The Iraq war was justified

Everyone now agrees the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a mistake — left and right, hawk and dove. Dodgy intelligence, no weapons of mass destruction, a botched occupation, trillions spent, and above all the birth of ISIS.

I don’t dispute any of those facts. I dispute the verdict drawn from them, because that verdict is a snapshot mistaken for a conclusion. Run the clock from 2003 to today and judge the whole span of 23 years as a single event, and the net effect is very positive in comparison with the alternative: Saddam’s son Uday ruling Iraq today.

Start with the choice America actually faced, because critics always smuggle in a fantasy version of 2003 in which doing nothing was free and safe. It was neither.

Saddam had already invaded Kuwait. And after he was driven out, he did not become a quiet neighbour. He kept the Republican Guard massed along the Kuwaiti and Saudi borders. The US had to station roughly a hundred thousand troops in the region indefinitely, alongside no-fly zones that demanded a permanent air presence sustained by six thousand airmen. That is not peace. It is a siege with no end date and a vast standing cost. So the US had to end it.

It was never America’s plan — but the shattering of the Iraqi state opened a vacuum, and that vacuum acted as a magnet. It drew the hardline jihadist vanguard, from across the region and the wider world, into one place, in the open, where they were fought and destroyed — rather than left to fester in a hundred ungoverned corners. The caliphate was built, declared to the world as the great hope, and then ground into rubble in front of everyone.

Consequently, outside the irreducible fringe of fanatics, ordinary Muslims today look at violent extremism and see no future in it. That is a safer world. That is the huge benefit we are enjoying today.

The fall of Saddam in 2003 was the first move in a long unwinding. It removed an anchor of the region’s authoritarian bloc, and it opened two decades in which the strongmen and the theocrats steadily lost ground. Assad’s Syria did not survive that long arc. Iran reached the end of it isolated and alone — exposed enough that Israel and the United States could strike it more or less at will.

I am not claiming the Iraq War alone caused all of this; the Arab Spring and Syria’s own collapse had engines of their own. But Iraq was the enabling first domino. With Uday still standing today, it is not a stretch to think that Iraq and Iran — two old foes facing a common enemy in the US and Israel — might have closed ranks into some kind of alliance. With that bloc in place, it is very hard to see the chain ever beginning.

The reason America won this long war was due to two characteristics she used to possess: she was ideologically stubborn — she believed in the ideals she advocated — and she was rich and powerful enough to absorb a colossal error and come back to finish the job.

So yes — the cost in lives across these 23 years was enormous, and I won’t wave it away. But “it was costly" is not the same sentence as “it was a mistake." For the same reason, we don’t blame the UK and France for the massive loss of life in WWII simply because they declared war on Hitler.

The Iran war is not

Now, can you see why one could argue the Iraq War was justified, yet not be able to say the same of the current war with Iran?

Because the US no longer possesses either of the two characteristics that let her pull off a final victory through the many battles of that prolonged Iraq War over the last 20 years.

When it fought Saddam and ISIS, the US had unequivocal backing from all her allies — moral at the very least, and in many cases financial and military as well.

Today, America has abandoned all of her lofty ideals. She has lost all moral scruple — willing to backstab her most loyal, oldest friends for financial gain. None of her erstwhile allies wants anything to do with her war on Iran. I say erstwhile because I would argue that, even if many of them will not say it aloud, all her old allies despise her and have lost faith in her — not just because of a vile demagogue, but even more because of the majority of Americans who put him in office. I know the moron put up a brave face and said America doesn’t need any allies. Such immaturity is not worth rebuking.

Today the US’s debt is around 120% of GDP. It has sat above the size of the entire economy for more than a decade now, and is closing on — by some measures already past — the record she set winning two massive wars in Europe and Asia. And she has let it climb that high without yet firing a single shot in the war now looming over the Taiwan Strait.

Unlike the last time the US went to war in Iraq, this time everybody warned the administration that it would not work — including the Joint Chiefs of Staff he had hand-picked — but he went for the thrill ride anyway.

The result: Iran’s military strength is recovering fast, and her gain is enormous — control of the Strait of Hormuz.

America did not just fail to learn anything over the last 23 years — populism is making her a great deal dumber.