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By Roger Koeppel

Translated By Hartmut Lau

Original Article (German)

There are still no carpets of flowers being laid down to welcome the victorious liberators of Iraq. The constitution is going nowhere fast. A secular, democratic, model country is nowhere in sight. Within the U.S. armed forces, the number of body bags being flown home is steadily increasing. When the American anti-Vietnam demonstrations were at their zenith at the end of the sixties, about 3% of the troops stationed and fighting in country were dying every year. The Iraq War’s bloody price is at just under 1%, but the trend line is pointed upwards.  The Washington Post’s research, which seems to prove that perplexity and self-criticism are spreading within the Bush Administration, fits into this environment. Does this mean that the Iraq project and the attempt to bomb one of the most brutal dictatorships of the Middle East into a democracy of the future has failed?

We should not subject ourselves to any illusions. Wars are not won in the blink of an eye.  Relationships cannot be stabilized overnight. The artificial country of Iraq, ethnically heterogeneous but split along sectarian lines, was held together for decades by terror and thoroughly Machiavellian clan politics. Now foreign terrorists and agitators are flooding into the country to wear down both the occupation troops and the Iraqi people. The situation is reminiscent of the conclusion about liberated Germany that the editor-in-chief of the respected weekly newspaper “Die Weltwoche” drew about a year after the end of World War II: “One asks oneself, amidst the chaos and destruction, if the medicine isn’t worse than the disease that it cured.” This faulty diagnosis, made in the midst of the passions of the time, shows how prematurely the use of force and its consequences can be judged.

Nevertheless, the Iraq intervention is, when seen as a whole, a success story. The hope that the use of force could make this desert country a happy one has proven itself, to date, to be a utopian chimera. The basic argument developed by the neo-conservatives, that fundamental values formed along Western lines could be exported and made permanent by the use of force is threatening to shatter against the realities of a country that was influenced by neither a tradition of nor a mentality influenced by the rule of law. In addition, it is obvious that we are not dealing with a people who, like the Japanese after the total destruction of 1945, accomplished an almost spooky transformation of their identity.

Paul Wolfowitz

What was the Iraq War? Basically it was a legitimate preventive blow by a world power made massively insecure after 9/11 against a terror-regime that misinterpreted the signs of the times. After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, no American president could have accepted the security risk of a notoriously unpredictable Iraq that was ruled by Saddam Hussein and that sympathized with the USA’s enemies.  The U.N.’s sanctions regime was already falling apart. The tyrant was receiving ever more money from the sale of oil. It was clearly in the regime’s interest to invest these monies not in hospitals and kindergartens, but in weapons of mass destruction.

In accordance with all that was known about the Saddam clan, Iraq would have been, sooner or later, in a position to again attack its neighbors. It is only in view of this background that wise men such as former Clinton advisor and Middle East specialist Kenneth Pollack concluded that an invasion of Iraq was above all necessary, because waiting would only increase Saddam’s probability of successfully rearming. The Iraqi strong man made a tragic error when he bet on disagreements amongst the Western powers - and his hallucination of U.S. weakness and decadence. After the world had seen such a dramatic demonstration of America’s vulnerability, Bush could no longer yield. He had to show strength and determination in order to reestablish the superpower’s authority. The risks he faced were considerable. He had to bring the undertaking, the origins of which were completely misunderstood above all by the Europeans, to a successful conclusion.

Thus in retrospect, it is not the reasons for going to war that should be discussed, but rather the war aims and the associated rhetoric about a global war on terror, rhetoric from which Bush himself is now distancing himself, one step at a time. Given the circumstances of the time it was understandable and legitimate in the realist sense of international relations, to launch the invasion of Iraq. But whether a military operation can really export Western values so that they are accepted over the long term may be, in the case of this experiment, be initially doubted or, in the best case, be given a limited yes. Where liberators are perceived as occupiers, terrorist resistance thrives. The striving for self-government is directed against those who think they are acting on behalf of self-government.

The Iraq War is becoming a burden for the American administration. Opposition is growing, including from Republicans. It’s getting lonely around President Bush and the obvious question is, who will still want this war when the man who started it leaves the ship of state after his second term. Every KIA [killed in action] makes it more difficult to sell continued engagement to a public that is becoming increasingly skeptical.

But the effort should not yet be given up as lost. The new alignment of American foreign policy, the movement of the accent to non-military means lets us conclude that sensible strategists are being sought. But, aside from this, the Iraq War may have created collateral benefits. On the one hand, its deterrent effect on the neighborhood has been huge. The Iranian mullahs and also those in power in Pyongyang may have been cured of the illusion that the Americans are a part of a weak-willed, decayed civilization that tends to yield when threatened. On the other hand, the Iraq offensive has dramatically demonstrated to the idealists within the Bush Administration the limits of their extravagant fantasies of bringing happiness to the world. War should not be unleashed primarily for moralistic reasons, but rather on behalf of national or international security interests. Grand goals may be pursued, but moralizing and preaching generates reflexive opposition, because the ideals that are to be fought for only very seldom are transformed into reality.