History of convenience

Republican presidential candidates are finding it difficult to answer whether Bush was right to invade Iraq in 2003?

The past few weeks of the presidential campaign trail have confirmed that American politics is still divided over the misguided war in Iraq that was embarked upon 12 years ago. Watching the Republican presidential debate last week, two things became clear. Firstly, the Republicans are eager to start a war with Iran. Secondly, the leading candidates, including President George W Bush’s younger brother, are still unwilling to acknowledge that the Iraq war was a misadventure. Jeb Bush even took it a step further and stated, “You know what, as it relates to my brother, he kept us safe.” This remark is bizarre since the 9/11 attack happened under his brother’s watch and that too after months of being deaf to CIA warnings regarding an impending attack.

With the exception of Rand Paul, Republican candidates are finding it difficult to answer the most basic question — was Republican President George W Bush right to invade Iraq in 2003? Instead of admitting that the war was a catastrophe based on lies, most of them come up with excuses for not winning it. They propose that the additional 30,000 troops sent to the country in 2007, also known as ‘the surge’, was a success and that Bush had finally achieved victory. However, after Barack Obama withdrew troops from Iraq, the war was lost, Iraq collapsed and the Islamic State (IS) came to power.

These arguments prove how these candidates failed to learn basic lessons from very recent history. If the US is unfortunate enough for any of these people to win the election, they will do their level best to revise history books to include their delusions in them. As soon as ignorance for future generations is secure, they will be free to pursue a war against Iran. The 2007 surge was a failure because it relied on paying militants to stop fighting. General Petraeus’s forces paid Saddam loyalists who were fighting the Americans and Iraqis themselves, to instead turn their weapons against al Qaeda. That led to a decline in violence from 26,000 deaths of Iraqi civilians in 2007 to 5,000 deaths in 2009, and this is what the Republicans are terming a victory. However, they conveniently forget that the aim of the surge was political reconciliation between Iraq’s various sects and communities, which never happened. Also, keeping violence down by making payments is only a temporary solution and never leads to a definitive victory. Likewise, the IS was born in Camp Bucca, a prison in southern Iraq also known as the ‘Jihadi University’. The top nine commanders of the IS did time at Bucca, including the leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The setting at Bucca was perfect for prisoner radicalisation and led to inmate collaboration between Saddam Hussein’s Baathist secularists and extremists, which ultimately resulted in the development of the IS. Hence, the IS is just another consequence of attacking Iraq.

As disturbing as it was to watch Republican presidential candidates refusing to acknowledge that the war on terror was a debacle, the leading Democrat is on record voting for the Iraq war. To her credit, Hillary Clinton has conceded that she got it wrong. In a two-party system, voting options are limited. It appears that the American people are left with a decision between someone who claims to have changed her stripes and those who are committed to waging new conflicts.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 21^st,  2015.

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