President James K. Polk’s war of choice against Mexico from 1846-48 resulted in the acquisition of what became the states of California, Utah and Nevada, as well as parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming. Mexico received $15 million in compensation and gave up its claim on Texas. In this war, the United States suffered fewer than two thousand combat deaths.
President William F. McKinley’s war of choice against Spain in 1898 resulted in an insurgency against the victorious U.S. presence in the Philippines and U.S. control over Puerto Rico, Guam, and Cuba. Fewer than 400 U.S. soldiers died in combat; ten times as many died from disease. The casus belli was the sinking of The USS Maine in Havana harbor. A Navy board of inquiry concluded that the most likely cause of this disaster was the ignition of more than five tons of powder charges for the vessel’s six- and ten-inch guns. The “yellow press” and belligerents on Capitol Hill blamed Spain, whose tenuous empire was one quick war away from disintegration.
U.S. wars of choice morphed into preventive wars even before the demise of the Soviet Union. The results have been chastening. For someone in my age bracket, the less said about the Vietnam War, the better. With the collapse of the USSR, U.S. preventive wars became possible in the Middle East. President George H. W. Bush’s decision to repulse Iraqi forces from Kuwait may have been a war of choice, but it was also essential. His limited war aims resulted in limited casualties and limited combat duration.
President George W. Bush’s war of choice was another matter entirely.
Let me stipulate at the outset that Iraq will do no worse than under Saddam & Sons – but it may not do that much better. Let me also stipulate that it is a good thing to have one less country seeking the Bomb in this region – for now. As for the rest, there is endless sadness. Besides yielding a generation of soldiers wrestling with demons, over one hundred thousand grieving families, and a few trillion dollars in interest-bearing debts, this war produced Nuri al-Maliki, the worst sectarian violence of any country in the world (not counting outright civil wars, like that ravaging Syria), and collusion between Iraq and Iran. In the long run, Iraq’s outlook might improve, but hardly enough to justify these costs.
The only way that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz preventive war could remotely have been justified was if Saddam had the WMD that the U.S. Intelligence Community – with the partial exception of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research – obligingly claimed. Remotely gathered intelligence, even by exquisite technical means, can be subject to inferences that turn out to be exaggerated, especially when those inferences are reinforced by a war-thumping White House and Secretary of Defense, a wounded public psyche inclined to slay dragons, and unreliable human intelligence.
The most skeptical evaluators of Saddam’s WMD holdings turned out to be the inspectors within Iraq operating under the ambit of the United Nations. Even when circumscribed and badgered, they had a better feel for the status of Saddam’s WMD programs than analysts confined to cubicles.
Remember the argument about how deterrence of Saddam and his WMD programs was eroding? How expensive it was to control his airspace and keep U.S. troops forward deployed? The costs of containment and deterrence now appear trivial compared to those associated with the preventive war that followed, with U.S. troops spending a decade rotating in and out of combat.
Regrettably and predictably, there has been no respite from Saddam’s death and his regime’s dysfunctional pursuit of WMD. Proliferation anxieties have now been transposed to Iran. This time, international inspectors are witnessing real nuclear capabilities that could be applied to make real weapons. Iraq is no longer a counterweight to Iran, nor a justification for Iran’s nuclear program. Instead, Baghdad is abetting Tehran’s regional ambitions.
There are clear lessons to be learned from the second Gulf war. Some are applicable to Iran; others aren’t. The authorities in Iran are making it easier to forget cautionary lessons, bit by bit.