Why have the war critics been so wrong?
Joseph Perkins
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
April 11, 2003
Forgive me for engaging in a little "triumphalism." I'm darn proud of our men and women in uniform. They came, they saw, they kicked Saddam's posterior.
In a mere three weeks. And "with less than half the ground forces and two-thirds of the air assets used 12 years ago in Desert Storm," as Vice President Dick Cheney noted this week.
As coalition forces mop up in Iraq, the focus turns to the post-war campaign – getting humanitarian aid to the needful Iraqi people; installing an interim government in Baghdad; figuring out a post-war role for the United Nations.
But before we close the books on Operation Iraqi Freedom, let us call into account the naysayers who were most critical of the coalition's prosecution of the war; the doom-mongers who warned that the war would yield disaster.
Beginning with Peter Arnett, who reported the war for National Geographic and NBC News, who went on Iraqi television and bad-mouthed both the U.S. military and its commander in chief.
"It is clear," said Arnett, to his Iraqi hosts, "that within the United States there is growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war and also opposition to the war.
"So our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States. It helps those who oppose the war."
Of course, Arnett was dead wrong.
While there might have been a growing challenge to the president among lefty politicians (like Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who told an audience that "we need a regime change in the United States") and growing opposition to the war by media lefties like Arnett, the American people increasingly supported both the president and the war once hostilities began.
In fact, during the very week that Arnett graced Iraqi TV an ABC News/Washington Post poll indicated that three of four Americans supported the war with Iraq.
Arnett's opposition to the war, his aid and comfort to Saddam's propaganda apparatus, was hardly surprising. His hostility toward the U.S. military is well known.
But we certainly expected more support for the war from retired military officers critiquing Operation Iraqi Freedom for the assorted news networks. Of those on-air military has-beens, none was more outrageous than Gen. Barry McCaffrey.
McCaffrey, who commanded an infantry division in the Gulf War before joining the Clinton administration as drug czar, went so far as to question Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's war plan.
"At the end of the day," said McCaffrey, "the question arises: why would you do this operation with inadequate power?
"Because you don't have time to get them there? But we did. Because you don't have the forces? But we did. Because you're trying to save money on a military operation that will be $200 billion before it's done?
"Or is it because you have such a strong ideological view, and you're so confident in your views that you disregard the vehement military advice from, particularly, Army generals who you don't think are very bright."
McCaffrey warned that the United States "could take a couple to 3,000 casualties" in Iraq because Rummy didn't put as many troops on the ground as the retired general thought prudent.
But as the war winds down, the United States has suffered only 100 or so losses – some 1,900 to 2,900 fewer than McCaffrey predicted.
So Rummy was right after all. About the war; about McCaffrey not being very bright.
The New York Times deserves a special citation for being wrong about the war. And none of its writers more so than Nicholas D. Kristof.
"From their perch in Washington," he columnized in October, "President Bush and his advisers seem to have convinced themselves that an invasion will proceed easily because many Iraqis will dance in the streets to welcome
