The esteemed military historian Martin van Creveld has a trenchant article in the latest issue of The Forward where he suggests President Bush be impeached and put on trial “for misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them”.
Dr. van Creveld is mostly recognized in Misesian circles for his book The Rise and Decline of the State, his lecture on the topic at the Mises Institute conference of the same name, and his recent return to Auburn at the Austrian Scholars Conference where he spoke on the topic of “Why War Games Do Not Work”.
Here is an interview with Dr. van Creveld from Sonshi.com
{ 14 comments }
really? worse than WWI? Any comparison in lives and propery lost? Not to mention the draft versus a contract army?
Shriller and more absurd hyperbole do not strengthen an argument. See George Galloway.
Further, the notion of impeaching the president, when this question was submitted to and approved by the Congress, is idiotic. And before anyone goes off on the “Bush Lied” theme re WMD, please check the facts, especially the pronouncements of the officials from the prior administration and the conduct of the Iraqi regime re inspections. Note especially the administration argument that we should not wait until a threat is imminent before acting to stop it, which in light of 9/11 at least at that time was a compelling argument.
Good points, Mike. Also, I was an avid reader of Arabic web sites before the war and knew that Hussein proclaimed to the world in Iraqi newspapers that he had nuclear weapons.
Here’s a bit of trivia about WMD in Iraq. A former ambassador to Iraq has pretty good evidence that Hussein thought he had nuclear weapons because his scientists told him they did. But those scientists have admitted that they failed miserably in their efforts to create nuclear weapons, but feared for their lives if they admitted their failure.
I think van Creveld is overstating the case somewhat. I think William Lind makes a better comparison to Iraq being the U.S.’s Syracuse.
That said, I feel like I’m reading Red State here, not Mises. What justification for going to war exists simply because Hussein may have developed WMDs? It’s not as if the U.S. has any moral ground to stand on here. Also, there were many dissenting voices who knew the intelligence was completely flawed. Perhaps Congress did not do it’s homework, but the evidence is overwhelming that the Bush administration jumped into this war both feet forward while ignoring all contradictory evidence. The resolution that Congress passed gave the president the authority to use force as a last result. Bush used it as first result. For that, he deserves to be impeached, if not imprisoned.
Anyone who believes that the intelligence wasn’t “fixed” (Downing Street memo) is just a Bush/neocon apologist. As for Democratic support of the war, the Clinton administration on Saddam’s WMD, etc., all this does is affirm how bipartisan US government warmongering is, going back at least to the Wilson administration.
I have maintained from the very beginning that invading Iraq would turn out to be the biggest foreign policy blunder in American history.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Send my male off…
David — You’ve no idea (a) if Saddam could produce biological WMD on demand, or if (b) WMD being very valuable was moved prior to the war or (c) if Saddam should be considered in the same level as other terrorist organizations. Saying there’s a complicit gang in power in regards to Saddam neglects the U.N., the French, the British, Russia … are they all “in it together”? To whose benefit and what purpose?
Not that we don’t have our hands dirty, but tell the whole story or else get a job at the NY Times.
Jim,
The original “justification” for the war in Iraq was that Saddam had WMDs. No evidence of that was found. None. So, then it became, “a war for Democracy, to free the Iraqi people” — free them, by murdering them, and bombing them off the face of the Earth, that is.
As for who benefits from the war on terror and in Iraq — all States not conquered. It’s a justification to expand their own power. G.W. Bush and the despots in the Congress and Senate have used 9/11 and this war as a justification to grab power that they couldn’t have grabbed (without much protest, and being thrown out of office) during other times.
To say that going to war was a first resort is absurd. What about the months of delay in trying to get the UN to enforce its own edicts? The US gave in to every UN and Euro demand to give SH every last chance to avoid this war, very much to its own loss in sacrifice of the element of surprise and allowing SH to prepare his defenses.
Don’t forget SH was left in power only on condition that he complied with UN resolutions, which he did not, repeatedly and flagrantly. If nothing else, this war is merely the conclusion of the last war.
Jim and Mike,
The world’s states are a den of thieves, and the UN is their den mother. So whatever the American state “gave in” to was just smoke-and-mirrors in the runup to what Bush Inc. had already decided to do. And insofar as “this war is merely the conclusion of the last war,” it is but the latest in a decades-long campaign of oil-based military intervention in the Middle East.
You state-worshippers can’t see that, but as neoconservativism requires tunnel vision no less than neoliberalism does, it comes as no surprise.
David H — Wrong. No WMD were found but evidence that Saddam had an ongoing WMD program was. The debate was shifted by the left to finding WMD rather than a reasonable response to the potential threat Saddam had become. Far from the neocons having getting the “power” the left is playing the game as well. For instance, Rockefeller went to Syria and warned them 6 months prior to Bush’s ultimatum. Care to guess where the Russian caravans from Iraq were going? The truth is ugly: states and people running them are voluptuously evil. Any belief in private property and freedom must take the necessity of vigorous armed defense and traitorous behavior by confidants into account.
David W — Including the oil-based confiscation of our oil production facilities built by our oil companies and nationalized by the Arabs? It’s not so one-sided as you propose. And “nation-states” are (unfortunately) here to stay.
Jim,
So one state retaliates against another state in response to decades of economic exploitation. Imagine that.
“And ‘nation-states’ are (unfortunately) here to stay.”
On what basis do you make this claim, especially when technologies like the Internet and the World Wide Web are so rapidly making inroads against it?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/garris3.html
Face it, you’re just a mouthpiece for the status quo and an enemy of freedom accordingly.
One thing I was wondering about my own post was the date Dr. van Creveld mentioned. 9 BC seems to be an arbitrary date in the battle between the Romans and the Germanic tribes. 9 AD may be the date he has in mind as it is the date of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest where an alliance of Germans ambushed and slaughtered a few legions of unsuspecting Romans. This defeat set up the boundary between the two parties for the next few hundred years.
However, the war did last over 30 years and skirmishes did occur during 9 BC so perhaps Dr. Creveld had some obscure engagement in mind, or maybe it was a typo on the part of the folks at The Forward.
“Don’t forget SH was left in power only on condition that he complied with UN resolutions, which he did not, repeatedly and flagrantly. If nothing else, this war is merely the conclusion of the last war.”
The contracting party with the Iraqi government was the UN. Therefore, it was up to the UN to determine whether the treaty which ended the first war on Iraq had been broken and the penalty for any breach. The US said it should be war. The UN disagreed so the US and Britain invaded without the UN’s imprimatur. The second war on Iraq was illegal anyway you look at it.
Also, to respond to a point made by Jim, my recollection may be in error but I don’t think they even found evidence of an NBC program (that’s Nuclear/Biological/Chemical rather than the truncated, inapt “WMD”).
Please, do not forget that Irak used chemical weapons against Iran and its Kurds, it was well documented and proved.
According to some, including a UN weapons inspector, the several hundred pages report that Irak gave to the U.N. prior to the war, stated a difference between weapons produced and those used against Iran or Kurds plus those destroyed by UN inspectors. Of course, this point is hearsay.
Comments on this entry are closed.