The remaining question now is how do we finish the job of democratization in Iraq?

We can't.

The Iraqis have to do that themselves.  Democracy is not a gift to be bestowed or an accessory to be installed, it's a prize to be won.  The US could remove an obstacle to democracy and try to produce a basic level of stability (a work still very much in progress), but the US cannot democratize Iraq.  That's one thing  the Bushies never understood, and as a result of that misunderstanding they promised way too much, way too soon.   If Bush had said from the start that the process of political transition in Iraq was going to be difficult, would involve violence, and would take at least a decade, likely several, he could point to the process now and say it was right on schedule.  The problem with pretending a hard job is going to be easy is that when it becomes clear that it's not easy people want to back out.  Better to just admit from the start that it's a hard job that needs to be done.

The process of transition from dictatorship to functioning democracy is never easy, and in a divided nation with an extremely long history of dictatorial rule, it gets far harder.  It was never going to be a quick or simple process. 

Guess it depends on what we mean by "we".  My point is that at this stage the primary drive toward democracy and the new ideas that will define Iraq's own style of democracy have to come from Iraqis.  That's why I opposed the Biden-Gelb "federal Iraq" plan.  It wasn't that bad a plan, but it's too late for outsiders to impose that kind of structural change.

Outsiders will often be frustrated at the pace of development and the degree to which obstacles (like sectarian and clan affiliation) arise, but these are things Iraqis have to resolve themselves.  It might pay to remember that the US had to fight a civil war of epic proportions before we sorted out our own conflict between states rights vs central authority.  It's never been easy to work these things out.

I don't have time to go back and sort out who said what when, but I do think recall a fair bit of unwarranted optimism in the leadup to the Iraq war... 

However, we digress.  I was hoping some who opposed the war would tell us what they think should have been done instead... 

I think it's less about love of Saddam than about a visceral conviction that the Capitalist West is the root cause of all that is Bad in the world. Since Saddam was Bad, he must therefore have been an agent of the Capitalist West, and thus the Capitalist West had no right to remove him from power.

I'm well aware that there's a fallacy or two in that progression.

We see the same sort of idea manifested in occasional claims thatl Qaeda's attacks on the West are somehow a response to some sort of intolerable provocation, and in the idea that Iran or North Korea would suddenly come over all benign if we would just be Nice to them. The "lesser breeds without the law" are assumed to be by definition reactive, incapable of initiating action for their own purposes. This seems to me to be a rather dangerous illusion.

I'm still curious to see if anyone actually tries to answer the question...

Steven--

Your question is an invitation to play monkey-in-the-middle with counterfactuals:  if we rewind the historical tape, at what point do you want us to start considering options?  Jan 2000? 9/11? Jan 2003?  Or perhaps we should go back to the early 1990's and the US loss of interest in Afghanistan? or to Bush I's call for the Kurds and Shi'a to rise up against Saddam?  Many, many options there.

There are two ways to look back: one is second-guessing, the other is identifying clear errors in judgment.  If I had my druthers, I would have liked to see Afghanistan stabilized before the US undertook the next war. We often forget the near unanimity worldwide with which the Taliban was taken down:  even the French were Americans then.  If the Bushies had built on that coalition rather than squandering it, the world would be a safer place today.

But let that pass.  Let's accept the case that the loathsome Saddam needed to be removed (I highly recommend the Kurdish films Turtles Can Fly and Kilometer Zero for a harrowing portrait of Iraq under Saddam).  Then we might ask:  on what timetable?  Could the US have pushed harder for multilateral support, or was it necessary to act unilaterally?  Did they need to send Colin Powell to the UN with information they knew to be misleading?  As best I can tell, Cheney and Rumsfeld were convinced that the US could effectively act alone, and--on the basis of their conversations with Ahmed Chalabi, Kanan Makiya and others--that Iraqis would welcome the overthrow of Saddam.  Hubris, I thought at the time.  

But let that pass.  As TT observes, the initial military campaign went off reasonably successfully, though it was no cakewalk. George Packer was pro-invasion, but his The Assassin's Gate provides a pretty devastating picture of the (I would say, criminally) negligent back-room politicking that screwed up the transition from invasion to occupation.  For instance, the State Department had a Future of Iraq working group and briefing paper: Wolfowitz, Feith et al. didn't bother to look at it and kept it from being presented.  On the ground, military "civil affairs" officers were told that there was a reconstruction plan, then told to make it up on the spot, then second-guessed from on high (see the front-line oral histories collected in the book What Was Asked Of Us).  

Then came Paul Bremer.  Shall we go on?  The accounts I've read suggest that there was a six-month window, between March and October 2003, when there was enough residual relief about the demise of Saddam that much chaos could have been avoided.  Instead....

Are these the options you wanted considered?  

[quote]it would have been counterproductive to flood Afghanistan with foreign
troops, which could easily have given the impression of a Soviet-style
occupation and exacerbated, rather than alleviated, resistance.  I've
felt from the start that stabilizing Afghanistan simply needs to be
accepted as a generational enterprise, with a timeline measured in
decades. [/quote]

I can certainly agree with this.  But there was a broad coalition in place in support of removing the Taliban.  If the US had exercised leadership there, the resources--peacekeepers, reconstruction aid--wouldn't have had to come from the US alone. It could have been a worldwide effort to give the Afghan people room to breathe.  Instead, it was packaged as double-or-nothing with Iraq--overmilitarized, as it were.   Now, with Karzai faltering, the Taliban are on their way back.

[quote]The conclusion is therefore inescapable: the Fascist Left loved the tyranny of Saddam more than the freedom and liberty of the Iraqi people. But 'twas ever thus.[/quote]

It's a bullet proof analysis: The "Fascist Left" are evil and Saddam is evil, therefore they are both on the same side. Ever considered making a living from your debating skills Owly?

Chris:

Ok, let's be simple.  What do you think should have been done about the Iraq situation in 2003?

A)  Leave Saddam in power but maintain sanctions

B)  Leave Saddam in power but lift sanctions

C)  Remove Saddam from power

D)  Something else (please specify)

If you chose option C, what do you think should have been done after Saddam was removed? 

you still can’t bring yourself to ask the obvious question, was the
objective ever attainable in the first place, or was it just another
misguided ideal that other people have to pay the price for.

I've been discussing that question, ad nauseam, for about the last 4 years.  The answer is that the objective was unattainable in the short term, attainable in the long term.  The transition from dictatorship to democracy is long, involved, and difficult, and it was never going to be possible to roll out a nice functional modern democracy any time in this decade.  If you take the objective as starting that process, than you could say it has to some extent been achieved.  

I didn't approve of the invasion from the start: I thought it needed a much more rigorous act of leadership in the attempt to develop a larger coalition, and I thought it blindingly obvious that the Bushies were not prepared for the challenge of stabilizing a postwar Iraq.  Even then, though, many of those who opposed the invaion (including myself) didn't have many terribly good alternatives to offer.  The status quo, if you recall, was not exactly working out. 

I can certainly agree with this. But there was a broad coalition in
place in support of removing the Taliban. If the US had exercised
leadership there, the resources--peacekeepers, reconstruction
aid--wouldn't have had to come from the US alone. It could have been a
worldwide effort to give the Afghan people room to breathe. Instead,
it was packaged as double-or-nothing with Iraq--overmilitarized, as it
were. Now, with Karzai faltering, the Taliban are on their way back.

Possibly so... and as I said, I do feel that one of Bush's great mistakes in Iraq was his failure to put real effort into leading a real coalition. However, I also suspect that the support for removing the Taleban was largely verbal, and that there was always going to be real reluctance to contribute anything more than nominal support in the "good on ye, mate, best of luck with it" vein. Whether Karzai is faltering for want of outside support or because Afghanistan is ungovernable is also open to debate.

I'm still not convinced that talking about "options" in hindsight,
without specifying certain constraints, is really more than war-gaming
or second-guessing.

That's exactly what it is, but there is a purpose to it: I'm asking those who denounce the invasion to consider, given the real world constraints at the time, what alternative policy would have been better.  It is often forgotten that the status quo ante was not exactly working out.

The proposal you cite was not an exit strategy, but an escalation strategy.  This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about when I say that the Bushies should have put more effort into trying to lead a real coalition: moves like this would not have worked, but trying them would have made the eventual (and I think inevitable) removal of Saddam much more palatable.

I actually wanted more than that.  I wanted the US to show real leadership, take Iraq to the UN as an example of a larger qestion that needed (and still needs) to be addressed: how bad does a government have to be to warrant external removal?

The answer the UN currently has to give is that the only grounds that warrant removal is "immediate threat".  The Bushies decided to skirt the real issue and fall back on that, hence the whole WMD mess.  That was a mistake, I think.  I think it needed to be argued that the sovereignty principle has become in some cases little more than a shield protecting the worst governments in the world, and that the UN needs to reevaluate the assumption of absolute sovereignty.

Saddam's government had already been deemed so bad that it could not be allowed to trade with the rest of the world, so bad that it had to be denied control of much of its own territory. Those sanctions had crippled Iraq and were killing Iraqis, but they were not removing Saddam. Many thought that ideally Saddam should have been removed by a domestic insurrection, but that would have meant a prolonged and incredibly destructive civil war.  The status quo was impossible and lifting sanctions would have been worse.  At that point it has to be asked whether there is a point at which it is justifiable to remove a government even in the absence of immediate threat.

I don't know if the UN would have ever resolved the issue (I suspect not) but I do think the US should have brought it up and made a real attempt at forcing the UN to address it. 

[quote] it was, and remains to this
day a question for Iraqi’s to answer themselves.[/quote]

Chris--

I understand your reluctance to be forced into an either/or answer, since the variables are massive and multiple.  But I don't think this I-wash-my-hands response is really adequate, since it refuses to acknowledge under what conditions the Iraqis could, in face, pose and answer the question "for themselves."  Could they have answered the question with Saddam Hussein in power?  (In the last "election" he received 100% of the vote).

Saying no--which is, I think, the only honest answer--does not mean you have to endorse the invasion/occupation as it happened; the conduct of the Bush administration was disgraceful on a number of counts.   But the fact that, as you note, questions of sovereignty are actively being debated worldwide means that "it's none of your business" is no longer a defensible position. 

[quote]The neocon inner core wanted a Chalabi-led junta from the start, but Powell and numerous others resisted.[/quote]

Just like they resisted the invasion in the first place? Very influential people. The Chalabi plan was ditched when it became obvious that he had absolutely no constituency in Iraq whatsoever. Nothing to do with Powell or anyone else.

[quote]Bush went against the neocon core, and the Sistani situation was by no means the only reason. Domestic politics were key, and the political managers felt that installing Chalabi after promising democracy would have been politically unacceptable. [/quote]

Domestic politics indeed! It was because the occupation was already being swamped by the combination of the Sunni resistance and Al Qaeda. A Shia rising would have been the straw to break the camel's back.

[quote]Of course the election was a mess, what else could it have been, under the circumstances? [/quote]

Circumstances which your government created! So what are you asking for? A D minus for trying? It was not just a mess it was fraudulent. And it is even more fraudulent to claim that democracy was what was intended all along.

[quote]Stability, development of a functional bureaucracy, police, and military, and some meaningful effort to broker a balance among Sunni, Shi'a, and Kurds were American concerns, nut they were in no way contrary to Iraqi interests.[/quote]

I think the main concern was the (continuing) refusal to put Iraq's oil up for sale. But let's say that your theory is correct for the sake of argument. That still doesn't give America the right to say that it is "losing patience" with an allegedly democratically elected government! and if it is claiming that right (as it did by implication) then that nullifies the claim that the government in question is either sovereign or democratically elected.

And of course it was 100% mercenary. Do you honestly think that your government is some white knight racing to right wrongs and make the world a better place for all? You remind me of Communist Party friends of mine who believed the same thing about the Soviet Union 30 years ago. It's a dangerously naive delusion. Nations act in their own interest, or rather in the interests of the people in charge in that nation.

Just Imagine;

Steve;

Can you imagine what Saddam would have done about an Iranian nuclear program once he had bribed his way out of sanctions and reconstituted his own nuclear program?

[quote] Since in this case it was the US that was shouldering the bulk of the
(quite considerable) cost of maintaining the no-fly zones, I see no
reason why the US shouldn't have been the one to point out that an
unsatisfactory status quo had been festering for years[/quote]

Sounds reasonable, but the economic argument looks pretty lousy in hindsight:

" The overall cost of the two no-fly zones was roughly $1 billion a year.  Other U.S. military operations, such as exercises in Kuwait, added another $500 million to the bill.  That total of $1.5 billion was a bit more than one week of occupying Iraq would cost the US government in 2003-4, when the burn rate was about $60 billion a year, increasing slightly to about $70 billion" in 2005." (Thomas Ricks, Fiasco (2007), p. 15).

Here evidenced-based history is a useful corrective to hindsight.  Ricks also quote Colin Powell in the fall of 2001 (post 9/11): "Iraq isn't going anywhere. It's in a fairly weakened state.  It's doing some things we don't like.  We'll continue to contain it."  (p.31).

As Ricks tells it, Powell was outmaneuvered by Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, especially after they went public with the WMD charges, thanks to Judith Miller of the NYT.  Ricks sees Wolfowitz as the one who nursed the "topple Saddam" flame from 1991 onward. 

Incidentally, he also recounts a Feb 2002 Wehrkunde meeting in Germany, where Wolfie, Joe Lieberman and John McCain launched the with-us-or-against-us doctrine of preemptive war. (p36)

Steven,

Why do you think Americans "had to" remove Saddam? You seem to believe that removal of Saddam was neccessary and the only problem was the execution of the plan. I suppose you also have an alternative plan in your head but the question for me is that why do you think removal of Saddam was neccessary and why should it be done by westerners with leadership of United States? What was supposed to be accomplished and, is it now?

How about surrender?

B2,

Try critical self-examination in Iraq once in a while?

We did. It was called the surge.

Brendan,

Choice number 1 was the clear answer. It was at the time, and is so
still with the benefit of hindsight. Incremental pressure and troop
build up would have been a logical alternative to invasion and war,
along the lines of what Michael Walzer wrote. 

What kind of "incremental pressure" do you envision... and how long was a troop buildup supposed to continue?  Where are you supposed to put these troops that you're building up?  What exactly would these moves be expected to accomplish?  Do you really think Saddam was going to step down or mysteriously reform becaise of incremental pressure or a troop buildup?  It sounds good in theory, but in practice it's as full of holes and unlikely to produce positive results as any other plan.

The most important fact that, to me, indicates the failure of the
political process and the choice depose Saddam AT THAT TIME is, there
was no credible or imminent threat. It was an irrational and illegal
action undertaken for other reasons entirely.

There wasn't an imminent threat, there was a disastrous and unsustainable stalemate.  What I'm asking is what else could have been done that would have had any reasonable hope of ending that situation.

"Illegal", in this context, really doesn't mean much to me.  Saddam's invasion of Iran was illegal, and his invasion of Kuwait was illegal, but he never faced any consequences until somebody broke the law.  What kind of law is it that can't be enforced without breaking it?

It's easy to condemn a lynching, but lynchings happen when the law breaks down and ceases to mean anything. 

Just like they resisted the invasion in the first place? Very
influential people. The Chalabi plan was ditched when it became obvious
that he had absolutely no constituency in Iraq whatsoever. Nothing to
do with Powell or anyone else.

Powell and a number of others argued that Chalabi had no constituency and could not govern.  The neocons argued that nobody had any constituency (Saddam was not exactly tolerant of political organization), and that an early election in an environment devoid of party structures would revert to sectarian and clan lines and reinforce the divisions that were already there.  Bush went with the Powell group, mainly because the 2004 election was imminent and his political advisers thought that having an interim Iraqi government in place and a commitment to an election date was essential to his re-election.

It was not just a mess it was fraudulent.
And it is even more fraudulent to claim that democracy was what was
intended all along.

If democracy was not the intention, why not just leave the army intact and appoint a congenial general?  That would have been a whole lot easier, no?

I think the main concern was the (continuing) refusal to put Iraq's
oil up for sale.

Why would Iraq not want to sell oil?  Their neighbors are doing rather well out of selling oil.  They have to sell something, and what else have they got?

But let's say that your theory is correct for the sake
of argument. That still doesn't give America the right to say that it
is "losing patience" with an allegedly democratically elected
government! and if it is claiming that right (as it did by implication)
then that nullifies the claim that the government in question is either
sovereign or democratically elected.

If the US felt that a government, elected, semi-elected, or unelected, was becoming too dependent on US aid, why should they not express impatience and indicate that aid might not last forever in the absence of progress?  In the real world, I mean, not in some politically correct fantasy land.

And of course it was 100% mercenary. Do you honestly think that your
government is some white knight racing to right wrongs and make the
world a better place for all?

Do you not see any possible middle ground between those extremes?

Nations act in their own
interest, or rather in the interests of the people in charge in that
nation.

Do you not acknowledge the possibility of common interests?  Certainly it was in the interest of the US to see Iraq reenter the global economy, pump and sell oil, buy products, and generally rejoin the world, none of which could happen while Saddam was in charge.  But would those things not also be in the interest of Iraqis?

The neocon vision for Iraq was a rather pretty thing, and would have been lovely for both Americans and Iraqis.  The neocon fuckup was in their failure to understand that America simply did not have the capacity to achieve that vision. 

From what I have read from you under another topic that I started, you
don't seem to be the type of person who believes that western world
should involve itself in solving problems for others, which I agree,
but why do you think that western world should act like superman in
this case? what is different?

In this case the Western world was already involved, up to its eyeballs. It was the West (specifically the US) who ejected Saddam from Kuwait. The West had imposed and maintained sanctions, and imposed no-fly zones that effectively prohibited Saddam from asserting control over large parts of Iraq.

It was not a question of whetner or not to intervene; intervention was already in place. The question was what the future of that intervention was to be. I don't see it as a choice among good or bad alternatives, but a choice among bad and worse alternatives... sustaining sanctions ad infinitum didn't look like a good option, and lifting them looked worse.

I think it's fair to ask people who do not think Saddam should have been removed what they think would have been a better choice, given the options available at that time.

It's also worth pointing out that while one must accept responsibility for the consequences of one's actions, one must also accept responsibility for the consequences of inaction.