Around the time of the first Gulf War in 1991 I attended an unintentionally hilarious meeting of Iraqi exile groups in DC. There was talk in Washington of overthrowing Saddam Hussein via Iraqi exiles, and this meeting had been called to put their differences aside and forge a united strategy toward that goal. A Middle East historian friend and I decided to drive into DC that evening to have a look for ourselves. We wanted to see whether these exiles were still living up to their long established reputation for being bitterly divided and dysfunctional. Overthrowing a government is a pretty big step. Though in no way connected to the policy-making crowd, we figured as citizens we ought to inform ourselves before the US started making definitive moves to bring chaos to Iraq, of all places.
Dozens of exiles showed up from across the spectrum of political groups; my friend remarked that all the usual suspects were in attendance. "This is going to get ugly," he predicted. The agenda lasted for all of a minute or two. Almost as soon as the meeting got under way, it was interrupted by a long and impassioned rant (by a Kurdish exile, if I recall rightly). Another Iraqi jumped up and began slanging off the first guy. The floodgates opened. From every corner of the room came accusations and counter-accusations. The occasional call for unity was shouted down. An Iraqi sitting nearby looked at us nervously, trying to assess how we were taking this in. A moment later he inserted himself into one of the shouting matches. After about 90 minutes of this mayhem we had to flee; it was all we could do to stifle our laughter amidst these zealots.
I was reminded of this episode yesterday by the reaction here to a post about Francis Fukuyama's latest attempt to obscure his history of backing the neocon project to overthrow Hussein. In an op-ed Fukuyama twitted George Bush for legitimizing "regime change" by invading Iraq, without however acknowledging that for years he'd advocated exactly that as a member of PNAC. A suprising number of commenters sprang to his defense. Didn't I know that Fukuyama had broken with the neocons some time ago? Some here are even credulous about his unsupported claim that he came out in opposition to the invasion way back in 2002 - although he's on record as supporting the decision to invade fully two months after the invasion.
It seems that for some on the left, merely expressing regret after the fact for having been proved disastrously wrong (with a healthy dash of historical revisionism) makes up for the years Fukuyama spent advocating for an illegal invasion of a sovereign country. You see it shows that in contrast to the other neocons he's got some sense, don't you know.
Except it doesn't and nothing can. Setting aside Fukuyama's embrace of international lawlessness, what about those Iraqi exiles he backed as the means to replace Hussein? On Sept. 20, 2001 he signed the PNAC Letter to George Bush, which called for Hussein's overthrow "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [9/11] attack".
Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism. The United States must therefore provide full military and financial support to the Iraqi opposition. American military force should be used to provide a "safe zone" in Iraq from which the opposition can operate. And American forces must be prepared to back up our commitment to the Iraqi opposition by all necessary means.
By "opposition" PNAC meant the Iraqi exile groups. The letter was issued immediately after 19 hours of talks organized by Paul Wolfowitz to advance the neocon agenda. The meetings were conducted by circumventing the State Department, though Ahmed Chalabi was on hand to advocate for a US invasion to back a takeover by Iraqi exile groups.
There is no excuse for any who signed the 2001 PNAC letter. For more than a decade, any moderately well informed observer in Washington knew that the Iraqi exiles were a bunch of clowns. If the PNAC gang were unaware of their reputation, then the first step should have been to learn more about the exile groups before trying to tie US foreign policy to these jokers. Therefore every single one of these PNAC signatories is on record as a fool or a knave. Nothing any of them says about foreign policy should ever be taken seriously. And notice that one of these is John McCain's chief adviser on foreign policy. Nobody on the left should be giving any of this gang the benefit of the doubt.
William Kristol, Gary Bauer, Jeffrey Bell, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey Bergner, Eliot Cohen, Seth Cropsey, Midge Decter, Thomas Donnelly, Aaron Friedberg, Hillel Fradkin, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Jeffrey Gedmin, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Charles Hill, Bruce P. Jackson, Eli S. Jacobs, Michael Joyce, Donald Kagan, Robert Kagan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Charles Krauthammer, John Lehman, Clifford May, Richard Perle, Martin Peretz, Norman Podhoretz, Randy Scheunemann, Gary Schmitt, William Schneider, Jr., Richard H. Shultz, Henry Sokolski, Stephen J. Solarz, Vin Weber, Leon Wieseltier, Marshall Wittmann