It’s still early in the process, and it is important to acknowledge that in the cabal of neoconservative writers and policy wonks we face a generally intelligent, determined, opportunistic and persistent group who are not likely to change their ambitions for the rest of us just because of setbacks that might cause some people to rethink their basic assumptions. But it is just possible to imagine that the ultimate upshot of George Dubya’s excellent Iraqi adventure will be to make it significantly more difficult to garner support for another military or paramilitary incursion.
Diehard supporters of the incursion might still try to spin the apparent discovery of an old artillery shell that had some sarin gas in it as proof – see! see! – that Saddam Hussein really did have those foul Weapons of Mass Destruction after all. But the enthusiasm with which they have jumped on every weapons cache or “program” becomes ludicrous after a while. Most people can figure out that this was one shell, probably left over from the 1980s, and while there might well be some more like it out there, it hardly constitutes evidence of recently built weapons or even a current program to build more chemical weapons.
Furthermore, an increasing number of people – especially since so much else is going poorly in Iraq that just getting out of there is becoming a more attractive option for an increasing number of Americans whose initial impulse was to support the war – are showing an understanding of the idea that even if Saddam had had all the weapons the U.S. true believers (or true liars) wanted us to believe he did, he hardly constituted an imminent or even especially troubling threat to the United States. We conducted a war of choice, not necessity, with a fourth-rate pipsqueak of a power. But even a country beaten down by a dictator for decades will eventually resent an occupation by a foreign power. It is hard for many Americans to come to terms with the idea that we might not be loved by everybody everywhere. But more and more are getting the message that such a shocking possibility might even be a reality.
CONSERVATIVE DISSENT
Here’s an entry from yesterday’s National Review Online, from NR editor Rich Lowry, who has generally – despite a recent NR piece that wondered whether Bush’s policy wasn’t a bit Wilsonian and utopian – has supported the war about as enthusiastically as anybody.
BUSH FLOPS [Rich Lowry]
I’m hearing that Bush flopped in his meeting with congressional Republicans. He gave them a pep talk, telling them how good the economy is and how determined he is to prevail in Iraq. Then he didn’t take any questions and left. The members, expecting a more substantive session, were disappointed.
Posted at 04:08 PM
Obviously, I wasn’t in that session and I haven’t yet talked to anybody who was, so I don’t know for sure how accurate Lowry’s report is. But if anybody should have good sources among conservative congresscritters, Rich Lowry should. His little report is in some ways the tips of a growing iceberg of conservative discontent with Bush administration policies in Iraq.
Perhaps more telling is Robert Novak’s recent column about Don Devine, vice chairman of the old-line – and formerly virtually indistinguishable from National Review – American Conservative Union. Bush recently spoke to the 40th anniversary ACU black tie banquet, sounding conservative themes and eliciting numerous standing ovations. “But one man,” wrote Novak, “kept his seat throughout the 40-minute oration. It was no liberal interloper but conservative stalwart Donald Devine.”
Devine, whom I knew somewhat when I was in Washington in the 1970s and with whom our editorial board met several times when he was head of the Office of Personnel Management during the Reagan administration, is a thoughtful and principled conservative who has been fighting the good fight since Goldwater days. If he has had it up to here with Bush – partly over Iraq but largely because Bush has presided over an orgy of increased discretionary domestic spending unparalleled since at least LBJ’s Great Society days – to the point that he actually refused to shake hands with the president of the United States, it is likely that other conservatives are becoming increasingly disillusioned.
Novak notes in the column that “conventional wisdom portrays the latest Zogby Poll’s 81 percent of Republican voters committed to Bush as reflecting extraordinary loyalty to the president by the GOP base. Actually, when nearly one out of five Republicans cannot flatly say they support Bush, that could spell defeat in a closely contested election.” He goes on to suggest that John Kerry – whom few conservatives would vote for even while holding their noses – might be the key to a successful reelection campaign
OTHER VOICES
Don Devine is hardly the only conservative having second thoughts. In a May 13 column, Novak wrote about Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, “an old-fashioned conservative and a loyal Republican who happens to be the current chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee” and a former Marine. Sen. Roberts gave the Landon Lecture at Kansas State University, and in the course of doing so expressed, as Novak put it, “two overriding problems in the war on terror: lack of accountability in the intelligence community and a messianic desire to recast the world in the American image.”
Here’s part of what Roberts said in the lecture: “Almost three years after 9/11, no one in the intelligence community has been disciplined, let alone fired. Almost two years since the publication of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that declared Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was reconstituting his nuclear program, no one has been disciplined or fired.”
Roberts continued: “In fighting the global war against terrorism, we need to restrain what are growing U.S. messianic instincts – a sort of global social engineering where the United States feels it is both entitled and obligated to promote democracy – by force if necessary.” In the end, he said, it is “time for some hard-headed assessment of American interests.”
The top two Republican members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana and Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, have similar misgivings about the course of the war in Iraq.
Then there’s James Webb, a decorated Vietnam veteran and Secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration, who spoke recently at the University of Kansas. He reminded the audience that the critical question citizens must ask is: “Under what circumstances will the United States military withdraw from Iraq? What are the conditions? If you can’t answer the question, then you shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” The ongoing war, he believes, was “a palpable strategic error” and “a strategic mousetrap” that arose from “a breakdown in group ethics.” He believes the Pentagon, during the run-up to the war, ignored or brushed aside those who painted a realistic picture of the potential problems that might arise during an occupation.
In response to a question as to whether the war was payback for business his father didn’t finish, Webb said he didn’t think so. He, as Eric Weslander in the Lawrence Journal-World put it, “attributed the war more to Vice President Dick Cheney – whom he called the Godfather – and a war-bent circle of advisers with no sense of military reality themselves.”
One might have wished all these people had been more forthcoming about their concerns back when they might have deterred an invasion – although if Bob Woodward‘s and other accounts are accurate it might be that this administration was going to invade Iraq no matter what, even with misgivings within the Republican Party. But while we should not forget those who were too timid to ask pointed questions in public when the decisions were being made, there’s little reason not to welcome them into the fold of what, if some polls are accurate, is almost a majority of Americans who now think the war was a mistake, or at least that we should get out of Iraq before things get even worse.
GRATEFUL FOR STUBBORNNESS?
Perhaps in that regard we should be grateful that the Bush administration, once it has decided on a policy, seldom indulges in rethinking it. Thus Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt’s response to the assassination of Abdel-Zahraa Othman, current head of the Iraqi Governing Council, was, “Days like today convince us even more that the [June 30] transfer must stay on track.”
Republican Senator and administration ally Jon Kyl of Arizona said that sticking with the June 30 deadline is in everybody’s best interest. “I think we make it clear we have no designs on Iraq, no desire to stay there, by keeping our commitment to be out by June 30,” he told Fox News.
As shocking and sad as yet one more killing by people who believe it is in their interest to promote even more chaos in Iraq is – and as much as some might view this killing as evidence that the United States must stay longer – the United States would be well advised to stay the course, assuming that the course is relatively swift disengagement from Iraq. This determination should be accompanied by a decision to downplay some of the more unrealistic goals the president and others have enunciated.
DUMP UNWORTHY ASPIRATIONS
I wrote last week about retired Gen. William E. Odom, who headed the National Security Agency during the Reagan administration and now teaches comparative politics at Georgetown and Yale, but his comments bear repeating. “If we think we can establish a constitutional democracy in Iraq,” he said, “where there is not even a sprig of constitutional tradition, we are fooling ourselves badly.”
Gen. Odom’s advice, of course, is to send the Secretary of State to the UN to tell the Security Council we had made a terrible mistake invading Iraq, and would they kindly pass a resolution and take over administering the country. He doesn’t think the UN would do that, so the next step would be to announce that on June 30 the U.S. is turning over complete and genuine sovereignty to whatever Iraqi government is in place then, and begin removing U.S. troops – in an orderly fashion, so it might take a few months – that very day.
Interesting. The Glasgow Herald says President Bush and Prime Minister Blair are seeking a new UN resolution recognizing a fully sovereign Iraqi government now. But they don’t plan to begin withdrawing troops.
Gen. Odom, however, like many retired military people disillusioned with this war, has a more realistic take on matters – although he may be discounting the desire of some in the U.S. government to have permanent bases in Iraq from which to project power in the region in the future.
That ambition is, quite frankly, unworthy. If the United States government is even the least bit serious about seeking and neutralizing terrorists beyond Iraq, perhaps with special forces or quiet commando operations, there are plenty of places from which to operate already. The occupation of Iraq is not only inspiring terrorist incidents, it is multiplying terrorists and engendering negative feelings about our country all over the world.
The United States might have the power to rule Iraq, but it does not have the moral authority. It is time to admit this and begin an orderly withdrawal. With an increasing number of conservatives thinking similar thoughts, there just might be a chance that it will happen – or at least that there will be more public discussion when they start talking about the necessity of invading Syria or Iran.
