Yes actually, we did tell you so…
Matthew Parris’ gloating over the failure of neo-con policy in Iraq prompts some soul searching from Clive:
It wasn’t just the Bush team that made mistakes, of course. Didn’t we all underestimate the challenge?
Well, no. “We all” did not. Some of us saw precisely the size of the challenge. Some of us had no confidence in the motives, the leadership, or the ability of President Bush to meet that challenge. We foresaw a mess, and put our hands up and asked whether it was all such a good idea. To us, it seemed obvious. But we were called “appeasers” for our troubles.
As people come out with expressions of regret that they supported the war, they rarely do so with reference to those who do not regret protesting against it. I wonder if there are any hawks out there who now think that some of the protesters had a point? Reading people’s analyses of their own decisions on the matter, it is as if there was no opposition to the war but a bunch of shrill communists who took a stroll through Hyde Park.
The Normblog take on the matter puzzles me. It seems quite wrong:
Had I foreseen a failure of this magnitude, I would have withheld my support. Even then, I would not have been able to bring myself to oppose the war. As I have said two or three times before, nothing on earth could have induced me to march or otherwise campaign for a course of action that would have saved the Baathist regime. But I would have stood aside.
Why, if Norm had forseen the catastrophe that now engulfs Iraq, would he not protest to prevent it? Being against that war is not to be against all war. Very few of us gave a categorical “No”. We just said “Not yet, and not like this.” Sometimes doubt can be a very strong emotion, which leads to protest. Concieving of the protests (and indeed, the entire political climate of early-2003) as either “for” or “against”, as Norm does above, is to fall into the manichean trap. Many seem to do so willingly, because it justifys and mitigates their past mistakes.
I sense that, as with all low points in history, there is a revisionism taking place about the Iraq war. The efforts to change the reasons for the invasion – from “immediate threat” to “humanitarian intervention” – have failed. So instead we see people forgetting that there were simple, honest, and prescient objections to the war.
It is not a fact which pleases me in any way, but: Yes, actually, we did “tell you so”. Do not mistake this for an unseemly, Parris style gloat. Do not mistake this as a final word on whether it was right or wrong to topple Saddam in 2003. I just say: We did predict this outcome. And I just ask: How come everyone now acts otherwise?
Update: Andrew Sullivan confronts the same subject head on:
They were African-American and said it was obvious to them that the WMD argument was what they called “game.” They weren’t surprised. I was. I believed George W. Bush. And I trusted him. And as the evidence has poured in that my faith and trust were betrayed, my surprise has turned to rage … The anger of the left, I realize, was always there. But the anger of the betrayed and decent right and center is deeper.
What did they all see in Bush?
This is a really good piece. You know, I’ve been thinking a bit about this of late, because I supported the war, or at least supported a war. A war I thought would have positive, though entirely unintentional, consequences. But I also marched in March because I was hugely uncomfortable with how the war was entered into, and what to me therefore seemed the logical consequences of it (i.e. a bloody mess, free PR for the nutters, larceny). I also don’t support the continued Occupation; we should have left much, much sooner. I guess my position puts me somewhere outside the Manichean category you mention.
I’ll happily admit that it looks now like I was more wrong than right. Though as I did all I could to stop the war, and like everyone here had almost zero power to do that, I’m not quite sure what being “right” would have given me besides a warm feeling of self-righteousness. Not that that is always a bad thing.
Can someone add to this by pointing to relevant blog posts or newspaper articles where those who spoke out against said it was going to be something approximating as bad as it has been, and indeed for the reasons that it has proved to be so? Or were most of the objections at the time (can´t quite remember) more of a “there are likely to be a lot of unintended consequences we cannot foresee” type?
Here’s one example from Blair’s own officials.
“I think there is a real risk that the [US] administration underestimates the difficulties,” David Manning, Blair’s chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote to the prime minister on March 14, 2002, after he returned from meetings with Condoleezza Rice, then Bush’s national security adviser, and her staff. “They may agree that failure isn’t an option, but this does not mean they will necessarily avoid it.”
And this is from Peter Oborne’s “Iraq: the Reckoning” documentary. Oborne interviewed Dr. Tony Dodge, a leading academic expert on Iraq, who was called into Downing Street to brief the Prime Minister just before the invasion.
Oborne: Can you tell me what advise you gave?
Dodge: Not in any way to underestimate the task that they would face. They would face a country that was deeply traumatised, probably more traumatised than any other society in a post-conflict environment. A society that had been mobilised by nationalism, by increasing Islamic radicalism…
Oborne: When you gave them this sobering advice, how did they react to that?
Dodge: Well, they took notes and left the room. I saw no evidence in the aftermath that any of that advice was fed into the policy making process.
One more. Oborne also interviewed another Iraq expert, Professor Joffe of Cambridge University, who gave very similar warnings on the difficulties which would exist after the removal of Saddam.
When he was finished his briefing, Blair looked him in the eye and said “but he’s evil, isn’t he?” Professor Joffe told Oborne that he was “rather taken aback” by this response (understandably). As the Prof said “it didn’t seem to me to correspond to the kinds of issues you would expect someone in his position to raise”.
As a newcomer to this blog, I find it fascinating. I read the Normblog piece a few days ago, and want to know how on earth anyone can possibly justify standing aside – abstaining – on the question of going to war.
I am one of those who was always against this venture, and that colours my views on what to do now, although clearly Britain and the US have a degree of responsibility for the mess.
Was removing Saddam a “good thing”? If so, then why are so many unsuitable [for want of a better printable word] rulers still in power in so many countries?
I could launch into a right royal rant but won’t. I’ll try to let my views spill out as and when in response to other posts.
Bondwoman, there certainly were many people pointing to the possibility of civil strife and possibly a civil war in Iraq, although I must confess that I can’t point you right now to a specific place. There were also predictions of much worse things, including a rather nifty little cobbled together online game, which foresaw an all out killing spree across the whole of the Middle East, including Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia etc etc. There is absolutely no case for anyone saying that no one predicted what might happen and how bad it might be.
Katherine, I think I saw the game you mention. Was it at Idleworm? Interestingly, the premise of that game rests on Iraqi possession of WMD.
My own take was simply that the decision making process was so obviously flawed, and the Bush rhetoric so gung-ho, it was highly likely to provoke bloodshed. I remain surprised that so many people considered that rhetoric adequate, let alone inspiring.
Norm, along with the rest of the Euston Brigadiers, has yet to admit to his biggest mistake; believing that democracy and liberty would result from the application of US military power in the pursuit of American self-interest.
At least Johann Hari had the courage to admit his stupidity in his mea culpa;
The evidence should have been clear to me all along: the Bush administration would produce disaster. Let’s look at the major mistakes-cum-crimes. Who would have thought they would unleash widespread torture, with over 10,000 people disappearing without trial into Iraq’s secret prisons? Anybody who followed the record of the very same people – from Rumsfeld to Negroponte – in Central America in the 1980s. Who would have thought they would use chemical weapons? Anybody who looked up Bush’s stance on chemical weapons treaties (he uses them for toilet paper) or checked Rumsfeld’s record of flogging them to tyrants. Who would have thought they would impose shock therapy mass privatisation on the Iraqi economy, sending unemployment soaring to 60 percent – a guarantee of ethnic strife? Anybody who followed the record of the US towards Russia, Argentina, and East Asia. Who could have known that they would cancel all reconstruction funds, when electricity and water supplies are still below even Saddam’s standards? Anybody who looked at their domestic policies.
http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=831
I went on the marches for several reasons. Principally because the idea of using warfare to solve a question of security was flawed AND because we were being so flagrantly pushed to war on the flimsiest of evidence. Once the war was being prosecuted there was a massive error of tactics in that the much vaunted “Shock and Awe” campaign – devised to protect allied casualties – did not allow for the surrender of the Iraqi military, only their annihilation. Of course the annihilation did not occur, just the melting away of the military into the civilian population. A proper, dignified, surrender of the Iraqi army could have lead to some sort of workable peace following the overthrow of Saddam. US arrogance didn’t allow the Iraqi’s any dignity and hence stored up the current insurgency we see today.
Going on the peace marchs caused me to re-evaluate earlier conflicts, such as the NATO action in Serbia, which I had supported at the time. I am convinced now that there indeed is a “military-industrial complex” which has an entirely deficient influence on world affairs.
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Exactly.
We had and still do have, every business being in Afghanistan.
And none in Iraq.
We COULD have legitimately taken over Iraq, at the end of the FIRST Gulf war, and it would have been much easier.
But now – arrgggh! NO.