The Iraq War—A Catastrophic Success

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The Iraq War—A Catastrophic Success
December 21, 2004
Robert Higgs

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
—Matthew 6:21

On the campaign trail last October, Vice President Dick Cheney created a small stir when, speaking of the Iraq war, he declared: “I think it has been a remarkable success story to date when you look at what has been accomplished overall.” In view of the rampant violence raging in Iraq, the widespread devastation of the country’s human and material resources, and the dim prospects for its future peace and prosperity, Cheney’s statement seemed bizarre, and the Democrats seized on it as still another example of the disconnect between the Bush administration and reality. Yet, on closer inspection, we can see that the war has indeed been a huge success, though not exactly in the way that the vice president intended to claim.

In a characteristically unwitting way, President George W. Bush himself stumbled upon a resolution of the seeming paradox when he told Time magazine’s interviewer last summer that the war had proved to be a “catastrophic success.” By that oxymoron, he sought to convey the idea that in the invasion the U.S. military forces had overcome the enemy unexpectedly quickly, “being so successful, so fast, that an enemy that should have surrendered or been done in, escaped and lived to fight another day.” Although this hypothesis seems far-fetched as an explanation of the nature and extent of the resistance now being waged against the U.S. occupation forces and their collaborators in Iraq, the term “catastrophic success” does express the character of the war precisely. We need only bear in mind that the catastrophe afflicts one set of people, whereas the success accrues to an entirely different set.

Moreover, to appreciate the war’s success, we must keep in the forefront of our thinking the instrumental rationality of its perpetrators. We must ask: Who bears the responsibility for launching and continuing the war? What are these individuals trying to achieve? And have they in fact achieved these objectives? Having answered these questions correctly, we shall be obliged to conclude that the war has been a huge success for those who brought it about, however disastrous it has been for many others, especially for the unfortunate people of Iraq.

A short list of the war’s perpetrators must include the president and his close advisers; the neoconservative intriguers who stirred up and continue to stoke elite and popular opinion in support of the war; the members of Congress who abdicated their exclusive constitutional responsibility to declare war, authorized the president to take the nation to war if he pleased, and then financed the war by a series of enormous appropriations from the Treasury; and certain politically well-placed persons in the munitions industries and in interest groups that have chosen to support, sometimes for reasons based on religious beliefs, a war that they perceive as promoting Israel’s interests or as bringing about the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. Each of these responsible parties has gained greatly from the war.

More: http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1441