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.
做个明白人 
So shallow. She must be too old.
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Ms. Rice is director of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. She served as U.S. secretary of state, 2005-09.
By Condoleezza Rice
The war against Iran has been a limited war, and its outcome is likely to be inconclusive. But it has achieved enough to produce a far better Middle East.
The three-month military campaign degraded Iran‘s ability to project power by significantly damaging its conventional forces, missile stockpiles and proxies.
It drew America, Israel and the Arab states closer together through defense cooperation and intelligence sharing. In this regard, Israel has never been more secure. Israel responded furiously to the terrorist attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and pummeled Iranian proxies, including Hezbollah and Hamas, that threaten its population. Securing international support for its continued efforts to deal with that threat remains a diplomatic hurdle for Jerusalem. But many Arab regimes no longer question Israel’s legitimacy; instead, they seek the benefits of technological and economic cooperation with Israel. Modernization is their strongest motivation.
The war demonstrated that the Iranian regime’s leaders were physically vulnerable to U.S. military power and allied intelligence. It also showed that although Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz, that leverage is limited, as the U.S. blockade confronted Iran with the prospect of severe economic damage in return.
The war also had global implications. It showed that China is no friend of the Arab world, as Beijing watched from the sidelines as Iran attacked the economic infrastructure of the region. Ukraine, which used its advanced defensive capabilities to support the war effort against Iran, demonstrated that it is an asset to the U.S. and its allies. Given the mounting strategic losses for Russia — Syria, Venezuela, possibly Cuba and on the battlefield in Ukraine — this is the time to press the advantage on behalf of Kyiv.
Most important, along with Operation Midnight Hammer last June, Operation Epic Fury set back Iranian nuclear ambitions significantly. It will be a long time before Iran can build a viable nuclear weapon.
Yes, there are large stockpiles of highly enriched uranium somewhere in Iran, but this is a problem for the future, not today. Even if the uranium is at 60% enrichment, a fairly short technical step away from weapons grade, taking that final step is virtually impossible today. To reach weapons-grade — 93% or higher — the material must be spun in sensitive centrifuges that are subject to breakage. It is hard to imagine that Iran‘s centrifuge cascades survived the intense bombing. The Iranian conversion facility, without which one can’t make a bomb, was destroyed. Its A-team of nuclear scientists has been eliminated.
In sum, Iran is far weaker today than it was in February. No amount of Iranian propaganda can mask this reality. America’s near-term goals should be to keep it in that weakened state, to strengthen the region’s political realignment, and to make certain that President Trump‘s promise that Iranwill never possess a nuclear weapon is fulfilled.
The U.S. doesn’t need a nuclear agreement with Iran to achieve these goals. But once the Strait of Hormuz is opened, if the administration engages in nuclear negotiations, it’s critical that the following conditions are maintained:
Not a single penny of frozen assets or sanctions relief should go to Tehran. Under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran used the money to rebuild its capabilities and those of its proxies. It would do so again.
The U.S. must maintain military readiness in the region and the will to attack again if the Iranians begin to rebuild their nuclear infrastructure or missile capabilities. We should publicly expose any Russian or Chinese efforts to help the regime rebuild these capabilities. Additionally, the lessons of the war should spur deeper defense — technological and intelligence cooperation with allies in the region, particularly concerning asymmetric warfare in the age of drones.
The international community should again reaffirm the dangers of a nuclear Iran. Our European allies have behaved shamefully, standing by as the U.S. dealt with growing Iranian capabilities and Iran attacked regional powers. Our allies need to re-engage with us, and we with them. Iran isn’t only our problem. It isn’t only an Israeli problem. The United Nations Security Council between 2006 and 2010 passed five resolutions declaring Iran‘s nuclear ambitions under Chapter VII an “action with respect to threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, and acts of aggression.” The next time our European friends are inclined to say that conflict with Iran is “not our war,” they should reread those resolutions.
Whenever possible — by both overt and covert means — the U.S. and Israel should undermine the regime’s capacity to oppress its own population. We owe this to the Iranian people.
Finally, we should secure the world’s energy and transportation systems against the vulnerabilities revealed by the war. It is puzzling that the Trumpadministration appeared to be caught off guard by Iran‘s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, despite decades of anticipation of this by military experts in planning exercises. The U.S. can’t afford to be surprised again.
This war hasn’t brought, as many had hoped, the end of the Iranian regime. But it has left a weaker, more confused one. The public hasn’t seen Mojtaba Khamenei since his installation as supreme leader. Economic pressure has made the regime vulnerable — not necessarily to the street, where it can always crush dissent, but perhaps to internal fractures over Iran‘s future relationship with the world. If the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps controls 40% of the economy, as reports indicate, the U.S. must make sure Tehran understands that 40% of nothing is nothing.
Strategic patience is hard, and it isn’t always satisfying. But time is on the side of the U.S. and its allies. Reaching no deal is fine. Reaching a bad deal isn’t.
This is a new day in the Middle East, though it isn’t one without clouds. No American president has had a better chance to build a different and more stable region. It may just take a little more time.
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