Reading the Sacramento Bee this morning, I came across an editorial entitled "Real lesson of Iraq: Pre-emptive war is bad idea" I was surprised to hear that frank of a statement about the the Bush Doctrine in a major American newspaper, and in a headline no less.
The article is a response to a paper written by Joseph Collins, deputy assistant secretary of defense from 2001 to 2004, called "Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath." (Note: I haven't yet read this paper, though it's going in my to-read pile) As the headline would suggest, the editorial is a pretty harsh criticism of preemptive war. From the Bee:
Collins falls into the second camp: "After the major combat operation, U.S. policy has been insolvent, with inadequate means of pursuing ambitious ends," he writes.
He notes that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld wanted "a quick, lightning-like operation in Iraq, followed by a swift handover of power to the Iraqis."
Most senior national security officials, he writes, thought "the war would be hard, the peace relatively easy, and the occupation short and inexpensive."
Yet from Collins' view, a tough post-invasion phase was foreseeable. Rather than see that as a deterrent to pre-emptive invasion, he proposes a remedy: better interagency decision-making and planning.
What difference would that make?
Collins, it seems, is just repeating the same talking points as John McCain and the rest of the Republican Party. We didn't have enough money/troops/whatever. And while people in the online world have long acknowledged that having more money/troops/whatever wouldn't have changed much, I don't think I've ever seen a major news organization call out those excuses as totally bogus. So bravo to the Bee editorial staff.
Collins believes that 140,000 troops were adequate to topple the regime, but "neither sufficient for occupation duty or for enabling reconstruction to move forward, nor were they able to deter or defeat the insurgents and protect the population."
In Collins' view, troop levels for post-combat stability operations in Iraq should have been 500,000.
Collins also believes that the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development aren't prepared for post-combat stability operations. He would double their budgets and increase staff by 50 percent.
Who would support invasion knowing these needs? Collins admits that perhaps senior officials were averse to post-invasion planning because they feared that "too much overt attention to the postwar phase might dampen congressional ardor for the war."
There is no such thing as a cheap or easy war. War is, by definition, hard and expensive. Those in power know that congress won't vote for a hard and expensive war, so they lied and put our troops in harms way for a war that they believed was underfunded and understaffed (and we believed was bound to be catastrophic regardless). It's good to see this hypocrasy detailed in the news, and it's also good to see people acknowledge that war is such a huge burden on our financial well being.
In a quick aside, I have to say I must disagree with the Bee's implication that expanding the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development is not worth paying for. While expanding them to support fighting wars is a categorically a bad idea, both those agencies are crucial to strengthening the ability of the U.S. to promote diplomatic resolutions to world conflicts and deserve much more attention and support than they currently receive.
And that is the true lesson of the Iraq invasion for the future. It should be a cautionary tale for those in the Bush administration sounding a drumbeat for pre-emptive military action and regime change in Iran before Bush leaves office in January.
It also puts the choice of a new president in perspective. The next president not only will have to deal with the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, but will face other potential hot spots. Do Americans want a president like Bush who will launch "wars of choice" but who will manage occupation better? Or do Americans want a president who will avoid pre-emptive invasions and occupations? That's the real issue posed by Collins' paper.
This editorial, while only one article, struck me as the kind of news coverage we need more of: coverage that challenges the underlying issue and digs deeper than "Are we winning?" I hope there is more of this to come in other places.