The Iraq War hawks are back

Some of the biggest backers of the Iraq War sure have a lot of opinions on Iran.

On March 19, 2003, a “coalition of the willing” led by the United States invaded Iraq, starting a war that killed thousands of American soldiers and roughly 600,000 Iraqi civilians (though exact numbers are very hard to come by).

The war enjoyed broad (and bipartisan) support in 2003, with 72 percent of Americans polled by Gallup saying that they supported the war against Iraq in May of that year (and despite his more recent protestations, that number included Donald Trump.) But nearly 17 years later, a majority of Americans think that the United States made a mistake sending troops to Iraq, a perspective that has played an increasingly large role in our politics.

The situation in Iran — where President Donald Trump’s decision to kill Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani after months of tensions has raised fears of another war in the region — is not an exact replica of the lead-up to the war in Iraq. And let’s be clear: Being wrong about the war in Iraq doesn’t mean that those calling for action with the Iranian regime will be found equally wanting by the passage of time.

But it’s concerning, to say the least, to see some of the biggest backers of the Iraq War — an abject failure that, coupled with the ongoing war in Afghanistan, has cost the United States trillions of dollars and thousands of lives — are publicly (and in some instances, gleefully) opining about the potential impact of war with Iran, in some cases even using the same rhetorical stylings to do so.

“This is going to be a catalyst inside Iran”

On January 2 on Fox News, two George W. Bush administration stalwarts — former Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and former Senior Adviser Karl Rove — joined Fox News host Sean Hannity (another prominent booster of the 2003 invasion) and former Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) to react to Gen. Qassem Soleimani’s death.

“I think it’s entirely possible this is going to be a catalyst inside Iran where the people celebrate this killing of Soleimani and puts pressure on the Iranian government to stop the terrorism, stop supporting all of the various terrorist movements it has around the world.”

What Fox News didn’t mention is that both Fleischer and Rove played major roles in the buildup to the Iraq War two decades ago, a buildup that included a months-long campaign to build support for the invasion of Iraq among the American public by connecting Iraq to the September 11 attacks and to weapons of mass destruction. Both men were key parts of the White House Iraq Group, a group of high-level administration officials charged with “educat[ing] the public” about the danger posed to the United States by Saddam Hussein.

As my colleague Matthew Yglesias has noted, the origins of the Iraq War were steeped in falsehoods shared by Fleischer and other members of the Bush administration, taking at absolute best what a former Bush administration official called “literary license” with the facts. I’ve reached out to Fleischer and will update if and when I hear back. In response to a request for comment, an assistant for Karl Rove told me that he is currently moving and would be unable to answer my questions.

It’s important to detail Fleischer’s role in the Bush administration’s push toward war in Iraq. Because those promises of US action being “celebrated”? It’s not the first time Fleischer’s made them.

2003 redux

On April 10, 2003, during a press briefing he gave as press secretary regarding the invasion of Iraq, Fleischer made an eerily similar claim.

“The president’s view is that the celebrations in the streets of Baghdad are the sights of freedom,” Fleischer said in response to a question about how images of the invasion were being received in the Arab World. “And freedom is a message that should be welcomed everywhere.”

There were some celebrations in Baghdad back in 2003, as Iraqi civilians commemorated the end of Hussein’s violent and controlling regime and the arrival of Allied troops. And Fleischer wasn’t alone in his beliefs. As my colleague Ezra Klein wrote back in 2014, the primary purported impetus for the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq wasn’t just Iraq’s alleged (and nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction and Iraq’s (negligible) links to al-Qaeda, but the idea that Iraq could be, as Fleischer is now saying about Iran, a “catalyst” for the region.

David Frum, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush and a prominent supporter of the Iraq War, concurred, writing in May 2019:

… the goal in 2003 was bigger than denuclearization. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was both oppressing his own subjects and menacing his neighbors. By replacing Saddam’s regime with a more humane and peaceful successor, the U.S. could set the Arab Middle East on a path to a better future — contributing to America’s own security after 9/11.

Suffice it to say, that’s not what happened. As Frum concluded:

We were ignorant, arrogant, and unprepared, and we unleashed human suffering that did no good for anyone: not for Americans, not for Iraqis, not for the region. Almost two decades later, the damage to America’s standing in the world from the Iraq War has still not been repaired, let alone that war’s economic and human costs to the United States and the Middle East.

In fact, a 2010 study by the RAND Corporation performed for the United States Air Force found that the Iraq War may have decreased the popularity of democratization efforts.

In several instances, the war appears to have increased toleration and even the support of Arab publics for unpopular rulers who, whatever their faults, are still preferable to the unknown. Some of this may stem from the declining cachet of democratization, given its image as a “U.S. project” whose forcible implementation in Iraq was widely blamed for sowing the seeds of the country’s descent into sectarian violence

But Fleischer appears to have not yet arrived at a similar conclusion. No, Iran is not Iraq — and yet the linguistic flourishes of 2003 remain the same, raising concerns that the failures of 2003 do, too.

“There’s every reason to believe a war itself is going to be short”

But it wasn’t just Fox News. Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, argued in the pages of the New York Times in favor of the strike on Gen. Soleimani, writing that such an action was essential “if [the United States] seeks to stay in the Middle East.”

The world to which we wake up today, rid of its most accomplished and deadly terrorist, is a better place. Nowhere is this insight more evident than throughout the Middle East, where individuals are posting joyous videos to social media, celebrating the death of the author of so much of their misery. We should all — even those among us who don’t particularly care for Mr. Trump — join them in their good cheer, and continue to repeal Mr. Suleimani’s murderous anti-American legacy.

It’s worth noting that American attitudes on the nation’s military presence in the Middle East are complex, as recent polling has shown a difference between the desire of Americans to stay engaged in the region and their willingness to get involved in specific conflicts.

And back in January 2003 (two years before joining the Bush administration), Doran was arguing in the pages of Foreign Affairs (and the New York Times) in favor of a war against Iraq, writing that victory could help achieve peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and induce other Middle Eastern countries to look to the United States as “their partner in the quest for a better life.”

The first order of business for the United States must therefore be to demonstrate forcefully that challenges to its authority in the region will be defeated. Its near enemies can be met in no other way, since their opposition to the present order is deep-rooted and total. Unless America is prepared to abandon its position and pull back from the region, as the British did three and a half decades ago, it must carry its struggle against al Qaeda and Saddam to the finish, putting an end to all doubt regarding its resolve. Thwarting Saddam’s ambitions and continuing to root out bin Laden’s henchmen and associates, moreover, will do more than take care of immediate menaces.

He furthered his argument in favor of war in the Princeton Alumni Weekly on February 26, 2003, arguing that taking out Hussein was essential because “the U.S. position in the Gulf and in the region in general is being undermined by our attempt to contain him and Iran simultaneously.”

And he added:

Hopefully, there’s every reason to believe a war itself is going to be short. If 1991 is anything to go by, there’s not going to be a lot of fight in the Iraqi army. And we’re much stronger than we were in 1991, so the combination of a weaker Iraqi army and a stronger U.S. means it should be fast. My gut feeling is that it’s going to go down like a house of cards. Because we’re much stronger than we were in 1991, and he’s much weaker, and you saw how everyone gave up. But that doesn’t mean we should plan for it to be a house of cards. I mean there’s all kinds of bad scenarios that one could think of. I suspect that once we show real resolve, the regime is going to go down rather easily.

Though the Iraqi regime collapsed quickly (Baghdad fell within three weeks of the initial invasion), the war itself has dragged on even after the end of official action in 2011. An American contractor was killed and several American soldiers were hurt by a rocket attack in northern Iraq in December 2019 — 16 years after Doran asserted that the war would reshape the region for the better.

I reached out to Doran and will update if and when I hear back.