Our Fools and Iraq

Once again, E.J. Dionne wrote a column in The Washington Post worth commenting on. His subject was whether the administration believed what they told us about Iraq before we invaded it. He suggests they did. I believe they did, and wrote the following to him:

E.J.,

One of the ways the world is divided into two parts is in how people see those they disagree with: Some see them as knaves, others see them as fools. So some have seen the President, the Vice-President, and the rest as knaves, determined to invade Iraq for their own reasons, perhaps out of greed, perhaps for revenge, perhaps with some other malicious motive. But your explanation, that they were fools who acted in good faith but with a mistaken understanding of the situation, is like Occam's Razor, the simplest explanation of what happened. It also happens to fit with the conclusion of the report of the WMD Commission that most of the analysts of the intelligence community believed that Saddam Hussein was a clear threat.

The question now becomes the one on everyone's lips: What do we do now? I believe that this should be divorced from how we got into Iraq. Rather, our answer should come from whether we believe we can do good by staying. To use the Pottery Barn analogy: We broke it, we bought it. Can we fix it? Unfortunately, the answer is far from clear.

Jim Voorhees

The question of what we do now is far from a simple one. My message to Mr. Dionne lays aside the question of cost, but of course it is the costs of the war that are easiest to see: lives lost and ruined, billions spent, a military stretched too far. Can we do enough good in Iraq to justify these? The same issue of the Post carries a piece by Kofi Annan that suggests that progress is being made. The surprising turnout of the elections last January also suggests that, despite the continuing bloodshed, we may be able to leave an Iraq that is stable, democratic, and prosperous. That bloodshed and what appear to be rising tensions among the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds make it clear that such an outcome is not assured. Anyone who believes that we will have such assurance in a year is not paying attention.

Therefore, we should not plan to begin our withdrawal in one year or even two. Our commitment to Iraq should not now diminish. Instead, we should learn from the many errors that we have made and carry on purposefully, unperturbed by setbacks that leave our goal in Iraq achievable.