Lind had serious questions about the rational for the war, and foretold the undoing of the Republican Party in the fourth of his weekly "On War" Series - Is Washington Playing at War - from 12 February, 2003:
... Washington seems hell-bent on war with Iraq, and nobody (including my friends in the military) understands why.
Secretary of State Powell's speech to the U.N. did not answer the question. Considering that we are talking about war here, the grounds he offered for it were trifling...
The mismatch between causes and means raises a deeply troubling question: is Washington playing at war? Make no mistake: war is the most perilous and unpredictable of all human endeavors. Playing with war is more dangerous than playing with fire, because fire can usually be contained; war, too often, cannot...
... If the Bush Administration were in desperate political trouble, one could at least see a rationale for a wild gamble on war. But politically, the Administration could hardly be riding higher. It just gained strength in Congress in an off-year election, a rare event. Bush's poll numbers are more than comfortable. Yet the White House is risking it all on a single throw of the dice. If this war goes badly, it is the end of George W. Bush and any hope of a Republican ascendancy for the next twenty years. Our next President might well be Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Rumsfeld recently said that a war with Iraq would be over in six days or perhaps six weeks; it almost certainly would not last six months. Here, too one senses someone playing at war. What if Iraq fights in the cities, where the built environment negates "hi-tech" weaponry?
The question Lind comes back to, over and over, is WHY. Why this war with Iraq?
I've long contended that "why" is perhaps the most useless of questions to ask. Who, what, where, when, and how - answers all those questions and everybody can agree on a group of basic facts. Once these pertinent facts are all agreed, then shave with Occam's razor, ascribe the simplest explanation that fits all the facts.
Not only do all governments lie (thank I.F. Stone), individuals do to, quite likely putting the most charitable construction on all that they have done (especially when all that they have done has turned out badly - perhaps VERY badly).
To bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people, of course.
Well, of course, that is a lie, albeit an uplifting one for the soldiers and warriors of the invading country. The lies we tell ourselves so that we can evade the mirror.
Originally, it was SO much simpler. To eliminate the (non-existent) WMD from Iraq and to remove from power an evil dictator. Mission accomplished, long ago - probably May of 2003 when the codpiece in chief announced mission accomplished at the photo-op on the ship outside San Diego.
WMD were NOT the reason. (Else we'd be gone.)
Saddam was long ago removed from power, and then executed, martyred, never to return (except perhaps in legend or in myth).
Removal of an evil despot then was NOT the reason. (Else we'd be gone.)
How about to establish a permanent military presence and multiple bases of operation in the middle east? That explains the 100+ bases, the almost $1 billion embassy building in the green zone. We invaded Iraq ... to STAY in Iraq. That explanation fits the facts.
The Cheney administration played war. A "game" they thought would be easily won. Had they consulted Lind, they might have thought differently. No, I think not. No one in the administration, least of all GWB, wanted to hear discouraging words. Warnings were sounded. Plenty of them.
Hubris - arrogant pride - they knew better about war and the need to display American military might. They wore their suits and showed up to the meetings on time. Just like good MBA's should do. Not at all like Clinton's lackadaisical crew.
And an overwhelming desire - to play at war. Treating it, as a game, selling it with the most effective marketing plan that focus groups had discovered.
Once the who, what, where, when, and how are established - the why question pretty much answers itself.
Lind, a self-described conservative / monarchist, concludes his prescient piece with a cautionary analogy. Not the tired Saddam = Hitler analogy that the U.S. has used to demonize every leader of every nation we've waged war upon since WWII. No. Conservatism was destroyed by WWI. The purported ideology of the Bushies, the neocons, the theocons, and the corporatists was being risked by waging this war - orchestrating this invasion and enduring occupation of a nation that was never, NEVER a threat to the U.S.
If anyone should be cautious about playing at war, it is conservatives. The greatest conservative catastrophe in the 20th Century was World War I. The three conservative monarchies that had kept the poisons of the French Revolution in check through the 19th century, Russia, Prussia and Austria, were all swept away by that disastrous war.
Then, too, in that fateful summer of 1914, governments played at war. Austria saw a chance to restore her image as a Great Power. Russia perceived an opportunity to take revenge on Austria for her humiliation in the Bosnian Annexation Crisis of 1908. The Kaiser ... wanted to stay on the defensive in the west and attack in the east, which would have kept Britain out of the war... Everyone agreed that the troops would be home before the leaves fell.
Four miserable years and millions of dead later, the Kaiser was an exile in Holland, the Tsar and his family were dead and Austria-Hungary had ceased to exist. The British empire had bled to death in the mud of Flanders, and on the streets of Paris, there were no young men. The future belonged to people no one had ever heard of, Lenin, Hitler and Stalin.
If there is a game conservatives should never allow their government to play, it is playing at war.
Lind's analysis is almost six years old. It holds up amazingly well. Writers such as Lind, Professor Juan Cole, Commander Jeff Huber, the dearly departed and oh so sorely missed Molly Ivins are especially important voices that we need to heed, to read, and to study.
They've seen the same things we've all seen. And they have taken their own unique training, education, background, life experiences, common sense, intuition, synthesis, etc, etc, and been able to predict the consequences of certain actions far FAR more realistically than the beltway talking heads, a number of far more well known and pulitzer-endowed national columnists and just about anybody that appears on Faux News.
I'll ask again. From who will Obama (or McCain) seek counsel about affairs foreign? about affairs military? about affairs domestic? about affairs financial?
While Obama has run an excellent campaign, he has also surrounded himself with advisers from the Clinton era.
That's NOT change. That's more of the same. More of the same military mistakes. More of the same foreign policy mistakes. More of the same financial mistakes.
I'm not excited about an Obama presidency. I'm not particularly hopeful either. It will be less worse than a McCain presidency. But unless Obama surrounds himself with people having this kind of proven bona fides on the war(s), this ability to accurately predict the consequences of such serious actions ...
