Shadowland: When Victory Was Ours

So, hell yes, I'm glad he's out of power, and most Iraqis are, too. But it's Americans I'm worried about. Whatever the history of Saddam's crimes, the history of colonial and quasi-colonial occupations in the Middle East is very grim indeed, for the occupiers as well as the occupied. There was never any reason to think Saddam could hold off the American onslaught in open warfare. But there was every reason to expect that Iraq under U.S. and British occupation would be an expensive, demoralizing quagmire. So I reported, and so it is. The latest Gallup poll from liberated Baghdad shows the Americans and Brits are mostly eyed with "disapproval," even as they die trying to bring peace and order.

Was this a war that had to be fought to protect the people of the United States?

That's the bleakest irony in this whole affair. Precisely because President Bush was so persuasive at the U.N. a year ago, Saddam once again was isolated, scrutinized and contained by the entire world community. By January, Bush--and the United Nations--had defeated Saddam's ambitions without firing a shot (apart from occasional attacks on his air defenses).

Meanwhile, the war that Americans really needed to fight and win, the war against the specific terrorists who actually did carry out the September 11 atrocity, was going very well. Al Qaeda's haven in Afghanistan had been conquered by Washington with full support from the United Nations and NATO. Osama bin Laden might still be at large in some rocky corner of the country, the Taliban might be regrouping here and there, but the operational masterminds of the attack had been hunted down and caught, spilling the secrets of their plans, allowing the United States and its allies to stave off any new 9/11s.

At the beginning of this year, with Americans alert and engaged, isolating Iraq, vanquishing the key elements of Al Qaeda and backed by just about the entire world, the United States was safer than it had been for a long time. If President Bush had wanted to land on an aircraft carrier on some blustery January morning and declare victory, he could have, and he'd have been right. Instead, he launched his pre-emptive war in Iraq and began this thankless occupation.

Could the press have stopped him? I don't think so. This was a fight the president wanted and believed in, and he's not a man to be swayed by mere news reports. But, yes, we could have made a better showing, asked tougher questions, been more aggressive presenting what we knew to be the facts. Then, at least, the American people would have known when they'd won. Now, we're looking at war without end.

© 2003