It’s the question feared by every Republican seeking to become President in 2016: “Would you have invaded Iraq in 2003 if you had known then what we know now?”
And when Republican Presidential candidates haven’t dodged the question, they’ve responded defensively–or argumentatively:
- Florida United States Senator Marco Rubio: Invading Iraq was “not a mistake because the president was presented with intelligence that said that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.”
- Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush: “In retrospect the intelligence that everybody saw, that the world saw, not just the United States, was faulty. Once we invaded and took out Saddam Hussein, we didn’t focus on security first.”
- New Jersey Governor Chris Christie: “If we knew then what we know now and I were the president of the United States, I wouldn’t have gone to war. But you don’t get to replay history.”
- United States Senator Ted Cruz of Texas: “Of course not. The entire predicate of the war against Iraq was the intelligence that showed they had weapons of mass destruction and that there was a real risk they would use them.”
Admittedly, the answers to many of life’s questions lie in the future–and can only be revealed over time.
As the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard observed: “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
Soren Kierkegaard
Thus, it is pointless to hold anyone–including past Presidents–accountable for not knowing truths that would emerge only years later.
Instead, the question reporters should be asking Republican Presidential candidates is: “How do you feel about a President who provoked a needless, bloody and financially ruinous war in Iraq?”
Or: “How do you feel about a President who starts a war claiming that a ‘madman’ will attack America with WMDs–and then, when they aren’t found, publicly jokes about it?”
There is actually a dark historical parallel to the events leading up to the Iraq war. A parallel in how Adolf Hitler launched his invasion of Poland.
ADOLF HITLER
When Germany’s Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, wanted to invade Poland in 1939, he mounted a sustained propaganda campaign to “justify” his ambitions.
Adolf Hitler
German “newspapers”-–produced by Joseph Goebbels, the club-footed Minister of Propaganda–-carried fictitious stories of how brutal Poles were assaulting and even murdering their helpless German citizens.
In theaters, German audiences saw phony newsreels showing Poles attacking and raping German women living in Poland.
For a time, Hitler not only deceived the Germans but the world. Just before German tanks and troops invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, members of Hitler’s dreaded SS secret police rounded up a number of prisoners from German concentration camps.
The inmates were dressed in Polish Army uniforms and driven to a German radio station at Gleiwitz, on the German/Polish border.
There they were shot by SS men. Then Polish-speaking SS men “seized” the station and broadcast to Germany that a Polish invasion of Germany was now under way.
Hitler, addressing Germany’s rubber-stamp parliament, the Reichstag, dramatically asserted: “This night for the first time Polish regular soldiers fired on our territory. Since 5.45 a.m. we have been returning the fire, and from now on bombs will be met by bombs.”
Leaders of Britain and France were taken in by this ruse. They had pledged to go to war if Hitler attacked Poland. But they didn’t want to take on Germany if Poland had been the aggressor.
By the time the truth became known, Poland was securely in German hands.
On August 22, 1939, Hitler had outlined his strategy to a group of high-ranking military officers:
“I shall give a propagandist cause for starting the war. Never mind whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked, later on, whether he told the truth or not. In starting and waging a war, it is not Right that matters, but Victory.”
GEORGE W. BUSH
American President George W. Bush followed a similar strategy while he prepared to invade Iraq: He ordered the topmost members of his administration to convince the American people of the war’s necessity.
Among those members: National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice; Vice President Dick Cheney; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; and Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Condaleeza Rice, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld
Among their arguments-–all eventually revealed as lies-–were:
- Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, had worked hand-in-glove with Osama Bin Laden to plan 9/11.
- Saddam was harboring and supporting Al Qaeda throughout Iraq.
- Saddam, with help from Al Qaeda, was scheming to build a nuclear bomb.
- Iraq possessed huge quantities of chemical/biological weapons, in violation of UN resolutions.
- Saddam was preparing to use those weapons against the United States.
- American Intelligence agencies had determined the precise locations where those weapons were stored.
- The war would be self-financing via the oil revenues that would come from Iraq.
- Invading American forces would be welcomed as liberators.
ADOLF HITLER
Hitler intended Poland to be only his first conquest on what became known as “the Eastern Front.” Conquering Poland would place his powerful Wehrmacht on the border of the country that was his ultimate target: The Soviet Union.
GEORGE W. BUSH
Similarly, Vice President Dick Cheney–the “power-behind-the-throne” of the Bush Presidency–had his own ambitions for conquering Iraq.
According to former Bush speechwriter David Frum: Cheney longed for war in Iraq to gain reliable control of that nation’s vital oil resources. A successful occupation of Iraq would also allow the United States to threaten such bordering Islamic nations as Syria, Iran and even Saudi Arabia.
