Though we actually never stopped being at war with Iraq since evicting them from Kuwait weren't we terrorized into this current phase of the war? Saddem had WMD and links to terrorists who might one day attack us. To offer any alternatives to war was to be for terrorists.

Our host's headline gets at the problem: denial is an extremely powerfui force in everyday life. As someone here has already noted, in the post-9/11 environment, fear and anger ruled, and the invasion of iraq tapped into that fear and anger.

now the fact is, as i've noted before, prior to the war, roughly 1/3 of the public supported the kind of war we're now in (1000+ american deaths, limited foreign support), and that is where the polls on the war appear to be heading. however, the roughly 1/3 who bought into the ad campaign but are now having second thoughts are unlikely to acknowledge that they were conned.

So what will historians note? That you can fool some of the people all of the time, and most of the people some of the time. That a supine media enabled the con job; without the media pointing out unpleasant truths, why should people get worked up? That jellyfish politicians refused to acknowledge the plain truth in front of their face.

And, oh yes, that this was a disaster whose reprecussions played out for decades.

Denial it is. Or deepseated brainwashing.
I spend time with a very good friend - a truly decent fellow in his relations with others in his circle - who is a "moderate conservative".
Not only is he insensitive to news on the war, but to articles in the paper about (1) how the middle class must pay significantly more for college tuitions, (2) how much the tax breaks are benefiting the hyper-rich, especially in the light of increasing costs of living to the middle class, (3) torture of suspected terrorists by American officals and G.I.s... and on and on and on.
Maybe one aspect of my friend's "insensitivity" resides in the back of his mind - the feeling that 9/11 caused just a huge injury and injustice to the U.S., that we must fight back, whatever it takes, however long it takes. Somehow he doesn't compare this occurrence to years of terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world. We have been uniquely wronged, end-of-story.
It's not a rational response, it's a deep-seated emotional one. I know he believes that the U.S. has across its history only done wonderful things for the rest of the world. There is either little knowledge of our darker side or the false understanding that anything seemlngly crue or injust thing that we have done has always been committed in the context of overriding freedom-fighting and beneficence. 
Many Americans just don't have any conception that our crap can stink - or even that we crap at all. Somehow we are different from the other citizens of the world, from other countries. And they have little ability to relate to the differences in thinking and living of others around the world.
That we are doing horrible things in Iraq and elsewhere seems to be justified to so many people in ways that in earlier days they may by now have raised their eyebrows and their voices. And so many in the middle class continue to be blind to the actions of the Bush administration and the Republicans in their current incarnation and how those actions actually affect them. And the Bushies and the Republicans know this and take full advantage of it.

I don't know how well or poorly history will treat Bush's 2 terms

I know how history will deal with this war.  As a historian you are trained to be an impartial observer, the thesis is guided by evidence.  In this instance, the facts are clear, no conjecture required.  History will see a concerted effort to fabricate threats, undermine attempts at compromise and general dishonesty.

As for the greater war on terror, here you have more room for competing arguments, although again factually it is easier to support the anti-Bush hypothesis.

Sad to say, but the distance of history may be the only way to sift through the propaganda and misinformation.  It will not be kind, the facts so alarming and clear.

Right on !


The need for payback, for making somebody pay for 9/11, anybody. And Saddam took it when OBL slipped away.

Go Michael!  I avoided the therapeutic implications that you so effectively convey (as a therapist,I try not to evangelize too much), but glad to see someone put it out there.  Specifically, I liken the US to a teenage boy, charged with hormones, thinking he will live forever, oblivious to the past and the future, sure of his rightness, but underlying all, a deep-seated terror that he's really not "all that".  Therapy indeed.  He needs to be grounded for awhile (with NO television!) and made to do some community service - as well as being pushed to look within. 

that's a fascinating letter from the senator, who avoids the whole question and instead, provides the knee-jerk recitation of what a great thing liberating iraq is. i'm amazed that he doesn't discuss how many schools we've painted.

I think that there are several reasons that dovetail into the malaise we have about reporting on the lead-up to the Iraq war.  One reason is that I suspect there are a lot of people who are willing to focus on the intentions of the administration and who believe that the invasion of Iraq was essentially benevolent in its intent.  They are able to point to the humanitarian crimes of Saddam Hussein and to the sharp contrast that the invasion had with the fifty year US policy of propping up brutal dictatorships throughout the world and to rationalize that in this instance the means justified the ends.  Moreover, I think that the reliance on intentions can be applied more specifically to the actions of the Bush and Blair administrations themselves.  I've been reading John Keegan's history of the Iraq War recently and what comes through is that everyone involved believed that Iraq really had those weapons, right down to the military commanders who put together a battleplan in no small part based around disabling the Iraqi military before it had a chance to unleash chemical and biological attacks.  That is frightening but consistent with the mindset of ideologues, who begin from a position or belief and then construct an argument for it instead of the other way around.  By that way of thinking, the Bush administration wasn't fixing the intelligence, they were FIXING the intelligence, and that they assumed that events would prove that they were right and the intelligence they had was spotty.  I can't think of any other explanation for Donald Rumsfeld standing up and insisting that not only did he know that Iraq had WMDs, he knew exactly where (I mean, if these guys genuinely thought they were pulling the wool over everyone's eyes, they would have taken the trouble to plant some WMDs around to keep themselves from the kind of national embarrassment they suffered in the wake of the invasion).  So I think those that are predisposed to be generous to the administration will give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they were overzealous perhaps or were guilty of human error, but nothing more.

I think there is also a collective national shame that would discourage the kind of introspection that an investigation into the lead-up to war would involve.  Chris Hedge talks about this in his stunningly good book, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.  He spends a lot of time talking about the kind of communal hysteria that sweeps a country as it goes off to war, and how the state and the media actively persecute and silence the opponents of the war from the outset.  But he also talks about the transience of that war mentality, so that as soon as the war is popularly discredited (as Iraq is well on its way to becoming), there is a tremendous aversion to looking back on what has happened.  People try hard to avoid the subject altogether, as if they are ashamed of having been swept up in a delusion, which of course they had.  I'm sure that if you took the 35% of the population that had supported the war in March of 2003 and no longer do so now and sit them down in front of some taped footage of the war coverage of that time, that it would make them physically uncomfortable.  People would rather not be reminded.

Mark Danner has just addressed this issue in the New York Review of Books (subscribers only).  His piece "What Are You Going to Do with That?" is a commencement address and well worth reading.

To paraphrase something I read just yesterday: "Many people don't want to be truly informed - they just want the illusion that they are being informed".  Of course, this goes quite a ways towards explaining the rise of FOX news and cable news in general...but on a larger scale, I think it captures a good deal of the reason why we seem to be (as a country) in a state of either apathy or denial about the lead up to the Iraq war.

Bush could just say he had a sincere hunch that the WMD were there and realizing that the evidence as currently assembled was inconclusive or equivocal he sent his spies to look at everything again or look farther and wider. A lawyer may perceive that she has a weak case and yet believe her client is innocent, in which case she might look for an undiscovered alibi or inconsistency in the prosecutions theory. The lawyer may be wrong about her client's innocence, and yet not wrong in how she acted on her belief--in particular if in seeking support for her client's evidence she went to sources she believed were credible, say the FBI or CIA, and didn't go paying people to provide false alibi. The memo is suggestive and certainly my own strong hunch is that the president is utterly corrupt, but alas it proves very little.

Depends on what you mean by "we".
I'm certain that the type of person who reads this blog is aware that the DSM is true. Ditto for the GOoPers who write for NRO. Those hacks are praying that the DSM is forgotten as "old news".
Just remember how loudly those same hacks were shrieking about 9/11, mushroom clouds and Saddam when this meeting between the British and Americans took place. They're pretending, now, that everybody new THEN that everything BushCo was saying was a lie.
They're still lying. Very few normal people - people not addicted to news blogs - knew then that Bush was lying. And the overwhelming majority of people NOW don't know that Bush lied.
"Old news", they say, and hope we forget, and hope we don't raise a stink. The mere fact that they admit it's "old news" is a tacit admission that they were lying back then.
Because the DSM says, flat out, that BushCo fixed the intel to match their dreams of conquest.
Ask your non-political neighbors if they've heard of the DSM. Ask them if they believe that Bush lied, or if he was simply misled by bad intel.
I think the readers of this blog should assume that NOBODY knows it's true. Tell as many people as you can, and bring evidence to the argument.

Yes, one of the problems here is that Democrats (and all those opposed to the war generally -- even after the fact) don't have much leverage in a country shrouded in fear after 9/11. I must agree with a previous commenter. Many Americans just don't pay that much attention to these things, let alone spend their days reading liberal blogs. They spend their days working, taking care of their families, spending time with friends, focusing on their hobbies and private interests. All they know -- and I'm know I'm generalizing here -- is that America was attacked on 9/11, that thousands of innocent Americans died, that their leaders are telling them that Iraq was somehow involved, that there's this vague thing called "terrorism" that is at war with us, and that any day could bring another 9/11, or worse.

Political manipuation of this kind happens because it's easy to manipulate a relatively disengaged electorate. There's a good deal of time and energy spent trying to figure out why there's so much cynicism out there, but I would say that the real issue is, ironically, the success of liberal democracy -- when things are going well, as they generally are, people are generally less likely to get involved or otherwise to be engaged. They're more content to focus on their private lives. 9/11 may have shattered that illusion somewhat, but, in the end, many people would rather not know what's really going on out there. 9/11, in my view, initially tore down that facade of self-illusion but, in the end, also strengthened it. It added a sense of fear to an already powerful sense of complacency. And that's a really, really bad combination -- especially where the truth is concerned.

In this atmosphere, it's been tough for Democrats, as evidenced by Kerry's for-it-against-it "flip-flop". If you're against the war, you're somehow unpatriotic and pro-terrorism, even if you have the facts on your side -- because the facts don't matter, the perception does. If you're for the war, then why focus on the manipulation that brought it about. This means that thoughtful Democrats -- and thoughtful Americans generally -- have had to wade into the quagmire of nuance. And in American politics that doesn't get you very far. I think this helps explain why even the war's opponents haven't effectively dealt with the pre-war manipulation.

I have heard it over and over.  From Bill Mahr, to Pat Buchanon.  They excuse the president under the assumption that "Politicians Lie" all the time to get what they want.

I seriously believe many Americans think the same way.  Its ok for Politicians to lie to us.  Most people didn't care when Clinton lied about a blowjob, and most people don't care now that Bush lied to take us to war.  Well the mainstream media seemed to care about the blowjob, but not the war.  But if you remember in 1997 when all this broke, polls showed that 75% of Americans didn't care whether clinton lied about a personal matter.

I am willing to bet that were a poll taken today showing how many people thought it was acceptable that Bush lied to take us to war, the numbers would be much lower, if the poll were couched in those terms.

But of course, the mainstream media is full of lazy pussies who refuse to ask tough questions.  When Iraq goes bad and our forces are overrun by insurgents - no were not there yet - I say we send all these douchebag journalists to fight the war they refused to cover.  Jonah Goldberg is a small target, he would do just fine in the military.

I've also been dismayed about the lack of public outrage.  But it's not denial.  Contrary to the collective howls on lefty blogs about poor coverage of these issues, plenty of evidence has been presented of either incompetence or outright corruption to turn the heads of people that pay scant attention to the news.  Even the "secondary" flow of news (such as Newsweek's recent flogging) serves to get the underlying issues into the public mind.  Still, no outrage.  Perhaps a bit of parlour skepticism, but that's all.  We have to face the fact that most Americans' relationship to national or international issues of war, poverty, disease, etc., are entirely grounded in the personal.  Or, to be more cynical, grounded in self-interest.  The tide wasn't turning against McCarthy until he immolated himself by picking the wrong enemies and Murrow trained his camera on it.  The tide turned against Vietnam when the draft expanded to college campuses.  Public opposition is not based on higher ideals.  In fact, calling it "public" opposition is misleading--it's a million individual furies that change the course in times like these.  We don't have those numbers.    9/11 is an empty slogan already.  Thus far, these issues that have enraged the centrists and progressives are NOT creating widespread, personal impact for everyday Americans--the impacts are all abstract or diffuse (like the opportunity-cost of  the deficit), the cost in blood is horrible, but not overwhelming, and gas prices are even falling.  Americans have lived off the spoils of the long war for a long time.  We are used to disaster outside our borders - in most people's minds, that's right where it belongs, right where it has always been.  As long as gas is cheap, food is cheap, and the TV is on in America, the natural order is being maintained.  Someday we'll get the historiographic treatment we deserve, but I'm not holding my breath.

The bottom line is that everybody expected Iraq to be at least as easy & successful as Afghanistan (even easier, actually, because the terrain was more favorable), and none of the "smart" politicians were willing to go on record opposing a triumphant military victory. Sadly, that probably includes Bill & Hillary Clinton.

I vaguely remember an ironic, candid quote by ex-Air Force big-wig Merril McPeak. I'm paraphrasing him, but the gist was "I'm nuts to oppose this Iraq war. Everybody's going to get a medal & everybody's going to come home. But nevertheless, I still oppose it because I just can't see the need to go to war."

Only brave politicians who cared more about their country than their careers (like Gore, Wes Clark, Dean & Gary Hart) were willing to go out on a limb and strike a note of caution & warning. And all of them, I believe, have paid a political price for their opposition. Opposing a war which your country's military officers support is never good politics.

FWIW, on the day the war started Gore made a statement "I would not have started this war", but according to people who were there his tone was conciliatory and he focused on the importance of the post-war reconstruction. It was only after it became clear how careless and arrogant the administration had been in post-war planning that the really angry speeches started, in August 2003. Gore gave a speech on civil liberties & detainee treatment in October 2003 and after Abu Graibh in 2004 he really flipped his lid.

The funny thing is, I think Iraq really should have gone at least as well, or better, than Afghanistan. Only the administration's incredible hubris and bad decision-making has made it go so much worse than expected.

But I think it's also necessary to say that us anti-war folks must not act like we deserve some kind of medal or cookie for opposing the Iraq war. We have to realize that all elections are relentlessly about the future, and what needs to be done going forward.

Do Democrats understand that Americans are eager for guidance on moving forward in the WOT, and on other issues, and are not at all eager to hold the Bush administration accountable for the many catastrophic mistakes they have made in the past? If so, they can get elected. If not, not.

Do you know that up to now I thought Anonymous Hero was one person? I pictured a middle-aged Hungarian emigre tech worker who was a sophomore in college.

Yes, history is written by the victors. As such, in 100 years this history won't be written by the democrats or the republicans; rather, it will be  written by the Chinese. Given their history of xenophobia, they will probably see it as the damn foolishness it is.  

that as a nation we had what was a very natural and decidedly emotional reaction to the events of 9/11. The national psyche needed some serious looking after.

Our government officials in both the executive and congress acquiesced to the masses that were crying out for retribution. However that might be expected, it was truly the wrong response. Responsible leadership would have found the mental fortitude to put aside how badly it hurt and avoid a thoughtless reaction. Sure we got after the Taliban but it wasn't enough for many and basically the WH and Congress caved to hawkish demands for revenge.

It was wrong because both the WH and Congress allowed the nation to be guided based on emotion. So much for deliberative and clear headed thought. If ever there was a need and a time for being objective and finding truth this was it. We struck out like a little child at what we thought was the source of our pain in order to soothe our injury.

Not only did we err through acting out of emotion but we got it quite wrong as well. Throughout most of the Afghanistan campaign we were running on pure emotion and it created a circumstance void of clear thought. We basically let OBL get away because of this. Various assessments were made that were wildly off the mark even though there were some who knew the conditions we faced very well. They weren't listened to because they were using logic and knowledge while most were doing something else entirely. In such a climate sound decisions are hard to come by. Having ignored our best military planners relative to the scope of the requirements only compounded the difficulty of the task. Bush is big on following his gut. Well guess what? You better know something about bees if you intend on attacking a hornets nest. And if you don't you better ask around for advice from people who know and then listen carefully to what they have to say. And it might even be wise to listen to the onlookers who might happen to know a thing or two as well.

Anyway, you get my drift. The experienced people that likely knew the way things should have been done were ignored (or fired). In place of that we had a bunch of cowboys who had not a clue. And still don't. And you'll notice how much tightening up has gone on in the second term in the Bush WH. They have circled the wagons even tighter than before and are potentially even less inclined than before of listening to sound advice. Purely dogmatic in every regard. No exceptions.

It is a virtual certainty that historians will treat this episode harshly. And with good reason.

thepeoplechoose

History will say the American people were affected with a severe case of sleeping sickness caused by the droning of the MSM about events that matter little to average citizens. The MSM has, or so it seems, decided to stop reporting on Iraq now that there is an "Iraqi Government" in place and "Democracy" is flourishing. One gets the impression that all the "news" is sanitized by the Administration before the MSM will report it thus resulting in a miasma of misinformation  permeating the country.

Too much of what passes for discourse on this and other blogs is the same tired old Us vs. Them partisan nattering.  The idea that the Democrats can make hay over Bush admin intelligence manipulation at this very late date – even if they were capable of doing so – is naïve.  How about trying to look at problems and issues without partisan blinders once and a while?  The results might be interesting.

Isakson is my Senator too, I am sorry to say. I have written him and also Chambliss on other issues and they responded with a similar "bug letter".

The reason there's not more outcry about Iraq is because of an unspoken contract between the rulers of this country and the rest of us: They can do whatever they want as long as they keep us safe from the terrorists.

They can declare war on whoever they want. For whatever reason they want. They can funnel trillions to their friends. They can take away our rights. They can make everybody pray to Jesus before business meetings, make schoolchildren wear Burkas, raise gas prices, pardon corporate executives...they can do, literally, whatever they want, as long as there are no more terrorist attacks. That is the implicit deal. And that is why, much to progressives' chagrin, none of these stories about Bush's wrongdoing get any traction. Torture? Yawn. Downing Street Memo? Uh...where the fuck is Downing Street? 100,000 dead Iraqi's? Fuck them - they are Arabs. 1700 dead American troops? Well, they signed up of their own free will, plus they're mostly Mexicans and hillbillies. Tax cuts for the rich? Well, I might be rich someday.

Oh yeah, I forgot - they gotta keep the cable TV going and there can't be any interruption in the sports seasons. Ohter than that, Bush has free reign. Us Chicken Littles, running around, screaming that the sky is falling and that the war is "wrong"...well, we're just quaint. Quaint remnants of something called democracy, which was really just a big pain in the ass anyway. Welcome to the American Monarchy. We have chosen to be subjects rather than citizens, dependent on the King's benificence for our national well being. This is the new social contract. It might take some time for those of us accustomed to thinking they are supposed to have a voice in our government to get it through our thick skulls.

"understanding"... I think that is a really good word.  No judgement, just a question.  Here's my response, no judgement.  Just a number of ideas and how each idea would contribute to denial.

 1.  Of the things people must worry about, Iraq is not at the top of the list.  You don't really care about the details.  What's done is done.

2.  People are busy, but they know someone over there in Iraq.  How difficult is it to say "my son" or "my loved one" is over there fighting a war that was made on false pretenses.--Again, why would you take the time to figure out where the errors were.  You care a lot more about where things will be headed than where things came from.  How do we stop/clean up this mess?  Let's focus on that.

3.  You actually believe the president is an honest person.  It was a simple mistake made by some of his subordinates, but now the democrats are just trying to play politics with it and attack Bush's character.

4.  The spreading of democracy, the liberation of people, fighting for freedom.... all of which Iraq symbolizes for some individuals... is one of the few positive things that has happened during our slumping economy of post-Clinton.  Now, it too is looking crappy...

5.  FOX news.  It is amazing that almost half of all Bush voters believed that we FOUND WMD in Iraq.  Can you believe that???? Fox news is the sole source of news for too many people.  We need to convince people to obtain their news from multiple sources.

I think the original question is an important question to learn from.  Much like "why do we let the national debt get bigger and bigger and bigger?  Why won't someone act responsibly and stop this constantly enlarging pit?"--politics.  What would Senator Kerry, what would any politician gain by continually trying to make a huge issue out of Iraq?  Almost every one of them voted for the war.  The country does not want people to point fingers, they want problems to be solved.

We were told that Saddam Hussein was a problem.  Few people stood up to dispute this assertion (yes, many internationals did, and a few domestics, but most politicians did not).  The solution to the problem was fighting a war, which we "won".

The current problem we are facing concerning "denial" is that there was never a considerable and credible opposition that was opposed to the Iraqi intelligence and the Iraqi war by either major party.  Thus, when you tell someone... "hey, you remember a few years ago when..."  They are NOT going to care unless you really try to sell your argument.  Unfortunately, most politicians don't want to spend their time trying to sell a point that is good for the sake of truth, but serves no practical purpose as far as politics go.

-Zen Blade 

they believe there is a connection between 9/11 and Saddam?  Over and over on cable news shows, guest or callers or e-mailers will make the charge and it is NEVER corrected by the host of the show.

Senator Iskason (R-Georgia) wrote (well, the senator's staff member<s> wrote) something in his letter that really caught my eye.

"The sacrifice for both Americans and Iraqis has been great..."

I'm just wondering, has anyone asked Senator Iskason just what he has sacrificed or continues to sacrifice due to the ongoing war in Iraq?

The senator reminds me of a certain prominent major national magazine writer with a penchant for playing with the facts on a significant issue that affects all Americans.

Either that, or a certain blog boss with a penchant for asking for information about a certain prominent major national magazine writer, receiving said information, confirming receipt of said information from multiple sources, and then taking no action whatsoever.

Just spinning the story, dodging the issue, and raking in the contributions, three peas in a D.C. pod.

Part of the problem is also the lack of accountability of this administration.  Since the intel was massaged and analysts are under gag orders the public, in general, even if they wanted to know couldn't get the details.  And for the public in general it doesn't matter.  Most of them have confidence in Bush to protect us, rightly or wrongly.  The reason is that if we "take the fight" to them it isn't a war we will have to fight on our soil.  And since 9/11 there have been no further attacks on US soil, and that adds to the impression that Bush is protecting us in the public's mind.  Thus they ignore any lies or refusal to explain what happened.

Josh's remarks here and in The Hill column are a bullseye. This has been apparent of many of us for some time now. It is reprehensible that the intelligence analysts are being blamed for providing the false 'fix' that was required of them by their superiors. The congressional inquiry into 'what went wrong' was blatantly fraudulent.

But the root of all this duplicity is much, much deeper, and goes where no one in Congress or the country is willing to go. That would require a critical examination of the role of clandestine US intelligence and organized crime in American politics, especially since WWII. Alliances of convenience made in postwar Italy may have had some long-term undesirable consequences, at least for those idealists among us. (And both the war and Manhattan Project taught us how to manage top secret "black budget" military operations.) Where some see spinelessness as the problem with our political opposition, could it not be something far more nefarious at work?

The master narrative will not allow us to pursue any such line of questioning. But critical events in the US over the last 50 years, most notably involving political assassinations, have played a key role in shaping our current regime and press. Watergate was an aberration. The Warren Commission was more the norm (incl. the October Surprise, Iran Contra, etc.). The success of the JFK assassination was not only in its removal of a sitting US president in broad daylight, but in the fact that whoever did it was powerful enough to get away with it without becoming identified or punished.  Might this happen again with respect to the current war in Iraq?

If there ever comes a day for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in our beloved country that goes to the roots of our half century of crises, I am sure the culprits will justify their actions on the basis of their patriotism, and on information that they absolutely could not divulge to the general public. But the real American tragedy will be in that if they ever do divulged the truth, and the depth and breadth of the deception and lies, our public is so well conditioned that it will never believe them or take them seriously. And that, in a nutshell, will be the ultimate success of the rightwing radicals in the post WWII era.

Not to mention part of a large community that was utterly convinced that John Kerry was going to win in a landslide.  Media has gotten sophisticated to the point where all of us, conservatives and liberals alike, can stuff ourselves with a propaganda of choice.

It's not a fear of physical destruction, or another terrorist attack. It's a fear of helplessness, a fear that all of our vaunted military, economic, and cultural power just doesn't count for all that much in the end. What better way to assuage this fear than a Crusade for Democracy?

The Washington elites of both parties have been in the business of enabling repressive Arab and Muslim regimes for decades, (not to mention giving Israel better than fair treatment), in part because of our strategic interests during the cold war, but fundamentally because oil is the lifeblood of the American dream (and especially the dream of the American elites). Then (not surprisingly) along came 9/11 to which there were effectively two possible responses.

The liberal internationalists seem to see the threat of Islamist terrorism as one among many security threats facing this country, to be countered and contained by some combination of international police and intelligence operations, with military actions reserved primarily for states that attack us or are harboring non-state networks that have attacked us. From this perspective the Iraq war has always made little sense. It is to them a "diversion from the real war on terror." What they seem to want is a "return to normal" (that is, the 1990s) when American empire had EU and UN cover, albeit now with a multinational effort to suppress terror networks. The trouble with this point of view is both strategic and political. Recognizing that one of the three chief reasons we are hated in the Arab and wider Muslim world is that we have in the past (and continue to be) hypocritical on the democracy front (talking it up while enabling repressive Muslim dictatorships), simply targeting non-state networks without working to reform the fundamental political dynamics of the region and our co-dependent relationships with Arab and Muslim regimes (as the liberal internationalists seem to want us to do...when did Kerry ever mention the words Iraq and democracy or Arab and democracy in the same sentence?) is a recipe for many, many years or decades of terrorist attacks against us. And of course it is a non-starter with the American people, who had a chance to vote for a muscular liberal internationalist last year, and didn't.

The second possible response to 9/11 and the threat posed by Islamist terrorism comes to us from those beloved neocons and liberal hawks, and happens to be the course we are actually following. They recognize America, with her more than 700 bases around the world, and unparalleled military and economic supremacy, to be an imperial power. They recognize the dependence of the global economy (including and especially the American economy) on oil. They recognize the role that repressive Arab and Muslim dictatorships, and our enabling relationships with those dictatorships play in the threat of Islamist terrorism against us. They recognize the chance for power and profit. And they recognize that the democratic aspirations of the people of the Arab world are far more widespread than their opponents seem to think. The war in Iraq was in short about all of these things - oil, power, profit, planting the seeds of "democracy" (which has come throughout much of the democratic world to mean choosing which brand of elites we wish to govern us, not rule by the people) in the heart of the middle east, and a healthy dose of lingering cold war right-wing paranoia about the role of states in terrorism. And as far as selling the war to the American people, all you needed was a brown faced bogeyman who may or may not have had bad,  weapons, and some post 9/11 anger and it was an easy sell. Even Al Gore could've pulled it off.

The war could still fail, and the chaos could still spread to neighboring countries. But this is not Vietnam. 2/3 of Iraqis at least want their new "democracy" to succeed (and to be sure it will be a much, much better government than the previous one, even if its likely to be more corrupt, backward and plutocratic than our own [which is quite an achievement these days]), and even the perennial pessimist Juan Cole acknowledges that the Sunnis will ultimately tire of their defiance of empire. The American people are getting pissy, but they know there's no way out anytime soon, and they're going to vote for the guy (or gal) in 08 who holds the line in Iraq, and stays the course not only there, but in promoting "democracy" throughout the region. If both candidates are equally convincing in this regard, they're going to vote for the one with the more sane domestic policies. No one should think that this thing is near over, or even halfway there yet. There will be future interventions. There will likely be a draft. We will see our liberties further eroded, and our taxes raised dramatically before it is all over. The only question is: do the Democrats have the stomach for it? Do the Democrats want to become the war party?

If the answer is yes, they need to put their kvetching about this war aside, and get behind the liberal hawks in the party. If the answer is no, they need to start behaving like a real opposition party, taking a page from the WW II GOP playbook, standing up for civil liberties (do people realize we are indicting art professors and raiding the homes of pulp novelists researching terrorism for their books?), states' rights, individual liberty, freedom of speech, fiscal conservatism, and against American empire (even their beloved Clinton-era American empire). John Kerry tried to have it both ways; you can't (see the 1936 and 1940 elections for more about that). It's decision time for Democrats.

Excellent post. My only quibble is that the military didn't seem too concerned about WMD prior to, during and after the invasion.

Sure, there was a lot of hoo-hah from reporters about gas masks and stuff, but would a sane military commander mass hundred of thousands of troops and support personnel in Kuwait knowing that they could be hit with WMD? And as we all know, there wasn't a great deal of effort put into securing suspected WMD sites.

To me it just doesn't add up.