Mac Owens rocks...

MACKUBIN THOMAS OWENS
Contributing Editor, National Review Online
Posted 05.12.04 | 3:00 PM

Spencer,

Your comments today confirm an adage that I think I coined: "It's easier to be president when you aren't." This, I suppose, is a variant of the old saw that "Hindsight is always 20-20." Like you, I now see the events of the past year and a half very clearly. Also like you, but unlike the president, I didn't have to make decisions based on incomplete — and unfortunately incorrect — information. I can report that I have never lost a game as a Monday-morning quarterback. You seem to have a similar record. If only President Bush knew then what you and I know now!

I am certainly not the first to observe that if President Bush was wrong about WMDs in Iraq, then so were France, Russia, Germany, most other intelligence organizations throughout the world, Bill Clinton, and Democrats in Congress — whose comments in 1998 have been replayed numerous times. Interestingly, Bob Woodward has shown that the president insisted on assurances from DCI George Tenet that Saddam indeed had such weapons. Unfortunately, the intelligence that Tenet validated was wrong — not for the first time in history — which means that we need to do some real restructuring of our intelligence agencies, not take shots at the president for acting on the basis of what he and everyone else believed — erroneously — to be true.

I am also not the first one to point out the irony of the fact that the president is accused of not acting before 9/11 on the basis of intelligence that was far more ambiguous than that regarding WMDs in Iraq. For months, Bush's critics have accused him of launching a preemptive war against Iraq because Saddam posed an "imminent" threat to the United States. Of course, that wasn't his justification for the war at all. The point of preemption was to prevent the threat of the WMD that "everyone" knew Saddam possessed from becoming imminent. At the same time, these critics accuse Bush of failing to preempt al Qaeda prior to 9/11. But the links that all of the oh-so-smart "hind-sighters" so clearly discern in retrospect were not nearly as clear before 9/11 as the evidence in early March of 2003 that Saddam possessed WMD.

Concerning links to al Qaeda, the fact is that Iraq under Saddam long had been a haven for terrorists. Once again, the president did not claim that the threat of WMD in the hands of terrorists was imminent; the objective of removing Saddam was to prevent the threat from becoming imminent. Since Saddam and al Qaeda had the same goal — to drive the United States out of the Middle East — it is not a stretch to take seriously the possibility that, despite there own deep political differences, they could cooperate on a tactical level to achieve their common objective. After all during the interwar period, the Nazis and the Communists often cooperated to destroy liberal democracy in Germany, waiting until late to settle their own differences.

Regarding your critique of my invocation of prudence, I repeat what I said yesterday. You criticize the president because his policy has not conformed to an ideal that is rarely, if ever, achieved. One who does not adjust his policy or strategy to changes in circumstances courts disaster. People are fond of citing Clausewitz's dictum that "the first, the supreme, the most far reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish...the kind of war on which they are embarking, neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature. This is the first of all strategic questions and the most comprehensive." But they often misunderstand the meaning of this passage.

They erroneously interpret this passage to mean that one shouldn't undertake a war unless one is sure of where the first step will lead. But that is completely alien to Clausewitz's understanding of war as taking place in a realm of uncertainty. If the original approach isn't working, then the statesman is obliged to adapt to the circumstances, all the while keeping the objective in sight. I interpret the changes you criticize as adaptations of policy to circumstances. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this.

You dismiss my claim that there were risks associated with waiting for a larger force before initiating hostilities. Again, you invoke hindsight to make your point. On March 19, 2002, we did not know, as you claim, that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction to deploy. The commanders on the ground took the threat of WMDs seriously. We know this because the soldiers and Marines on the march up to Baghdad frequently donned their chemical protective suits in response to intelligence and false signals from detection equipment. A commander doesn't inflict such misery on his troops unless he thinks the threat is a real one.

And this leads to one of the risks of waiting — the weather. If you think operating in a chemical suit is hard in mild weather, try doing it when the temperature is in the 100s, which would have been the case if the offensive had been delayed only a month or two. This means that the choice was not really between launching the attack in March or launching it in late April or May (remember we did not know how quickly the move against Baghdad would go), but between launching it in March or launching it in November. And I still think you are dreaming to claim that we could have used delay to bring other allies aboard.

Regarding troop strength, it seems clear in retrospect that there were enough to accomplish the task of taking Baghdad. We erroneously assumed that Baghdad was the Iraqi "center of gravity." Instead, as we now know, Baghdad constituted the "culmination point" of the offensive. The force had to pause before it continued into the Sunni triangle. It now seems clear that this pause gave the insurgents an opportunity to regroup and begin a guerrilla war. As I wrote on NRO, "In retrospect, the refusal of the Turks to permit the 4th Infantry Division to launch a "northern front" may turn out to be one of the most momentous decisions of the war — not because the unit was necessary to topple Saddam, but because an armor unit smashing through the Sunni Triangle while the conventional war was still underway would likely have convinced the population of the region that they had been defeated." But this is an example of the vicissitudes that arise from the nature of war — that it takes place in a realm of chance and uncertainty.

And yes, I remain cautiously optimistic. Again, a little historical perspective is useful. Bad news is not the end of the world. Look at what people were saying in 1863 or 1942. Compared to the news from the early years of these wars, which turned out well, the news from Iraq is not bad at all.

Cheers,

Mac