As parents and teachers, we are always looking to turn mistakes committed by our children and students into teachable moments. We know lessons can be learned from bad experiences if we recognize what led to them and learn from the experience. The bad experience then becomes a teachable moment: an opportunity to learn why something happened and to use this knowledge to avoid the same mistake in the future. It is precisely in this way that we grow as human beings. But we can do so only if we understand what we did wrong. Without such recognition, we learn nothing and are bound to repeat the same mistake again until we do.
It is now abundantly clear that in Iraq, we invaded a country that did not pose an imminent threat to us. If any country other than ours waged such an unjust war, we would have no difficulty saying: “They were wrong. They should lose.” Why is it so hard for us to say the same thing about ourselves? Rather than admit our error and learn from it, we continue to maintain that we had the right to invade Iraq and were right in doing so. Like a child who refuses to acknowledge a mistake, we are denied the opportunity to learn from the mistake.
What valuable lessons could we learn if we viewed our conduct in Iraq as a teachable moment? Primarily, we would be reminded of the basic truth that the only long-term basis for a civilized and secure society is compliance with the rule of law. The central premise of the rule of law is that everyone, individual and government alike, must be held to the same standards or rules of conduct. As human experience has shown, the premise that “no one is above the law” provides the single most important check on individual or government misconduct. We would be reminded that the only alternative to the rule of law, “might makes right” or the rule of the jungle, is a certain path to lawlessness and abuse of power. If we learn nothing else from the Iraq debacle, let us learn that there is no security absent the rule of law, and that a country, like a person, unfettered by the rule of law, puts itself as well as others at risk. Acts have consequences, and illegal, immoral acts often have negative consequences. Which is a good thing, since a person or nation that violates basic norms of behavior must be held to account in order not to “get away with murder.”
After the tragic events of 9/11, there are those who say everything has changed, that international law and the just war doctrine are no longer sufficient to protect us from harm. That unilateral preventive war and, yes, even torture are at this point in history necessary to guarantee our security. However, human nature is not so easily changed. Just as we rightly reject the idea of a benevolent dictator, we must similarly reject the idea of a benevolent empire. Our Founding Fathers understood that “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Neither superior virtue nor military might exempts us from the human condition and the adverse consequences of disregarding the rule of law. If “might makes right” succeeds in Iraq, what lesson will we as a country have learned? That we are a law unto ourselves and can invade other countries at will. This lesson will not serve us well in the future: we are eventually bound to fail, if not in Iraq, then even more catastrophically elsewhere. We should know that, but the headiness of being the world’s only superpower has fogged our vision. We can only hope the debacle in Iraq brings us back to our senses. We would then understand that the only thing worse than losing an unjust war is winning one.
What other lessons can we learn from the invasion of Iraq? We can learn what it means to truly support your country. There is no more basic American value than respect for the rule of law. We oppose the lynching of “bad” people for good reason. Not because the bad person is in the right, but because we would be in the wrong. We can learn that we must oppose unjust wars against “bad” dictators for precisely the same reason. To those who say “you’re either for us or against us,” we can learn to respond “you’re either for American values or against them.”
In sum, the war in Iraq presents a valuable opportunity to recognize that the events of 9/11, traumatic as they were, did not change basic morality or the importance of the rule of law. To learn that by acting outside the rule of law, we actually promote lawlessness and insecurity, and become the very evil we claim to be fighting. If defeat in Iraq is the only way for us to learn these truths, it is still a lesson worth learning.
