few decades.

Iraq is a deeply divided country that still suffers from violence. It has been called a semi-democracy where it has regular elections, political parties, and a variety of media outlets, but at the same time has weak rule of law, corruption, and ignores human rights. Agresto looked at that nation, and decided that the attempt to build a free and liberal society there was mistaken, and that it was the Muslim culture of the region that was the culprit. The future of Iraq has not yet been determined however. Its society can struggle for years before its new ruling elite decides which direction it ultimately wants to go. They could eventually come to some grand compromises that will open the door to further participation and greater democratization. They could also decide to turn towards autocracy if they believe that is what’s necessary to overcome all the country’s problems. The point is there are still many paths Iraq can follow. Ultimately, it will be Iraqis who make that history, not Americans who believe that things did not go their way and want to write off the country and region as a result.

SOURCES

Agresto, John, “Was Promoting Democracy a Mistake?” Commentary, December 2012

Diamond, Larry, Squandered Victory, The American Occupation And The Bungled Effort To Bring Democracy To Iraq, New York: Times Books, 2005

Fukuyama, Francis, America at the Crossroads, Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 2006

Packer, George, The Assassin’s Gate, American in Iraq; New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005

What Role Did Neoconservatives Play In American Political Thought And The Invasion Of Iraq?

In 2006, Francis Fukuyama published America at the Crossroads, Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy. In it, he covered three important facets of American foreign policy with regards to Iraq. First, he went over neoconservative ideology, something often talked about with regards to the invasion of Iraq, but little understood. Second, he debunked the idea that it was solely neoconservatives within the Bush administration who were responsible for the war. Finally, he discussed how neoconservatives betrayed their own ideas by how they dealt with the invasion and reconstruction of the country. Altogether, the neoconservatives did contribute to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein that would in the end, help discredit them.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq brought neoconservatives to the attention of American pundits, but there was broad misunderstanding of their origins and ideas. For example, some believed that because many of the neoconservatives within the Bush administration such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and head of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle were Jewish, their main concern was protecting Israel. Others mentioned University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss as being an influential thinker behind the movement. James Atlas of the New York Times wrote an article in May 2003, which went into great length arguing that Strauss was the intellectual godfather of neoconservatives. Strauss had little direct influence on any of the neoconservatives involved with the Bush administration, and said little about foreign policy to begin with. Neoconservatism actually had its roots with a group of leftists in 1930s and 1940s New York City. Irvin Kristol, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, Seymour Martin Lipset, Philip Selznick, and Nathan Glazer are considered the founders of the movement. All of them were initially socialists or communists who ended up turning against those ideas, because of the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. They came to see oppressive governments as being a threat to other countries, because if they were willing to mistreat their own citizens, they would not regard the interests of other countries either. During World War II and the Cold War, they became opponents of liberals and the New Left, because they believed they were soft or sympathetic to the Soviet Union. They also saw World War II as a great moral victory for the United States against dictatorship, fascism and oppression, which helped spread democracy around the world. Kristol and Bell went on to found the journal Public Interest that dealt with American domestic politics. They were opposed to things like President Johnson’s Great Society, which they thought was liberal social engineering that would make the recipients dependent upon the government. By the 1980s, neoconservatives backed President Reagan, and saw the end of the Cold War as another victory for democracy. Irving Kristol’s son William went on to found the magazine the Weekly Standard in the 1990s, and he, along with Frank Kagan began advocating for a neoconservative foreign policy. In 1996, they wrote an article in the journal Foreign Affairs, and then in 2000 published a book Present Dangers that advocated for “benevolent hegemony” by the United States now that the Soviet Union had been defeated. The U.S. was to use its power to spread democracy, and keep its opponents at bay using overwhelming military superiority. The move from Left to Right happened to many Americans in the 1930s to 1960s. The brutality of Stalin made them disillusioned not only with communism, but with liberalism as well, while the victories in World War II and the Cold War emboldened them. Neoconservatives eventually became a vocal element of the larger conservative movement within the United States.

Neoconservatism ended up contributing a fourth approach to foreign policy in the United States in the 1990s. There are two dominant views of foreign affairs amongst American elites, realism, and idealism. Realism is based upon states acting as rational actors that want to protect and expand their power. Idealists want to establish a world order based upon law and global institutions. Fukuyama noted a third trend, which he called nationalists who only care about national security, but also have a strong isolationist view as well. In the 1990s, neoconservatives like Kristol and Kagan added their ideas, which were based upon four main principals. First, their beliefs about dictatorships led them to believe that the internal politics of countries were of great importance, because oppressive countries were much more likely to cause trouble in the international system such as wars. Second, was that morals should play a role in international relations, namely the promotion of democracy and human rights. Third, there was a distrust of international law and organizations to solve anything. Finally, neoconservatives’ dislike of liberal American domestic policies led them to believe that social engineering in other countries would not work either. The movement’s early opposition to Stalinism shaped their opinions of foreign affairs. It was also an alternative to the realist and idealists in American political thought. During the 1990s neoconservatives were also in the odd position of supporting many of President Clinton’s policies such as the intervention in the former Yugoslavia to stop the slaughter there, which mainstream conservatives opposed. Neoconservatives therefore pushed for a liberal foreign policy, but through American military power.

During the 1990s, Iraq became a major concern of neoconservative foreign policy experts. That started with the 1991 Gulf War. Neoconservatives supported the war to stop Saddam Hussein from expanding his power, but became opponents of the first Bush administration’s decision not to support the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings that followed the cessation of hostilities. Neoconservatives began pushing for regime change afterward, and supported various Iraqi exile groups such as Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. Their concerns about dictators, especially aggressive and oppressive ones, made them opponents of Saddam, and push for his removal. Their distrust of international organizations made them believe that the United Nations would not solve the problem, so the U.S. needed to deal with Iraq unilaterally, perhaps using a pre-emptive strike. Many of these ideas were pushed within the second Bush administration, but they were not the dominant ones.

Many commentators believed that the neoconservatives were the main reason why the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, but they were wrong. It seemed like almost every article that discussed the Bush administration’s decision to go to war mentioned the neoconservatives by talking about officials like Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz and the desire to spread democracy in the Middle East. This argument ignored the fact that Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were not neoconservatives, and were the ones that shaped Iraq policy. In January 2001, Rumsfeld distributed a report on asymmetrical threats to the United States now that the Cold War was over. Iraq was mentioned, because new technologies offered it and other countries the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and nuclear devices, which could threaten U.S. interests. That was the Defense Secretary’s main concern about Iraq from day one of the new administration, to remove the security threat Rumsfeld believed Saddam posed. There was nothing about dictatorships or democracy. President Bush too was concerned about Iraq from the start of his administration, but he voiced none of the neoconservative agenda. In the first two meetings of the National Security Council, the president simply allowed each agency within his administration to follow its own strategy with regards to Iraq from the State Department working on smart sanctions to the Treasury Department looking into cutting off Iraq’s finances to the Pentagon looking into reforming a coalition against Iraq and supporting Iraqi opposition groups. Only that very last point of backing Iraqi opponents was a neoconservative idea. It wasn’t until 9/11 happened that the Bush administration finally started pushing for invading Iraq. Bush thought that Saddam might be involved in the attack, and Rumsfeld hoped that 9/11 might provide an opportunity to strike Iraq. An Iraq-Al Qaeda connection and WMD were not original neoconservative arguments against Iraq, but were adopted by them, so that they could achieve their goal of overthrowing Saddam. That showed that the Bush administration was the one driving the agenda, rather than the neoconservatives.

Fukuyama believed that in backing the Iraq invasion, neoconservatives ended up betraying one of their own ideas, which was the belief that social engineering does not work. Neoconservatives had no ideas on how to build a democracy after the fall of Saddam, or how to develop the country. That’s because almost all of the neoconservative writing focused almost exclusively on using the U.S. military against the country’s enemies, but nothing about what would happen afterward. Neoconservatives in the government seemed to think that the whole process would be quick and easy. Wolfowitz for instance, said that the reconstruction of Iraq would cost little, and would mostly be funded by Iraqi oil revenues. Many neoconservatives also supported the disbanding of the Iraqi security forces having no idea that such institutions as the military were one of the things that held Iraq together, and would be necessary to fight the insurgency. Instead, many seemed to believe that once Saddam was removed, democracy would just come about naturally. Nine years later, Iraq is still struggling with establishing rule of law, building institutions, developing its economy, and creating a democratic form of government showing that the neoconservatives might have been right that grand attempts to change societies usually run into all kinds of problems.

Neoconservatives’ support for the invasion of Iraq brought them into the spotlight in America, but would also discredited many of their ideas immediately afterward. Almost every writing about the Bush administration’s war mentioned neoconservatives as being some of the major movers and thinkers behind the invasion. While they were strong proponents of getting rid of Saddam since the 1990s, they were not the main decision makers within the government. Their support for spreading democracy and concerns about the internal politics of other countries only came to the fore after the invasion when no weapons of mass destruction or Al Qaeda connection were discovered. Those two failures would also not only discredit the administration, but the neoconservatives in general since so many believed that they were the main architects of the war. Neoconservatism went on to cause more problems as they had little to contribute to rebuilding Iraq, because their ideology was originally opposed to such ideas, and they had only focused upon using military force against America’s enemies. Neoconservatives are still involved in American politics today, which is why its important to cut through all the myths about their involvement in Iraq, and understand what their real origins and ideas are.

SOURCES

Atlas, James, “The Nation: Leo-Cons; A Classicist’s Legacy: New Empire Builders,” New York Times, 5/3/03

Dickey, Christopher, “$1 Billion A Week,” Newsweek, 7/21/03

Elliott, Michael and Carney, James, “First Stop, Iraq,” Time, 3/31/03

Fallows, James, “Blind Into Baghdad,” Atlantic, January/February 2004

Fukuyama, Francis, America at the Crossroads, Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 2006

Hersh, Seymour, “The Debate Within,” New Yorker, 3/11/02

Laura Ingraham Show, “Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with The Laura Ingraham Show,” U.S. Department of Defense, 8/1/03

Marshall, Joshua Micah, “Practice to Deceive,” Washington Monthly, April 03

Ricks, Thomas, Fiasco, New York: Penguin Press, 2006

Suskind, Ron, The Price of Loyalty, Free Press: New York, London, Sydney, 2004

Viotti, Paul, Kauppi, Mark, International Relations Theory, Realism, Pluralism, Globalism, Macmillan Publishing Company/Maxwell Macmillan: New York, Toronto, 1993

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT VIDEO: John Prados, National Security Archive: Media Countdown To War In Iraq