To skip this introduction and go directly to read Jeff Weintraub’s In-Depth Analysis “Some Partial, Preliminary & Unfashionable Thoughts Toward Reassessing the 2003 Iraq War – Did Anything Go Right and What Were The Alternatives?” click here.

I was sure in the lead up to the Iraq War that it wouldn’t happen. It seemed obvious to me that it made no sense, and I couldn’t believe that the U.S. would embark on such foolishness. One of my big mistakes, obviously. While Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Osama bin Laden and American capacity to wage two wars, one clearly by choice, seemed to be a huge strategic mistake, the war proceeded and escalated, and we have paid.

Nonetheless, I did understand why deposing Saddam was desirable. His regime was reprehensible. I respected those who called for opposition to its totalitarianism, from the informed Kanan Makiya to my Central European friends, Adam Michnik, Vaclav Havel, et al. I even said so at an anti-war rally.

Yet, connecting the means at our disposal with the desirable end of a free and democratic Iraq seemed to me to be an extraordinarily difficult project, and I had absolutely no confidence that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Company could pull it off. How could my intelligent friends who supported the war not see that? I actually had a number of heated public discussions with Michnik about that.

Once begun, I hoped that the intervention would be short and sweet, and hoped that a democratic transition could be managed, but as we now know these hopes were frustrated. From every point of view, the war was a disaster: for the Iraq, the region, the U.S., and the project of democracy, and the way the war was fought, as it was part of a purported global war against terror, compromised American democratic principles. As time has passed many of the early supporters see all this and have changed their judgments, and those who haven’t, such as John McCain, choose not to focus in their speech and action on the question of entrance into the war, but rather on the exit, the so called surge, which they purport explains limited American successes.

But I am curious: what have become of those who as a matter of principle supported the war? And what have become of their arguments? A few brave souls have stuck to their positions. To have a richer understanding of our recent past and to reflect on the challenges of the day, I think it is worth paying attention. Thus, today’s In-Depth post: Jeff Weintraub’s “Some Partial, Preliminary & Unfashionable Thoughts Toward Reassessing the 2003 Iraq War – Did Anything Go Right and What Were The Alternatives?”

To read Jeff Weintraub’s In-Depth Analysis, “Some Partial, Preliminary & Unfashionable Thoughts Toward Reassessing the 2003 Iraq War – Did Anything Go Right and What Were The Alternatives?”click here.

I remember struggling with this as a young man.  Subjected to the draft during the Vietnam War era, being a very early and precocious opponent to the war, I tried to convince myself that I was a pacifist.  I read the writings of Gandhi and A.J. Muste.   I looked into the pacifist activities of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.  Although I realized that making the claim of being a Jewish pacifist would be practically difficult, I wanted to explore possibilities.  But in the end, I gave up, because I couldn’t convince myself that I wouldn’t fight against Hitler, and I recognized then and  see now that there are many other instances where I cannot oppose military action as a matter of absolute conviction.

I was not an enthusiastic supporter of either the first war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan, for example.  It was not clear to me that a military response to either crisis was the appropriate one.  But on the other hand, I couldn’t in good conscience oppose either war.   The slogan “No Blood for Oil” rang hollow.  America was attacked from bases that were protected and developed in the Taliban’s Afghanistan, and Saddam Hussein was indeed a brutal dictator who worked to create a totalitarian order, as Kanan Makiya, ably demonstrated in his gripping book, The Republic of Fear.

But, on the other hand, means do have a way of defining political action whether or not the ends are justified.  The way we have fought the wars, and the way our allies have ruled, have undermined the arguments for the war in Afghanistan.  And indeed the way the Gulf War was fought and the lessons that were drawn from the war cast into doubt its initial justification, especially as this was utilized for the George W. Bush’s war of aggression in Iraq.

I am not a pacifist as a matter of principle, but I still am trying to learn.  When I was a young man, I couldn’t commit myself to pacifism, because I appreciated that there were limits to non violent resistance.  Now I see, rather, the limitations of violence, drawn to that position, not because of absolute conviction, but for practical reasons.   For in the military resistance to fanaticism in Afghanistan and in the military resistance to tyranny in Iraq, the limitations of military action have become quite apparent.

The means have determined the ends.  Indeed, they make the end appear as domination, as an end in itself.  I hope that my fellow citizens and our President keep this in mind when the review of the Afghan War is conducted later this year.

I was not able to oppose the war to begin with, but I think I should have.  In retrospect, it is absolutely imperative to remember the limits of military power, and the unintended consequences that result when those limits are not recognized.  I am convinced that now the means of leaving must be creative and responsible, but leave we must.