It was a good start by the Administration, I thought — steady, measured, and accomplished with minimal casualties (only later would we discover the degree to which our failure to put sufficient military pressure on Al Qaeda forces at Tora Bora may have led to bin Laden’s escape). And so, along with the rest of the world, I waited with anticipation for what I assumed would follow: the enunciation of a U.S. foreign policy for the twenty-first century, one that would not only adapt our military planning, intelligence operations, and homeland defenses to the threat of terrorist networks but build a new international consensus around the challenges of transnational threats.
This new blueprint never arrived. Instead what we got was an assortment of outdated policies from eras gone by, dusted off, slapped together, and with new labels affixed. Reagan’s “Evil Empire” was now “the Axis of Evil.” Theodore Roosevelt’s version of the Monroe Doctrine — the notion that we could preemptively remove governments not to our liking — was now the Bush Doctrine, only extended beyond the Western Hemisphere to span the globe. Manifest destiny was back in fashion; all that was needed, according to Bush, was American firepower, American resolve, and a “coalition of the willing.”
Perhaps worst of all, the Bush Administration resuscitated a brand of politics not seen since the end of the Cold War. As the ouster of Saddam Hussein became the test case for Bush’s doctrine of preventive war, those who questioned the Administration’s rationale for invasion were accused of being “soft on terrorism” or “un-American.” Instead of an honest accounting of this military campaign’s pros and cons, the Administration initiated a public relations offensive: shading intelligence reports to support its case, grossly understating both the costs and the manpower requirements of military action, raising the specter of mushroom clouds.
The PR strategy worked; by the fall of 2002, a majority of Americans were convinced that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and at least 66 percent believed (falsely) that the Iraqi leader had been personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. Support for an invasion of Iraq — and Bush’s approval rating — hovered around 60 percent. With an eye on the midterm elections, Republicans stepped up the attacks and pushed for a vote authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein. And on October 11, 2002, twenty-eight of the Senate’s fifty Democrats joined all but one Republican in handing to Bush the power he wanted.
I was disappointed in that vote, although sympathetic to the pressures Democrats were under. I had felt some of those same pressures myself. By the fall of 2002, I had already decided to run for the U.S. Senate and knew that possible war with Iraq would loom large in any campaign. When a group of Chicago activists asked if I would speak at a large antiwar rally planned for October, a number of my friends warned me against taking so public a position on such a volatile issue. Not only was the idea of an invasion increasingly popular, but on the merits I didn’t consider the case against war to be cut-and-dried. Like most analysts, I assumed that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and coveted nuclear arms. I believed that he had repeatedly flouted UN resolutions and weapons inspectors and that such behavior had to have consequences. That Saddam butchered his own people was undisputed; I had no doubt that the world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
What I sensed, though, was that the threat Saddam posed was not imminent, the Administration’s rationales for war were flimsy and ideologically driven, and the war in Afghanistan was far from complete. And I was certain that by choosing precipitous, unilateral military action over the hard slog of diplomacy, coercive inspections, and smart sanctions, America was missing an opportunity to build a broad base of support for its policies.
And so I made the speech. To the two thousand people gathered in Chicago’s Federal Plaza, I explained that unlike some of the people in the crowd, I didn’t oppose all wars — that my grandfather had signed up for the war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed and had fought in Patton’s army. I also said that “after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this Administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance” and would “willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again.”
What I could not support was “a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.” And I said:
I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than the best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda.
The speech was well received; activists began circulating the text on the Internet, and I established a reputation for speaking my mind on hard issues — a reputation that would carry me through a tough Democratic primary. But I had no way of knowing at the time whether my assessment of the situation in Iraq was correct. When the invasion was finally launched and U.S. forces marched unimpeded through Baghdad, when I saw Saddam’s statue topple and watched the President stand atop the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, a banner behind him proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” I began to suspect that I might have been wrong — and was relieved to see the low number of American casualties involved.
And now, three years later — as the number of American deaths passed two thousand and the number of wounded passed sixteen thousand; after $250 billion in direct spending and hundreds of billions more in future years to pay off the resulting debt and care for disabled veterans; after two Iraqi national elections, one Iraqi constitutional referendum, and tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths; after watching anti-American sentiment rise to record levels around the world and Afghanistan begin to slip back into chaos — I was flying into Baghdad as a member of the Senate, partially responsible for trying to figure out just what to do with this mess.
The landing at Baghdad International Airport turned out not to be so bad — although I was thankful that we couldn’t see out the windows as the C-130 bucked and banked and dipped its way down. Our escort officer from the State Department was there to greet us, along with an assortment of military personnel with rifles slung over their shoulders. After getting our security briefing, recording our blood types, and being fitted for helmets and Kevlar vests, we boarded two Black Hawk helicopters and headed for the Green Zone, flying low, passing over miles of mostly muddy, barren fields crisscrossed by narrow roads and punctuated by small groves of date trees and squat concrete shelters, many of them seemingly empty, some bulldozed down to their foundations. Eventually Baghdad came into view, a sand-colored metropolis set in a circular pattern, the Tigris River cutting a broad, murky swath down its center. Even from the air the city looked worn and battered, the traffic on the streets intermittent — although almost every rooftop was cluttered with satellite dishes, which along with cell phone service had been touted by U.S. officials as one of the successes of the reconstruction.
I would spend only a day and a half in Iraq, most of it in the Green Zone, a ten-mile-wide area of central Baghdad that had once been the heart of Saddam Hussein’s government but was now a U.S.-controlled compound, surrounded along its perimeter by blast walls and barbed wire. Reconstruction teams briefed us about the difficulty of maintaining electrical power and oil production in the face of insurgent sabotage; intelligence officers described the growing threat of sectarian militias and their infiltration of Iraqi security forces. Later, we met with members of the Iraqi Election Commission, who spoke with enthusiasm about the high turnout during the recent election, and for an hour we listened to U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad, a shrewd, elegant man with world-weary eyes, explain the delicate shuttle diplomacy in which he was now engaged, to bring Shi’ite, Sunni, and Kurdish factions into some sort of workable unity government.