The Iraq Takeaway: American Ground Invasions Destabilize the Middle East

[Mass]

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/03/the-iraq-takeaway-american-ground-invasions-destabilize-the-middle-east/274190/

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The glaring lesson of the war is that American ground invasions destabilize the Middle East, instead of stabilizing it. The 100,000 Iraqis who perished, the 4,500 American soldiers killed and the $1 trillion spent should have halted what Tufts University professor Daniel W. Drezner has called the "creeping militarization of American foreign policy." Instead, the civilian American institutions that failed us before Iraq have grown even weaker.
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The State Department is the first example. Drezner correctly argues that as the Pentagon's budget has ballooned in the post-9/11 decade, so has its influence over American foreign policy. Too many former generals, he contends, have occupied foreign policy important positions.
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In his first major speech as secretary of state, John Kerry tried to put the size of the American civilian effort in perspective. He cited a recent poll that found most Americans believe the State Department and U.S. foreign aid programs consume 25 percent of federal spending. In fact, they receive 1 percent. (The military gets roughly 20 percent.)

Kerry's speech got virtually no press coverage. Just as it did a decade ago, the news media - a second vital American civilian institution - is failing us. This week the media is being correctly excoriated for its failure to be more skeptical of the Bush administration's central justification for the Iraq war: weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist.
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The rise of social media and citizen journalism arguably fill the void created by dwindling newspaper resources. Eric Boehlert of Media Matters argued this week that Twitter could have forced mainstream reporters to do a better job before the Iraq invasion. He cited recent cases of mainstream newspapers columnists being forced to respond to a torrent of criticism on Twitter about pieces they wrote.
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Today, fears of "another Iraq" dominate America's foreign policy debate. The choice is binary. The United States can respond to a foreign policy threat by carrying out a risky ground invasion. Or it can do nothing at all. Diplomatic, economic and other non-military attempts to influence events overseas are given short shrift. Any American involvement will make the situation worse, the argument goes, and create another quagmire.
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A decade after Iraq, the State Department remains the Pentagon's Mini Me. The news media is one-third the size of the public-relations industry. And we continue to view military force as our principal means of addressing foreign policy challenges. In post-Iraq America, our foreign policy debate has devolved into an "invade or not invade" dichotomy. Far more options are available. Every country is not Iraq.

Unfortunateyl, when you hear the media and Democrats and Republicans pushing for war in Syria and Iran, and now North Korea, it is now obvious that the lessons of Iraq have not been learned.

[TwilightGardener]

1. Obama is really trying to use other means to stabilize Syria--under terrible

pressure to use a military option. Nobody (regular people) wants another war, but then people bitch about money for foreign aid, and I do too sometimes, but it's really one of the big tools we have in the toolbox to try to exert influence without resorting to force.