In his gut you know Donald is right.
This week punishment came to one presidential candidate telling
a truth and reward came to another telling a lie. Such perverse incentives
regarding honesty created the bizarro political world we inhabit.
“He was a bad guy — really bad guy,” Donald Trump said of Saddam
Hussein. “But you know what he did well? He killed terrorists. He did that so
good. They didn’t read them the rights. They didn’t talk. They were terrorists.
Over. Today, Iraq is Harvard for terrorism.”
Earlier this week, terrorists murdered 150 or so people in a
Baghdad bombing. A war justified to roll back international terrorism instead
unleashed it. Harvard of terrorism, indeed.
The outrage over Trump’s comments stems only in part from the
candidate’s impolitic praise for a man deserving condemnation. The larger part
of the indignation comes from Trump representing a challenge to both parties’
foreign policy shibboleths, which themselves represent a challenge to common
sense.
The Republican nominee did not misjudge “bad guy” Saddam Hussein
— at least the current Republican nominee didn’t.
Like George W. Bush, his successor rarely thinks about
consequences. Whereas Bush neglected to anticipate what might fill the void in
Iraq, Barack Obama initially chose ISIS over Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the
Muslim Brotherhood over Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, and jihadists over Muammar
Gaddafi in Libya. Neither the
president nor his predecessor grasped the difference between regional bullies
and deluded Islamists aiming for world domination, garden-variety evil
dictators found in every corner of the globe and fanatics endemic to the
Islamic world, and secular strongmen and sectarian true believers.
Like so many moves on the real-life “Risk” board, the invasion
of Iraq unwittingly sided with worse over bad. But it’s the current GOP
presidential nominee, pundits insist with a straight face, who made a terrible
strategic error regarding Iraq.
More than a decade ago, the fledgling blogosphere pushed the
heady theory of “Iraq the model,” which posited that a nation-building exercise
in Mesopotamia would unleash a chain reaction of democracies in the Middle
East. “I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators,” Vice
President Dick Cheney misjudged. Ken Adelman wrote in the Washington
Post, “I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and
liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.” Bizarre conspiracy theories touting
Saddam Hussein’s links to everything from the initial World Trade Center attack
to the Oklahoma City Bombing to 9/11 (through a meeting that didn’t happen in
Prague with Muhammad Atta) arose in publications whose editors should have
known better.
The Bush Administration
relied on a conman codenamed Curveball as the basis for its false contentions
about a secret biological weapons program, on forged documents for its claims
that Hussein attempted to procure uranium from Niger to make nukes, and
on New York Times reports on weapons of mass destruction that
used the discredited Ahmed Chalabi as a source.
Few of the allegations or
predictions turned out correct. Errors of fact and judgment plagued the whole
operation.
But it’s Donald Trump who got Iraq wrong?
Like most people who talk too much, Trump appears gaffe prone.
His varying positions on guns, abortion, and socialized medicine over the years
also reveal a candidate without a solid grounding in conservatism. But his
instincts on foreign policy more greatly resemble conservative thought than
those who doubt the federal government’s ability to deliver a letter but
believe that its armies can somehow transform desert-dwelling Muhammadans into
Vermont-style town meeting members.
Edmund Burke, the Irishman
serving in the British Parliament who became the philosophical godfather of
American conservatism, warned in Reflections on the Revolution in
France against overthrowing the existing order without forethought. He
noted that “a sober legislator would carefully compare the possessor whom he
was recommended to expel, with the stranger who was proposed to fill his place”
before embarking upon violent upheaval. A few years later, George Washington
asked in his Farewell Address, “Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?”
More than a half century ago, Young Americans for Freedom posited, “American
foreign policy must be judged by this criterion: does it serve the just
interests of the United States?”
But of late many conservatives look not to such writings for foreign
policy guidance but to D.C. and Marvel. Trump rejects this conception of
America as a superhero savior-state.
Whether his brain knows Sharon Statement from Sharon Osbourne, his
gut gets that attempting to remake Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and points beyond
does little to make America great again.
