Madeleine Albright’s appearance at the Mondavi Center (on the campus of U.C. Davis) marked the opening of the venue’s ninth season of providing artistic performances. Each season has also included a distinguished speaker’s series, and with Ms. Albright as the opening act, so to speak, that series and the whole season got off to an impressive start.
The former Secretary of State (she served in that office for the full second term of Bill Clinton’s presidency) responded to questions posed by Davis Political Science Professor Larry Berman and took a few from the capacity audience as well. During the course of the 90-minute exchange, she offered her views on many of the major foreign policy issues of the day, and much of her commentary reflected none too well on the presidency of George W. Bush.
In particular, she made clear that she regards the decision to invade Iraq as a major blunder, one that she called “one of the worst symbols of American power.” She claimed that, in addition to resulting in a loss of focus on the hunt for Osama bin Ladin specifically and the war against al Qaeda generally, the war in Iraq also benefitted Iran immeasurably by removing a counter-force in the region in the form of Saddam Hussein.
Her views on that particular subject and on the consequences (mostly negative in her view) of the Bush presidency raise the same kind of “what if” question that haunted many Americans at the height of the Viet Nam war in the 1960s.
That war was dramatically escalated by Lyndon Johnson, who became president when John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November of 1963. From approximately 15,000 military advisers the United States had “training” South Vietnamese forces when Johnson assumed office, the American involvement in Viet Nam reached a peak of 550,000 combat troops by the end of his presidency in January of 1969.
Richard Nixon, upon assuming the presidency, began a slow withdrawal, under a plan he dubbed “Vietnamization.” But he also escalated the U.S. offensive to include bombings of Hanoi, North Viet Nam’s capital city, and the mining of key harbors, a form of attempted blockade.
The United States was torn apart by the war, which left over 50,000 Americans soldiers killed and hundreds of thousands scarred physically and emotionally from the military efforts to defeat the North Vietnamese insurgency. That effort ultimately failed, as South Viet Nam finally fell in 1975, following the U.S. withdrawal from the battlefield two years earlier. The country is now united as Viet Nam, and has become a fairly stable, if not prosperous, independent communist state.
But what would Kennedy have done? That question was frequently asked during Johnson’s prosecution of the war. It was asked less during Nixon’s tenure in office, but a related question was whether Nixon would have ever been elected were it not for Kennedy’s assassination.
Of course, answers to both questions are purely speculative. As to the first, evidence suggests Kennedy would have been far less aggressive in escalating the U.S. presence in Viet Nam. He was a cold warrior in his opposition to Soviet dominance, but he had not sided with the military in the Cuban missile crisis, suggesting that he understood, perhaps better than Johnson, the perils of all war.
As to the latter question, Nixon barely beat Hubert Humphrey in 1968 as many Democrats, angry at Johnson (whose vice-president was Humphrey), sat out the election. Had Viet Nam not been the dominant issue it was and had Nixon not been able to present himself as the “peace candidate” (with a claimed “secret plan” to end the war), the strong likelihood is that the Democrats would have prevailed in that election.
Of such imponderables are many history books filled. But the reality of what happened cannot be changed, nor can the future that that reality led to.
Still, when a Madeleine Albright presents a compelling case that a specific decision was a major mistake, the imponderable question must be asked.
And so, if only for a brief moment of reflection, let’s consider what the course of our history might/could/would have been if Al Gore and not George Bush had won the 2000 presidential election, and if, as a result, the United States had not invaded Iraq and had instead remained engaged with the large coalition of international forces against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
It is surely fair to say that Iraq would still be a brutal dictatorship, but it would be isolated and essentially sequestered from the rest of the Middle East, a threat in only theoretical terms to those in the region and not at all to the West. Why? Because, as Albright emphasized, Hussein’s Iraq was boxed in at the time of the invasion. It had no military capability to wage war and would not have attained any such ability so long as the United Nations sanctions remained in place.
As for bin Ladin, al Qaeda and Afghanistan, with the focus properly on that war from 2003 on, instead of it being essentially ignored as it was until only recently, the great likelihood is that bin Ladin would have either been captured or killed and his network of terrorist cells left disorganized, if not destroyed. To think otherwise is to concede that he and his gang of terrorist thugs are unbeatable, which then leads to an entirely different calculus in terms of many decisions made and unmade by both the Bush and Obama administrations.
I’ll leave that imponderable (of whether bin Ladin and al Qaeda can ever be defeated) for another day. Suffice to say that the course of America’s history was unalterably affected by the Bush decision to make war in Iraq.
Whether it was based on the best available evidence or, as seems increasingly more likely, was just a bad decision, it has left the United States still on the hunt for bin Ladin nine years and counting after 9/11 and probably no less at risk of another attack than it was in March of 2003 when Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq.
Oh, and as for the other question that arose following Kennedy’s assassination, it’s highly unlikely that Barack Obama would have risen from relative obscurity to win the presidency had the U.S. not invaded Iraq.
Ed; as I recall a large percentage of the US Congress and Senate were for the war including Hillary Clinton and of course John Kerry, before he was against it, as was I. Hind sight being 20/20 I feel it was a mistake. I admit I was foolish enough to believe that the Iraqis would be grateful to the US for freeing them form the terrible tyrant who murdered and tortured and gassed them. I like I believe most Americans had no clue what a bunch of insane people the people of the area were, at the time, and surly are today.
Yes, I believe it was a mistake. Does that make George Bush a bad person or is he just a human being who made an honest mistake thinking he was doing what was best for his country and the world. And by the way who is Al Gore?
I have noticed that, of late, you aren’t spending any time on bragging up our current president who, along with his corrupt administration is destroying our country on a daily basis
Liberals seem to critique America’s “mistakes” in a state of amnesia. To blithely say South Viet Nam fell in 1975 and now is united and fairly prosperous, glosses over the atrocities that were perpetrated by the “winning” side, and the genocide that occurred in neighboring Cambodia. Regardless of ones views of that war, the American withdrawal brought about exactly what was feared: a replica of Soviet and communist Chinese gulag state. Regardless of ones view of that war America fought to prevent just that.
Concerning Iraq, to say that Iraq was boxed in and couldn’t wage war as long as UN sanctions remained in place is to forget how corrupt and porous those sanctions were and how Saddam continually scorned and evaded those sanctions. The American no fly zones were costing billions of dollars and were becoming increasingly ineffective because of the lack of UN resolve. USING WMDs Saddam killed a million people during the Iran/Iraq war. He killed hundred of thousands more of his own people USING WMD. He never unconditionally renounced WMDs and he never opened to inspections the way Libya and South Africa did after giving up similar programs. And not one world intelligence agency or major democrat including both Clintons and Albright suspected that Iraq had no WMDs. All new he would reconstitute once given an opportunity. If toppling Saddam was a mistake it was a mistake made for some substantial reasons.
What will we make of this “blunder” if in a future blog 35 year hence (see Viet Nam 1975) we are to read that Iraq is a country now united, and has become a fairly stable, if not prosperous, independent democracy
Clearly we have very different views of both wars, but I have to wonder what informs you on the Viet Nam War since your perspective is not at all accurate. That war was not fought to stop the establishment of a Soviet-style gulag state, nor has the country become one in its aftermath. The war was fought to stop the feared spread of communism across the Asian continent. The fear was encapsulated in the theory that was dubbed the “domino effect,” whereby it was assumed that one state after another in the region would be turned to communism. (Thirty-five years later, that has obviously not occurred.)
As for the genocide in Cambodia that followed the war, it was a completely separate and unrelated episode that followed the unification of Viet Nam. In fact, Cambodia and Viet Nam were enemies during the reign of Pol Pot, the mastermind of the genocide, and Viet Nam finally defeated the Khmer Rouge regime in 1979, which is when the genocide also ended.
Your pro-war attitude also suggests a lack of awareness of how wars actually work, which is to say, they always produce unintended and undesirable collateral effects and rarely bring about the political results which presumably justify their perpetration. And, of course, they are horrific in every sense of human comprehension, as anyone who has ever served in the military can attest. You, I must assume, never have, but feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
The war in Iraq, no matter who supported it or acquiesced in it, was a monumental mistake, and not just because no WMD were found. The facts, which you conveniently ignore, are that Saddam had not used WMD at all for over ten years before the U.S. invasion and that in 2002, the U.N. inspectors were back in Iraq, conducting inspections that were not finding any WMD.
Bush was a war monger, which is to say, he had his mind made up to invade Iraq from the moment he took office, only looking for the first plausible opportunity to sway public opinion in favor of it. That occurred with the 9/11 attacks, which, although Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with them, opened the door for him and his neo-con chicken hawks to mobilize public support, largely through false accusations and cooked intelligence reports, in favor of the invasion. That most Democrats were cowered into passivity is hardly a justification for the war. Rather it points out how pathetic both parties are in their ability to lead the nation (as further evidenced by the amazingly weak leadership Obama and his administration have provided thus far).
Bottom line: going to war is never a good decision, albeit it is occasionally a necessary one. But in both Viet Nam and Iraq, it was neither.
ED:
“Bottom line: going to war is never a good decision, albeit it is occasionally a necessary one.” AGREED!
However, have some historical perspective that is not instinctively anti-American. But before I continue excuse me if you find that insulting, but it is no less insulting then your “my pro war attitude.”
“The war was fought to stop the feared spread of communism across the Asian continent.” Yes and what does that mean? Was stopping communism as banal an objective as stopping the republicans taking the senate or stopping the democrats seizing the state house?
What happened after America left the region? There were Death camps, unimaginable repression “reeducation centers” horror upon horror. Yes Viet Nam and Cambodia were enemies at the time but the systemic atrocities that their respective communist regimes imposed is a matter of scale only, and they modeled after the Soviet Union and China’s Cultural Revolution (China and the USSR were also enemies manipulating the pawns of their respective regimes). The question of whether or not communism was evil has been decided by history. The question of whether the Domino theory was correct policy is for another day. I’m simply saying look what happened after America’s departure. “Thirty five years later that has obviously not occurred” is not an analysis it is Monday morning quarterbacking that skims over the ensuing horrifying years because it neatly fits a political philosophy, and it doesn’t even give a nod to the Soviet Union collapsing. I’m weary of pat labels: “The war to End All Wars” WW1 turned out to be the most useless of wars that lead to an even larger conflagration with WW2.. The tragedy that was the Viet Nam war is not as black and white as you would like to portray.
As far as Iraq, what does “conveniently forget that Saddam hadn’t used WMDs for 10 years” mean? That he did use them to kill millions (have you conveniently forgot that?) is a fact, and no one doubted he would use them when it became more convenient. Again Saddam never renounced WMDs, he never allowed complete and unfettered access to inspectors, and no one in the International Intelligence world or in the Democratic leadership including President Clinton (who would know best) suspected that no WMDs would be found. These are no less facts than the fact that no WMDs were found! “Bush was a war monger, which is to say, he had his mind made up to invade Iraq from the moment he took office, only looking for the first plausible opportunity to sway public opinion in favor of it” is mere speculation. Again arguendo if the invasion was a bad decision it wasn’t a decision made lightly or simply to further the agenda of the military industrial complex as you would like to suggest.
You seem to like counter factual historical exercises so lets just play one forward: What will we make of this Iraq “blunder” if in a blog 35 year hence we are to read that Iraq is “a country now united, and has become a fairly stable, if not prosperous”, independent democracy?
I think if one is going to continue to believe the Iraq War was necessary, one has not seriously studied the goals of those in power, nor the repercussions of this ongoing war.
I had a personal reason for Saddam being destroyed, based sheerly on emotions. Still I did not see any logical reason for my country to invade his. Did I consider him a threat after 1991? Absolutely not. I detested the man, however, based on the facts, not emotions, my vote is always based on what is best the world collectively.
If we are to use the very broad term ”weapons of mass destruction” let us use it to apply to all, not just perceived enemies. Any weapon, whether outright banned by the Geneva Convention, that does not distinguish between combatant and civilian is termed a WMD. I won’t cut and paste facts, it’s up to the individual to research the long term effects of such horrific weapons such as ”cluster bombs” and it’s effects. Decades later, people, young children as well, are killed and lose limbs due to this weapon.
Take the time to check out Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Kuwait and Lebanon and see *who* dropped these cute little grape sized bombs, and how many lives and limbs were lost even many years later. Then, in your eloquent speech explain to me why only *other* countries are held accountable for using such nasty weapons aimed at enemy combatants, but oops, sorry about your children losing a couple of limbs.
One can poetically use ”collateral damage” or one can be honest when describing ripped limbs from babies, blown to smithereens bodies, horrific burns, slashed abdomens, calling a spade a spade. It’s all perspective. It’s all about who the victim is. Our empathy often extends only to those we know, or like.
As for the original question: If Al Gore had become President, there would have been no Iraq war. Saddam would not have been a threat to the US or his neighbors. Also due to the huge Iraqi refugee issue now, the US resettled 18,000 Iraqis in the U.S. in this past year.
The ripple effect ….