Posted on 05/17/2015 7:04:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
Jeb Bush began a talk the other day by addressing the issue of his brother George, noted architect of the Iraq war, and he did not shrink from the challenge. "I can't deny the fact that I love my family," announced Jeb.
So if you suspected that the Bush Thanksgivings in Kennebunkport resemble "August: Osage County" -- with lots of screaming, sobbing and clawing -- you probably feel pretty silly right now.
On a more pertinent question -- whether the war was a wise idea -- the answer is not so clear. The former governor of Florida first said that, knowing what we know now, he would have favored the invasion. He then claimed he misunderstood the question.
Had he known that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, Jeb said later, "I would not have gone into Iraq." But he mainly wants to avoid the whole issue, which he dismisses as "a hypothetical."
If you're looking for deep, searching reflection on the Iraq war, the 2016 presidential campaign may not be the best place to look. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll last year found that 71 percent of Americans and 44 percent of Republicans think the war "wasn't worth it."
But nearly all Republicans and many Democrats supported it at the time. So the less said on the subject, most of the candidates doubtless feel, the better. Most prefer to "focus on the future," as Jeb urged.
This desire not to dwell on the past often comes from the same candidates who invoke the Munich agreement of 1938, a failed attempt to appease Adolf Hitler. But how a candidate assesses the lessons of the past is one of the best ways to get a sense of how a president would behave in the future -- which is also "a hypothetical."
Among Republicans, there has never been much interest in acknowledging what a catastrophe the Iraq war was. In 2012, Rick Perry said the U.S. should send troops back to Iraq. In 2008, Mike Huckabee was still insisting Hussein might have had WMD: "Just because you didn't find every Easter egg didn't mean that it wasn't planted." In 2012, Mitt Romney affirmed, "It was the right decision to go into Iraq."
Some current candidates have been a bit less enthusiastic. Ted Cruz tiptoed, noting that WMD were the reason for our invasion. "Without that predicate, it is difficult to imagine the decision would have been made to go into Iraq, and that predicate proved erroneous," he said, in a masterpiece of sterile verbosity. Marco Rubio said he would not have attacked Iraq based on today's knowledge -- though in March, he defended the invasion.
But neither they nor any of the others -- with the obvious exception of Rand Paul -- have renounced the basic worldview that produced it. The Republicans almost unanimously favor an aggressive stance based on brawny slogans and an assumption of American omnipotence.
Scott Walker sounds as though he misses George W. Bush: "I want a leader who is willing to take the fight to them before they take the fight to us." Rubio says America must have the mightiest military forces in the world, as if we don't already.
Paul is the only entrant willing to disavow the reckless adventurism of the Bush-Cheney years. When other Republicans blamed Barack Obama for the rise of the Islamic State, Paul disagreed, faulting those who mounted the Iraq war for "the chaos that is in the Middle East."
He's an outlier, and not just in his party. Hillary Clinton, who as a senator voted for the war, concedes she "got it wrong." But if the experience made her reassess her basic assumptions, she has kept it secret.
The unanticipated consequences of the Iraq invasion didn't keep her from pushing Obama to use air power to topple Moammar Gadhafi -- which led to another unanticipated disaster, in Libya and beyond. Clinton insists on sticking to that same approach in spite of all the times it has let us down.
Since 2001, our interventions have not only fallen short, but blown up in our faces. What should be clear is that when presidents resort to military force, they usually lack an understanding of the countries they attack, a due regard for the commitment required and a full appreciation of all the things that could go very wrong.
If the candidates haven't learned those lessons yet, they'll probably get another chance.
Make that The author shows his ignorance
Uhhhhhhhh...and what were the consequences again? Please don't make me click on the link. Just tell me, does he spell them out later in the article?
Or are we just expected to know what those consequences were?
Born in Brady, Texas in 1954, Chapman grew up in Midland and Austin. He attended Harvard University, where he was on the staff of The Harvard Crimson, and graduated with honors in 1976. He has been a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and has served on the Visiting Committee of the University of Chicago Law School.
Chapman is another arrogant Harvard Grad. I have lost so much respect for the Ivy League.
The propaganda from the "progressive" media has been successful in convincing many that the Iraq War was all about WMDs. It was not.
I am not a fan of amnestyRubio, but this morning on FoxNews Sunday, Chris Wallace was a real jerk.
He kept badgering Rubio regarding whether ‘now’ we should have gone into Iraq knowing what we didn’t know ‘then’. His convoluted badgering was not about Rubio’s response, but about Rubio’s supposed failure to answer the question to the liking of some female reporter earlier in the week.
The catastrophe of the Iraq War was the Obama Administration. The US Military pull out left a vacuum that Iran and ISIS were happy to fill. Standing O for O and an epic fail for Stevie.
Also, I am so glad that Obama had nothing to do with Libya. Hey Chapman (aka Obama’s Butt Boy), how many sets of knee pads have you gone through in the last seven years?
The response by Jeb Bush to the question about whether he would have invaded Irag in hindsight was very revealing. The fact that he answered the question as posed was laughable; it showed he is not a quick thinker. He accepted the premise behind a trick question and tried to “honestly” answer it. The cause of what is happening in Iraq is not the result of what George W Bush did, which was to send troops to invade Iraq, get rid of Saddam Hussein, and successfully pacify the country. The proximate cause is what Barack Obama did, which was to withdraw American troops from Iraq before Iraq was strong enough to fend off enemies. The question as posed to Jeb Bush infers that Isis was inevitable. In Chris Wallace’s interview with Rubio, Wallace mentioned to Rubio that a leader successfully arranges events. Why does Obama get a pass for his failure to successfully arrange events in Iraq by the media and the Republicans?
How was his article ignorant?
Iran naturally filled that vacuum once Saddam was removed. Iran is better off now, than before.
This idea that stability was going to be the ruling stasis is absurd. Reagan and Bush senior had good reason to keep Saddam in power, and that wisdom was ignored by this new breed of do good conservatism.
Now the entire ME is aflame, and Obama can be blamed, but not all of it is his fault. Bush couldn't get a SOFA, how the hell was Obama too?
Are we better off now. No, the Christan winter in the ME will continue, and Islam will continue to be Islam, marching across the sands like a plague.
This about Jeb Bush’s fumbling of the ISIS question, people forget to key points. We didn’t create it
1) ISIS can be traced all the way back to Zarqawi’s Jama’at al-Tawhidw’al-Jihad which (1999)
2) Coalition and Iraqi tribes stomped Al Qaeda in Iraq and its remnants fled into Syria, without funding and weapons from patrons in the middle east it wouldn’t have rose from the ashes.
“The propaganda from the “progressive” media has been successful in convincing many that the Iraq War was all about WMDs. It was not.”
What else was it? That was pretty much the whole enchilada in Colin Powells UN presentation. WMDs, and we aren’t taking a chance on another 9/11.
There were much better reasons to attack the Saudis IMO.
Obama created ISIS by pulling out with the complete absence of security. And he must be feeling some heat, otherwise there would be no need to provide him cover now by badgering the GOP candidates.
Even here on FR everything is Bush's Fault.
The NY Slimes did an 8 part series recently on how there WERE WMDs in Iraq, but they just lied about it during the Bush years.
And furthermore, he and McCain literally helped ISIS grow into the nightmare it is. It has only been 2 years ago that Obama was stopped from bombing in BEHALF of ISIS.
Its widely known that Benghazi was a backchannel method of supplying ISIS with weapons from Libya through Turkey.
Yes, Bush made a bad mistake in how the war was conducted, in appointing Bremer, in nation building rather than occupation, in not -violently- responding to the not so hidden Iranian participation in the war.
But ISIS is 100% a McCain/Obama/Hitlery creation.
It was the Syrian wing of the Arab spring. Even a cursory look at events shows that to be true.
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