We anti-war folks were wrong, but we don’t need to apologize

By Larry Derfner

Jerusalem — Now that Saddam Hussein’s regime has fallen, and the Iraqi people are overjoyed at this development, we on the Left who were against fighting this war have some soul-searching to do.

Were we wrong? In hindsight, yes, we were wrong.

A terrible force has been removed from the world at what seems an acceptably low price in human suffering, even with all the risks that remain. If we’d known on the eve of the invasion what we know today, I, for one, would have supported going in.

But given what we knew then, before the fact, were we wrong to oppose Operation Iraqi Freedom? No, we weren’t, and I don’t see that we have anything to apologize for.
I opposed the war because, while I thought the goal of deposing Saddam was certainly a worthy one, the risks were too high. I agreed with the Bush administration’s assumptions — that Saddam was utterly ruthless and that he had weapons of mass destruction.

This led me to the conclusion that with his dictatorship and his life in danger, he would try to use these weapons against the hundreds of thousands of troops coming after him. He might not succeed, but he would try.

If he succeeded, masses of U.S. and British troops would likely be killed, probably with masses of Iraqi civilians. The U.S. retaliation would be catastrophic. The casualty toll would be enormous, and the world would become a much more dangerous place than before, defeating the ultimate purpose of the war.

My other main objection was that the invasion would ignite the Arab and Muslim world, encouraging Al-Qaida, threatening moderate Arab regimes and, again, making the world a far more dangerous place.

Here, too, I agreed with the Bush administration’s assessment — that the Middle East was rife with religious and political fanaticism, with maniacs who not only weren’t afraid to die for the cause, but who prayed for it.

But it seemed to me that if there were an American assault on an Arab ruler who had no evident connection to Sept. 11, who hadn’t bothered anybody outside his borders for more than a decade, and whose WMDs amounted to, at most, a fraction of Israel’s, this would not dry up the swamp of Middle East terror, but flood it.

Fears unrealized

Neither of these fears has been realized. But on the eve of the war, they were reasonable fears to have, enough to make reasonable people decide that the war was an awfully bad bet.

So now, looking ahead, what lesson are we supposed to draw from the unrealization of these fears, especially the first? To understand that, we first have to understand why Saddam and his warlords (or, if Saddam was killed, his warlords alone) didn’t use their WMDs against the Allies. The problem is — it’s a mystery.

Was it deterrence? It’s hard to see how Saddam and the boys could have been deterred by American threats of punishment or death. They were facing death anyway.

There’s another possible explanation — that Saddam didn’t have WMDs in the first place or didn’t have the capability to use them. This speculation, however, could be canceled out any day if those weapons are found.

So what’s the moral of the story? That America shouldn’t worry about invading countries run by dictators who probably have WMDs because there’s no danger of their being used? Anybody want to test this theory on North Korea?

The other doomsday scenario that didn’t play out — the mobilization of radical forces in the Arab and Muslim world — leaves behind just as much uncertainty.

The current, seeming quiet on the Mideast “street” doesn’t necessarily mean everything’s calm. This is a volatile, violent region with over one billion people, and we don’t know what’s going on under the surface.

The American military engagement in Iraq is an unfinished story, and so is the Arab and Muslim reaction. It’s still too early to say Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was wrong in predicting that the war would spawn “100 new bin Ladens.”

And I don’t think any reasonable person believes America is now free to storm through Iran, Syria, Sudan, Libya and onward because the Arabs and Muslims are all afraid of George W. Bush.

The overthrow of Saddam hasn’t converted me to neoconservatism, or made me an enthusiast of “pre-emptive war.” I don’t think the Allied victory was a foregone conclusion. I don’t think Operation Iraqi Freedom should become the model for U.S. foreign policy. And I still think this is all going to end badly.

I remain convinced that the Bush administration does not necessarily want a democratic Iraqi government, just a pro-American one, and the only way to achieve this is by permanent U.S. military occupation, which cannot work.

But the downfall of Saddam Hussein and the freeing of 24 million Iraqis — even if their good fortune doesn’t last — confronts me, and the rest of the anti-war Left, with a hard fact to swallow: If we had succeeded in stopping the war, Saddam would still be in power today.

So as of today, in hindsight, we were wrong. Why, I don’t know, and I haven’t come across anyone who does.

I think the Left’s criticism of the Bush administration’s brazen, militaristic approach to the world still holds true. But in the new, post-Saddam era, intellectual honesty should compel us war protesters to proceed with a little less certainty.

Larry Derfner writes about Israeli society for American Jewish newspapers and the Jerusalem Post.