Nothing noble about Iraq invasion

Neocon Jonah Goldberg has written an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times so obscene, so mendacious, so full of lies and apologies that it deserve to be exposed sentence for sentence for what it is: a farcical interpretation of the current administration's foreign policy disaster that is the occupation of Iraq. Of course, Goldberg, no longer able to duck reality as his ilk have tried desperately to do during the last three and a half years, is now "admitting" the Iraq was was a "mistake". But, you see, it was a "worthy" mistake, and we could even now choose to leave the country in the throes of anarchy "with honor".

Let's go through some of his absurd argument.

[Th]e antiwar types aren't really pacifists. They favor military intervention when it comes to stopping genocide in Darfur or starvation in Somalia or doing whatever that was President Clinton did in Haiti.

Um, many "anti-war" types actually are pacifists based on either the conscience or religious beliefs. Perhaps he's never heard of the Friends (AKA "Quakers", although they don't like being referred to as such". To claim that the same people who were correctly against the Iraq war in 2002 were the same people who rubber-stamped Clinton's foreign policy mistakes such as bombing and sanctioning Iraq or his disastrous and self-serving intervention in Haiti is nothing more than a transparent and clumsy lie.

The failure to find weapons of mass destruction is a side issue. The WMD fiasco was a global intelligence failure, but calling Saddam Hussein's bluff after 9/11 was the right thing to do.

That's interesting, I seem to remember that the Iraq war was expressly sold on the idea that Saddam Hussein was violating the UN Resolution calling for it to disarm. . .that is to say, sold on lies and scaremongering as there was no real "evidence" to back up the Bush administration's claims. Goldberg believes that "calling Hussein's bluff" was the right thing to do after the September 11 terrorist attack, but fails to even pretend to support this ridiculous claim. Why exactly was it the right thing to do, now that we're in year three of an illegal occupation of a country in the Middle East that has become a breeding ground for terrorists and led to the death of tens of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of US soldiers.

Washington's more important intelligence failure lay in underestimating what would be required to rebuild and restore post-Hussein Iraq. The White House did not anticipate a low-intensity civil war in Iraq, never planned for it and would not have deemed it in the U.S. interest to pay this high a price in prestige, treasure and, of course, lives.

Mr. Goldberg needs to take an intro class in logic. If there was no reason to invade Iraq (at least none he deigns to mention in his diatribe), then what difference does it make that the biggest mistake was not planning for the insurgency. The biggest mistake was starting the war in the first place. The insurgency was a natural and predictable outcome of a US-led military flagrently disobeying the UN Security Council and international law and invading a country that didn't exactly want to be "liberated" by us.

Further, if the WMD wasn't the justification in Goldberg's mind for the war, then perhaps humanitarian intervention was? But as he states. the intensity of the guerilla warfare doesn't make this particular conflict worthwhile for us because it costs too much money (and of course lives). If this was truly an honorable war, why would it matter how many lives and how much money it would cost to defeat the insurgency? After all, World War II was certainly no cakewalk.

Goldberg would have the American people believe that the problem with the war is not its illegality or mounting death-toll, but rather that our country failed to predict how "tough" it would be. Of course, Bush repeated ad nauseum in the run--up to the war that it would be a difficult and costly battle, so much so that he drew resources slated for the Afghanistan front to fund it.

If it was a mistake to go in, we should get out, some argue. But this is unpersuasive. A doctor will warn that if you see a man stabbed in the chest, you shouldn't rush to pull the knife out. We are in Iraq for good reasons and for reasons that were well-intentioned but wrong. But we are there.

This analogy is just silly. The proper analogy, not to belabor the point, is not whether to leave a knife in one's chest, but rather to stick the knife in the first place. See, the invasion was the literal "sticking the knife in the heart of US national security", as the most recent National Intelligence Estimate has made clear.

Again, he says we are in Iraq for "good reasons", but can't bring himself to list them for his by now utterly confused readers.

Those who say that it's not the central front in the war on terror are in a worse state of denial than they think Bush is in. Of course it's the central front in the war on terror. That it has become so is a valid criticism of Bush, but it's also strong reason for seeing our Iraqi intervention through. If we pull out precipitously, jihadism will open a franchise in Iraq and gain steam around the world, and the U.S. will be weakened.

This is a very interesting point, except, what if our continued presence there is actually worse for the security situation there than pulling out? But as we'll see, Goldberg wouldn't have us pull out unless a very clever pre-condition was fulfilled:

I think we should ask the Iraqis to vote on whether U.S. troops should stay. Polling suggests that they want us to go. But polling absent consequences is a form of protest. With accountability, minds may change and appreciation for the U.S. presence might grow. If Iraqis voted "stay," we'd have a mandate to do what's necessary to win, and our ideals would be reaffirmed. If they voted "go," our values would also be reaffirmed, and we could leave with honor. And pretty much everyone would have to accept democracy as the only legitimate expression of national will. Finishing the job is better than leaving a mess. And if we can finish the job, the war won't be remembered as a mistake.

So now the citizens of the country we illegally invaded and have occupied for the last three years should be allowed a referendum on whether was stay or go? Funny how we didn't need such consent when we decided to burn the barn down for the last three years. But let's put that to one side. The Iraqi people have already expressed their opinion, clearly and repeatedly as Goldberg himself notes. But the problem is that these poor, ignorant, utterlt ungrateful Iraqis are voicing their opinion without the attachment of any consequence.

So I guess in Goldberg's formulation, we must put the question as "Do you want us to stay or go? But if you say we will go, we will go and the country we destroyed will be left on it's own, without reperations, the rebuilding of infrastructure, etc. Here's the analogy: an inebriated man stabs what he thinks is an armed man in a barfight. But the victim was not armed and did no constitute a threat to him (or anyone else, for that matter).

After a few minutes pause, the aggressor asks the innocent, maimed victim if he would like for him to continue kicking him while he bleeds to death, or if he would prefer the aggressor leaves the man to die without assistance.

Sounds honorable and noble, don't you think?

Update: Norman Solomon really nailed this whole incompetence-dodge issue a while back here.