In Retrospect Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

There have been a lot of retrospectives this week on the five year anniversary of the War. Many deal with why so many people supported the war in the first place.  But I think the one justification that doesn't make any sense is the "I thought there were weapons of mass destruction" defense. 

Let's say there were WMD in Iraq.  Would Iraq be any better off today?  The answer is obviously no.  It would actually be worse.  Potentially much worse.  It would still be a failed warlord state with multiple unstable ceasefires sort of partially temporarily holding things together.  We would have still had the horrible sectarian violence of 2006 and early 2007, the still intolerable levels of violence today, and the displacement of 4 million Iraqis.   The only difference is that there would also be biological, chemical or nuclear weapons likely on the loose as well. 

Something to think about before we decide to attack Iran. 

Comments

[Don Bacon]

1. If those geniuses REALLY believed that Iraq had nukes they wouldn't have invaded.
2. You're not suggesting that Iran has nukes, are you?

[Mike M.]

The WMD argument really goes like this: "I supported the invasion because I believed that Iraq had WMDs, that Bush will invade over my objections, thst the invasion will go swimmingly well, our soldiers will be greeted with flowers, they will find and secure all of the WMDs and I will look like a wimp for opposing the most popular war ever."

That's the whole argument. It's informed by Gulf War I being easy and thus winding up popular.

[Michelle]

Blix, Acropolis Review and TPM highlight some of the key points for the 5-year anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq:

http://acropolisreview.com/2008/03/john-mccains-iraq-war-five-year.html

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/184135.php

[Mike]

It's a gross oversimplification to sum up the views of so many people as "I thought there were WMD". There were plenty of other misconceptions going around, especially the assumption that the war would be as easy as Desert Storm. I think it's quite arguable, just for example, that hypothetically the US ought to have invaded Iraq to prevent the construction and sale to al Qaeda of nuclear weapons. Plenty of people would doubtless have agreed that that was our goal, and it's not an unreasonable point of view.

If you mean to address some more specific argument, or maybe to argue that lots of people held overly simple views on the war, this would be better than putting up a straw man.