Their answers don't address was the war worth it if Iraq cannot adopt some type of workable political structure. The respondents you quote focus on the very short term Saddam is gone and the long term shift in the governance of Middle East countries.

What if there is a terrible price to pay between now and then (e.g., prolonged civil war, prolonged instability that ripples across Iraqi border).  Is is still worth it?

Regardless very interesting to hear what a few locals think.

The three Middle Easterners hardly seem to form a representative group, do they?

Excellent post.  When taking the Iraq War into consideration one must include the entire list of intangibles.  To be sure, the two most vocal critics of the war are Al Qaeda and the American public.  The American press, in addition, has gone to great strides to lose this war at home not because its aims are illegitimate but because the Bush Administration has managed the conflict so poorly.  To those who oppose this conflict and see no hope and only failure, I would remind you that history tells that judging a conflict prematurely often leads to erroneous conclusions.  World War I, for example, was "the war to end all wars."  That proved to be horribly false.  The American Civil War was said to have divided the nation permanently no matter the outcome.  Once again, a logical but very false conclusion.  Now, many consider the Iraq War to be a miserable failure with only civil war to show.  While this may be, I would point out that stability will return to Iraq and the results might be pleansantly surprising both for Iraqi's and Americans.  As the experts mentioned in Anne-Marie's post indicate, the democratic process has taken shape in Iraq--elections have shown this.  Despite the sectarian violence which is currently ravaging the nation, both sides are still negotiating could easily come to an agreement with a bit of compromise.  The point: let's not predict the conclusion of the conflict before it is over.

There are, in fact, divisions lingering from the Civil War, but they may have more to do with Reconstruction (which is crucial in Iraq, too).

A dead-certain conclusion for any war is lots of dead people. One can pre-judge reliably that a lot of people will be pissed off as well as some pleased.

We all love to blame the press (you have seen liberals complaining about corporatization) but leave them out. Events occurring as hoped need no comment, since they are expected. Things going wrong of course should be reported so improvements can be made.

And there is plenty going wrong, as desperation builds among American troops leading to excesses of killing (more today). It serves no one to soft-pedal the messiness of war. 

Ann-Marie is right to be more interested in the three responses from the Middle East. The overwhelmingly negative American opinion on the subject has to be viewed in the context of this quote from her statement:

And if the Administration had been willing to make a full and honest assessment of the true costs and the uncertainty of the benefits before invading Iraq, I doubt that a majority of the American people would have supported the war.

Given that, there was no possibility of launching the war without lying about its aims and costs. That inevitably has led to disappointment with many people conned by the pretence that it was about "disarming Sadaam" or their assumptions that it would strengthen American hegemony and benefit Israel now resentful of having been conned.

That appears to be a sharp increase in opposition. But it doesn't translate into an anti-war movement or even serious mainstream proposals to withdraw.

What's missed is that the minority who thinks it was worth it no longer consists overwhelmingly of people who thought they were supporting a very different war and now includes substantial numbers of people who agree with Ann-Marie that:

Is the cause of freeing a people and pushing for progressive political and economic change in the most dangerous region in the world worth fighting and dying for? Undoubtedly.

 

That minority will prevail for the same reason it has always prevailed. Progressives will fight and die for progress and reactionaries will fight and die to oppose progress, but the conservative majority will always just passively adapt to whatever the status quo happens to be.

The reactionaries in Iraq have no program that could possibly result in their victory. The Iraqi people have no choice but to fight.

Most conservatives in America also know that they have no option but to "stay the course". They can't "cut and run" with any hope of restoring the previous US policy of backing autocracy in the name of "stability". They can't come up with a plan to impose a friendly pro-US regime (ie puppets) in Iraq because that has never been possible (and was never, despite their fantasies, a US war aim).

Progressive economic and social change requires democracy which in the middle east necessarily implies governments far less compliant to US and Israeli interests than the prevailing autocracies, including the participation of islamist parties such as those democratically elected in Iraq, Palestine and soon Egypt. (Hezbollah also joined the Lebanese Government for the first time after Syria's withdrawal and a coalition ranging from the Muslim Borhterhood to the Communist Party was recently announced to take power in Syria - with Voice of America hailing this development.

A majority of the American people would certainly have opposed a war that aimed to achieve that and many have in the past supported large expenditures of blood and treasure to prevent such "anti-American" developments - eg in Vietnam. Even now the Bush administration has not spelled out that "democracy" really does mean government of, by and for the people of each country rather than "friendly governments".

Yet the strategic reality America faced after 9/11 was that the policy of backing autocracies in the name of security and stability had imploded - as Bush said it bought neither security nor stability. There is no viable long term option for defeating islamofascist terrorism other than draining the swamps of stagnant societies in which it thrives.

The remainder (middle part) of Ann-Marie's statement says:

But has this war--with its disdain for allies and institutions, its willful blindness to any scenario other than easy victory and immediate democracy, and its planners' irresponsibility so deep as to be immoral in failing to protect the heritage, infrastructure and lives of a people who never asked for war--been worth it? Squandering lives and vast sums of money through a combination of arrogance and negligence can never be worth it.

 

This assumes that the planners were wilfully blind rather than constrained by reality. In fact they were simply lying and the costs and difficulties so far have been dramatically less than what was predicted by the foreign policy establishment when it was launched.

Even the American military fatalaties so far are still fewer than the civilian casualties on a single day of the fruits of the previous policy advocated by that establishment and the half a trillion cost so far is far less than the trillions lost on that single day.

While there has undoubtedly been arrogance and blunders from the administration that has to be viewed in the context of a foreign policy establishment (and military establishment) that could hardly avoid making blunders in fighting a revolutionary war given its previous orientation to counter-revolutionary war.

Was the war worth it? No.

Was it was because of the way the war has been fought? No.

Was it because of its undertaking in the first place? Yes.

An immoral war of choice is a war of aggression. This breaks international law. To con the post 9/11 traumatized American people into supporting a war so the "mushroom cloud" won't be unleashed on them USA compounds the crime.

See today's NY Times for even more evidence of Bush's dishonesty in this matter.

Tom

bluebell

Oh sure, it will be a huge success for Iraqis.  Can't wait till they democratically follow their Afghan brothers and start sentencing people to death for converting to Christianity. 

We have no idea how to measure "success" because we're dealing with complex cultures about which we are clueless.  If we succeed it will only prove the adage:  "God protects fools, drunks and the United States".

I dont think the war was worth it i think it is all Bush and he should be impeached and someone new get in to office and fix his mess if they can because he did such a bad job

WAS the war worth it?

Is it over?  Gee.... I must have missed the memo. 

For those of us who increasingly think that the balance sheet of the war is almost entirely negative (in my case because of the way it has been fought more than its undertaking in the first place) -- which describes virtually every American queried, the gap between our perceptions and the perceptions of those actually in the region should give us pause.

 

This is certainly a misleading statement.  It suggests that the opinions of the three individuals in question are somehow representative of "those in the region".  But there are lots of people in the region, and one can always find some people who support just about any policy.

The "Middle Easterners" on Time's list are no doubt fine and courageous individuals.  But they represent a small group of cosmopolitan, Western-educated and Western-affiliated democracy activists - two from Lebanon and one from Egypt.  Not only are Mesopotamia and the Arabian Peninsula completely ignored in this little survey, but those who were selected were apparently selected for their predicatably pro-Western views.  They provide little reason to "give us pause".

One, for example, is a half-Lebanese opinion editor of of an English-language newspaper, and a contributing editor to Reason magazine.  He has a masters from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Another is a long-time associate of Ahmed Chalabi, and worked with him to found the International Committee for a Free Iraq in 1991.  He helped organize the lobbying effort to pass the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998.  He was thus a vigorous anti-Saddam activist, and advocate of regime change, from early on.  He has a substantial academic teaching background in the United States and the UK.

Hisham Kassem is the editor of a newspaper that is the mouthpiece of Ayman Nour's Tomorrow Party, a party that has been the beneficiary of strong US support going back to the Clinton administration, and which received about 7% of the vote in Egypt's elections

I would submit that, despite their many virtues, none of these respondents is well-placed to give us a view of the invasion from the perspective of ordinary Middle Easterners.  They represents the views of a small, affluent, urban liberal class, somewhat removed from the actual fighting.

I am really stunned by the slovenly journalistic standards at work in this article.  What criteria were used to select the group of "experts and thinkers"  Did the author simply call up a few friends from her rolodex?

Polls in the region show that Middle East publics were and remain overwhelmingly opposed to the war, and decidedly believe it was not "worth it".  Yet apparently those people should all have their opinions discounted, because they do not rub shoulders with the right Western liberal crowds in Washington, NGOs and the media.

Are there any Iraqis in the group?  Jordanians?  Syrians?  Emiratis?  Omanis?  Yemenis?  Any diplomats or other government officials?  Any ordinary Arabs? 

The war has been an unprecedented bonanza to Al Qeada, they vocally supported George W. Bush being re-elected as he has created a recruiting boom for them. Witness the IED's now killing Americans in Afghanistan, Iraq has become not just a terrorist candy store full of explosives, but also a new Al Qeada training ground for urban terrorists. Nothing like those sadistic torture pictures to fulfill bin Laden's wildest dreams of demonizing America. Excellent indeed.

jdledell

I'm not what one would consider a casual observer.  As someone who has studies history intensly, I can tell you a plethora of reasons why the Iraq War is neither particularly terrible nor fundamentally unprecedented.  Yet, this knowledge belies the fact that we are in the midst of an enormous socio/economic paradigm shift akin to the French Revolution, Industrial Revolution, and World War II.  The Iraq War will likely be looked back upon as a minor footnote in this continual cultural struggle.

Tom

I agree and despite the situatino in Iraq right now, it would be foolish to say all is lost.  In fact, while it may be true that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is winding down (or will very soon), it is likely that the entire conflict itself is far from being settled.  I mentioned elsewhere that pessimism is natural when war is in mid-course.  It always appears as if all hope is lost.  Our own Civil War displayed that firsthand. 

Tom

I agree that the U.S. will have very little right in taking credit.  It seems clear at this juncture that our efforts in Iraq are purely self-serving and have little to do with promoting the well-being of those who live there.  I've mentioned on other threads that a Middle East "revolution" of sorts has been all but inevitible since the fall of the Ottoman Empire after the armistice ended World War I.  Since that point, the region has seen nearly a century of puppet regimes, leaders of convenience (for Western nations), and false prophets claiming to be the Divine link to Allah.  That the region has in abundance the most important natural resource of the post Industrial Revolution world is likely the reason for continued instability.  Indeed, angry anti-West Muslims have very legitimate arguments as to why their nations have been continually underminded by the West.  But let us not forget that the "West" is not merely the United States.  Europe and China (and even Russia) all have skeletons in their closet when speaking of coersion in the region.  I would suspect that the final result in Iraq may indeed be three countries, or, there is yet a possibility that an inclusive government can be formed.  It would seem, however, that the Middle East of the last 50 or so years will be completely reformed within the next decade.

grayday101

Read this post from Mama, an Iraqi Blogger, if you want an opinion from a real Iraqi raising her family in Baghdad.  It is extremely poignant.

http://youngmammy.blogspot.com/

Gettysburg points to the American civil war as a parallel for how a war might not be clearly worth it mid fight, but definately so in retrospect.

What a bogus comparison. War is a continuation of politics by other means, and the American civil war was a continuation of domestic politics.

The Iraq war is a foreign invasion, not remotely comparable to the American civil war. If you want a comparison to American history, the closest parallel would be the war of 1812 (and even that isn't a close parallel). Would you argue the war of 1812 was worth it? Hardly.

When democracy arises from internal political processes, as with the American Revolution, it can thrive. When it is imposed by foreign occupiers, it almost always degenerates in to some dictatorship or kleptocracy, with democratic trappings such as rigged elections and other window dressing.

To even try to compare an external foreign occupation and regime change to the American civil war is a gross misreading of bot situations - they aren't remotely comparable.

Bo Raxo
--
"Bother," said Pooh as Satan pointed out the small print.