I recently stumbled across a nameless blogger's musings about the "pre-war consensus" that Saddam had WMDs. I recall being somewhat confused on this, but I was pretty sure I was never part of any "consensus" on the issue.
Fortunately, I have a time capsule of my state of mind back then. Here's a letter I wrote to the editor March 17, 2003 - un-edited, as it was sent. It never got printed (not suprising for our jingo-rag excuse for a paper) but it's interesting nevertheless. When the President and his apologists say no one could have foreseen what actually happened, it's obvious they are liars. If I, with my little knowledge of current events culled from CNN and the newspapers, could have gotten it so right, why couldn't they, with spy sattelites and illegal wiretaps, have a clue as to what was about to go down?
March 17, 2003
Dear Editor:
As I write this, arms inspectors are leaving Iraq, our President having declared the opportunity for a peaceful resolution of the Iraq crisis over. Soon - possibly by the time you read this - we will be at war, and without the support of the United Nations. This will be so despite the fact that less than half of the voting population of this country supports a war without U.N. backing. This will be so despite the fact that the insistence on war as the only alternative has alienated our allies and damaged our reputation in the international community. This will be so despite the failure of the administration to disclose its post-war strategy for rebuilding Iraq - a strategy that, even if it exists, will necessarily require an isolated United States alone to rebuild a conquered Iraq. This will be so despite the lack of any coherent, credible explanation of why Iraq poses an immediate threat to the United States, with new justifications being offered regularly like so many marketing campaigns for goods of dubious utility.
As I review the developments of the past few months, I am baffled in my attempts to understand what we are trying to accomplish in exchange for the many obvious costs this war brings with it. If it is to enforce U.N. resolutions, why are we so blatantly defying and de-legitimizing the U.N.? If it is because the Hussein regime poses a threat to United States security, where is the evidence of links with terrorists who would attack us - or evidence of the extremely unlikely capability of Iraq to launch a direct attack on the U.S.? If it is to install a democratic government, where is the plan for doing so, in a nation with no significant democratic traditions? With no credible explanation for our belligerence, is it any wonder that people identify the "real" reason for the war as a grab for oil, or a misguided personal vendetta by the President?
I find myself recalling a small book I first read long after it had apparently become significant only to historians - "The Arrogance of Power" by Senator J. William Fulbright. Although Sen. Fulbright was concerned in 1966 with America's costly adventure in Southeast Asia, his words resonate terribly today. Fulbright never questioned the military might of the United States. What he did question was the belief that this great power translated into the power to right the wrongs of the world. He questioned the ability of the United States to use its might to "create stability where there is chaos, the will to fight where there is defeatism, democracy where there is no tradition of it, and honest government where corruption is almost a way of life."
This nation has long been rightly proud of its unique heritage, a challenge issued at its birth for the world to recognize that all mankind is created equal, and that a just government can only derive its power from the consent of the governed. We have not always lived up to the noble ideals we have set for ourselves, and for that we have paid in civil war, discord, and blood. How are we living up to that heritage today by trying to force the world to bend to our will? How are we living up to that heritage today by waging war and occupying a foreign nation to impose a government on it? Doesn't our own nation's creed require us to listen not only to our own people, but the people of the international community, and the people of Iraq itself? Despicable as the Hussein regime is, who in Iraq has consented to a government imposed on it by the United States? Without the consent of the governed, a regime of occupation is no more just than the current dictatorship.
"Despite its dangerous and unproductive consequences," Fulbright wrote, "the idea of being responsible for the whole world seems flattering to Americans and I am afraid it is turning our heads, just as the sense of universal responsibility turned the heads of the ancient Romans and 19th Century British." This administration has long seemed seduced by the dream of Empire - one of the first reports commissioned by its Secretary of Defense was an examination of how the ancient empires held on to their power. But it seems the lesson that all imperial dreams eventually become nightmares was lost on the administration. Rome, having abandoned its own Republican form of government, took the path of Empire, and eventually crumbled from the inside out. The British Empire lasted less than a century before its imperial pretensions died a death of a thousand cuts. How soon will our own arrogance be humbled, if we continue down this road?
Sincerely,