Another Iraq War Rehash
A new British report seems to share Trump’s views of Saddam Hussein.
ENLARGE
The Iraq Inquiry Report presented by Sir John Chilcot at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster, London. Photo: Zuma Press
Updated July 6, 2016 7:29 p.m. ET
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Britain’s establishment never forgave itself for taking the country to war in Iraq in 2003, and Wednesday’s publication of a public inquiry into the invasion provided a fresh opportunity for self-flagellation. At four times the length of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” the so-called Chilcot Inquiry tells us nothing we didn’t know.
The main target of the Inquiry, named after its chairman, onetime civil servant John Chilcot, is former Prime Minister Tony Blair. “I’ll be with you, whatever,” Mr. Blair told President George W. Bush in July 2002, according to the Inquiry. War critics have seized on this quote as evidence of perfidious slavishness rather than a sign of a President and a Prime Minister seeing eye to eye on the long war on terror.
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The Inquiry’s main charge is that the decision to go to war was based on “flawed intelligence and assessments.” There’s a news flash from 2003. Mr. Chilcot and his colleagues also reproach Messrs. Blair and Bush for “undermining” the authority of the United Nations Security Council by short-cutting diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute over Saddam Hussein’s weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. Both lines of attack are misplaced.
Acting on bad information isn’t the same as acting in bad faith. Vocal opponents of the war, including Gerhard Schröder’s government in Germany, also believed Saddam had extensive WMD stocks. Intelligence agencies throughout the West did not want to repeat a lesson of the 1991 Gulf War, when they underestimated the scale of Iraq’s illicit programs. As U.S. inspectors learned from debriefing Saddam once he was in prison, the Iraqi dictator had fully intended to restart his WMD program once sanctions on Iraq were lifted, which is where things were going until the attacks of September 11.
It’s also easy to forget that WMD were far from the only reason the U.S. and Britain had for deposing Saddam, who was the cause of countless Middle East crises during his 25 years in power. These included the Iran-Iraq war, the Anfal campaign, the rape of Kuwait and the Gulf War, the Scud-missile attacks on Israel, the extermination campaign against the marsh Arabs, the Kurdish refugee crisis—a record of human cruelty and chaos exceeded by few dictators in history. The most dangerous WMD in Iraq was Saddam.
The U.S. and Britain made mistakes in conducting the war, not least failing to anticipate that the Baathist regime intended to fight a guerrilla insurgency. That and other errors of foresight or execution led to four bloody years after the fall of Baghdad, yet by 2008 the war was effectively over and won thanks to Mr. Bush’s surge strategy. The chaos that has since unfolded in Iraq is the result of President Obama’s hasty withdrawal, not the invasion.
As for Mr. Chilcot’s faith in U.N. diplomacy, has he noticed what’s happening in Syria? By delegating responsibility to the U.N. and Russia’s vetoes, the world has stood by as a half-million Syrians have been killed and half its population displaced. Messrs. Bush and Blair were never more right than when they chose not to delegate responsibility for global security to the diplomats at Turtle Bay.
The Chilcot report arrived a day after Donald Trump declared that while Saddam was “a bad guy,” he had offered the compensating virtue of killing terrorists. Does Mr. Chilcot take Mr. Trump’s de facto endorsement as a compliment?
A new British report seems to share Trump’s views of Saddam Hussein.
The Iraq Inquiry Report presented by Sir John Chilcot at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster, London. Photo: Zuma Press
Updated July 6, 2016 7:29 p.m. ET
176 COMMENTS
Britain’s establishment never forgave itself for taking the country to war in Iraq in 2003, and Wednesday’s publication of a public inquiry into the invasion provided a fresh opportunity for self-flagellation. At four times the length of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace,” the so-called Chilcot Inquiry tells us nothing we didn’t know.
The main target of the Inquiry, named after its chairman, onetime civil servant John Chilcot, is former Prime Minister Tony Blair. “I’ll be with you, whatever,” Mr. Blair told President George W. Bush in July 2002, according to the Inquiry. War critics have seized on this quote as evidence of perfidious slavishness rather than a sign of a President and a Prime Minister seeing eye to eye on the long war on terror.
Related Articles
The Inquiry’s main charge is that the decision to go to war was based on “flawed intelligence and assessments.” There’s a news flash from 2003. Mr. Chilcot and his colleagues also reproach Messrs. Blair and Bush for “undermining” the authority of the United Nations Security Council by short-cutting diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute over Saddam Hussein’s weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. Both lines of attack are misplaced.
Acting on bad information isn’t the same as acting in bad faith. Vocal opponents of the war, including Gerhard Schröder’s government in Germany, also believed Saddam had extensive WMD stocks. Intelligence agencies throughout the West did not want to repeat a lesson of the 1991 Gulf War, when they underestimated the scale of Iraq’s illicit programs. As U.S. inspectors learned from debriefing Saddam once he was in prison, the Iraqi dictator had fully intended to restart his WMD program once sanctions on Iraq were lifted, which is where things were going until the attacks of September 11.
It’s also easy to forget that WMD were far from the only reason the U.S. and Britain had for deposing Saddam, who was the cause of countless Middle East crises during his 25 years in power. These included the Iran-Iraq war, the Anfal campaign, the rape of Kuwait and the Gulf War, the Scud-missile attacks on Israel, the extermination campaign against the marsh Arabs, the Kurdish refugee crisis—a record of human cruelty and chaos exceeded by few dictators in history. The most dangerous WMD in Iraq was Saddam.
The U.S. and Britain made mistakes in conducting the war, not least failing to anticipate that the Baathist regime intended to fight a guerrilla insurgency. That and other errors of foresight or execution led to four bloody years after the fall of Baghdad, yet by 2008 the war was effectively over and won thanks to Mr. Bush’s surge strategy. The chaos that has since unfolded in Iraq is the result of President Obama’s hasty withdrawal, not the invasion.
As for Mr. Chilcot’s faith in U.N. diplomacy, has he noticed what’s happening in Syria? By delegating responsibility to the U.N. and Russia’s vetoes, the world has stood by as a half-million Syrians have been killed and half its population displaced. Messrs. Bush and Blair were never more right than when they chose not to delegate responsibility for global security to the diplomats at Turtle Bay.
The Chilcot report arrived a day after Donald Trump declared that while Saddam was “a bad guy,” he had offered the compensating virtue of killing terrorists. Does Mr. Chilcot take Mr. Trump’s de facto endorsement as a compliment?
