An untidy freedom

Lessons from the Iraq war, a bloody and comprehensive foreign-policy failure.

As the last US convoy rolled across Iraq’s border with Kuwait, US Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta signed Pentagon order EXORD 1003 Victor at 7 a m on December 18. The nearly nine-year-long Iraq war was officially over. It removed Saddam Hussein, but achieved few other objectives. That it was the most glaring and important foreign-policy failure at least since the end of the Cold War has become increasingly obvious.

The war, which was launched in March 2003 by a coalition dominated by the US and the UK, without full United Nations backing, was justified at the time by several different arguments. First, that Saddam Hussein was building up an illegal arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Second, that Hussein’s government had ties with the Al Qaeda. Third, that the shining example of a democratic Iraq would catalyse transitions away from dictatorship in the Arab world, making it a zone of stable Western allies. All of these justifications have been shredded by events, as many observers warned at the time they would be. No WMDs have been found. Indeed, the evidence for their existence, much trumpeted by the George W Bush-led White House before the war, is seen to have been exaggerated — and, in some cases, outright fabricated. No evidence of the Iraqi government’s ties with pan-Islamic militants has been found, either; but the anti-US insurrection in Iraq proved fertile ground for the strengthening of those aspects of political Islam with terrorist links. The Arab world has indeed moved towards democracy, but in spite of the events in Iraq, not because of them. The removal of all those with ties to the ruling Ba’ath Party left an unstable power vacuum, which consequently leans ever closer to Iran. Meanwhile, Iraq’s oil production is still only a fraction of what it was before the first Gulf War. And, most importantly, at least 100,000 Iraqis – over 30 a day – have died. The entire attitude to the war and reconstruction was laid bare by former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when, in response to a question about the post-invasion looting of irreplaceable artefacts from the Baghdad museum, he said: “Freedom’s untidy.” Enduring freedom for Iraq, it could be argued, has indeed been “untidy”.

Only starry-eyed dreamers could hope for some accountability for this fiasco. But, at least, some lessons should have been learned – most importantly, that regime change through military intervention is clearly nowhere near as easy as the Bush administration would have had us believe. Another crucial lesson is that self-serving justifications from government – of the sort that marked the fevered drumbeat that led up to the war – must be met with clear-eyed critique. Many politicians and liberal intellectuals who failed at performing that crucial critical function have since apologised and recanted their support for the war; else their legacy would be to be forever associated with a ghastly mistake, as many obituaries of the late Christopher Hitchens sadly pointed out. Like Vietnam and the Soviets’ Afghanistan adventure, the Iraq war will remain a reminder that realistic far-sightedness in foreign policy, and courage and independence in criticism, is integral to a well-functioning global order.