2022-03-23

TomDispatch | the 19th anniversary of our invasion of Iraq.

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Saif Ansari at Jacobin on the 19th anniversary of our invasion of Iraq.
—Erika
On the campaign trail in 2020, Joe Biden was barely probed about his long-standing support for the Iraq War, a fact he attempted to conceal. According to Biden (who repeatedly touted his experience in foreign policy in the lead-up to the presidential election), he had opposed the war from the very beginning — the “very moment” the first bombs came roaring down on Baghdad.
Not only did Biden cast a critical vote to authorize military force; he also played a crucial role in creating the case for war in the first place. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden built support for a bipartisan resolution that ultimately gave George W. Bush’s administration wide discretion to defend the United States from any perceived threat from Iraq. In the years since, Biden has argued that he only voted for the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq to enhance the United States’ bargaining power at the United Nations — as if putting a gun to the head of the international community (what Biden called “tough diplomacy”) represented anything other than a call for war.
Far from the reluctant warrior he’s portrayed himself as, Biden — by rejecting alternative resolutions that would have required the United States to predicate military action on authorization from the United Nations Security Council, and disparaging more progressive Democrats who balked at the prospect of war as purists — ultimately created the very conditions in which opposition to war became untenable in the first place.
Even a series of high-profile hearings Biden held in 2002 — ostensibly an evenhanded attempt to inform the US public of the risks of an invasion — was a ruse: he enlisted a host of pro-war operatives to parrot the Bush administration’s propaganda about Iraq’s mythic weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and alleged ties to al-Qaeda, with nary a skeptical voice among them. According to the chief UN weapons inspector at the time, Scott Ritter, the hearings were a “sham” designed to provide cover for Biden’s “pre-ordained conclusion” that either Saddam Hussein or his weapons had to go — despite the fact that the CIA’s George Tenet had personally told Biden there was no evidence these WMDs even existed.
In fact, Biden had called for war with Iraq for years. In 1998, he warned that the country represented a grave threat to US interests. According to Biden, it was impossible for inspectors to guarantee that Hussein would not develop WMDs in the future (if he didn’t have them already), and that “the only way . . . to get rid of [him]” was to put boots on the ground — sooner or later.
But the rationale that Biden had so diligently crafted for years — that Iraq posed an existential threat to the United States — never materialized. A desperate search for WMDs in the wake of the invasion produced nothing. Within a year, a majority of Americans realized that the invasion had been a mistake. And by the end of 2014, lawmakers and the intelligence community alike conceded that not only did Iraq have no such weapons — biological, chemical, or nuclear — but prewar intelligence had been deeply flawed.
And yet not even during the heated final debate of the primaries in 2020 did Bernie Sanders (who had voted against the invasion in 2002 as a representative of Vermont) make the case — which he had alluded to on the campaign trail more than once — that Biden was unfit to serve as president because of what was, in Sanders’s view, “the worst foreign policy blunder in the modern history of the United States.”
Elizabeth Warren, another candidate who had called the Iraq War a mistake, also failed to challenge Biden’s historical defense of the invasion — from denying that he had ever believed Hussein possessed WMDs to lamenting that the only mistake he had made was to trust the Bush administration. When asked whether Biden was to blame, Warren — a legal academic who had begun her political career taking on the president over the 2005 bankruptcy bill — demurred.
In fact, the most strenuous criticism against Biden’s role in the Iraq War was leveled in March 2020 by an air force veteran who accused Biden of having the blood of fellow service members on his hands. But despite his overtures that he had come to regret his support for the war — which became increasingly unpopular in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party in subsequent years — Biden never learned from his mistake.
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  • Tom Peifer
    OK, so as far as war criminals go, he's way ahead of Putin in the line, but yet never gets called evil, despotic or any of the array of perjoratives which are bandied about both here and on other pages.
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  • Carol Spooner
    He may have learned something. So far he is resisting pressure to intervene in the Ukraine with "no-fly zone" and/or troops. I hope he sticks to that.
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  • Philip Round
    The​ fact that​ Joe​ Biden​ and​ The​ US​ establishment​ were​ solidly in​ favour​ of their​ own​ illegal​ wars​ (wars​ plural, by ​the way!)​ does​ not​ make​ Putin's​ war​ in​ Ukraine​ ​any​ more​ justifiable.​ And​ (so​ far​ as​ we​ ​know, and​ unlike​ Putin) Joe​ has​ not​ poisoned any​ political​ opponents.​ (More's the​ pity, some​ would​ say.)
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