What is the Conservative Perspective on Iraq?

The Southern Avenger thinks that the Iraq war and occupation could not be further from traditional conservative values.

As a “small-c” conservative, who is cautious about using government power to attempt to fix problems and build utopias both here and abroad, I tend to agree. But I approach the situation with a bit more nuance.

In the video, the Southern Avenger lists Republican Ohio Senator Robert Taft’s opposition of the Marshall Plan among key instances of conservative opposition to the “foreign entanglements” that President George Washington once warned against. By lumping opposition to the Marshall Plan in with other conservative arguments against American imperialism, the Avenger overlooks a crucial distinction between WWII and our current crisis in Iraq.

First and foremost, we did not unilaterally or preemptively attack the Axis powers. Hitler, Mussolini and Emperor Hirohito forced our hands to war. And even as we fought, we spent years planning for the occupation. We understood the peril of once again humiliating a nation whose previous humiliation in the aftermath of WWI had led to this frightening rise of enraged nationalism.

The Marshall Plan represented the culmination of this hard work and dedication. We built a better Europe through careful understanding of the social and moral problems posed by the punitive Versailles treaty and a desire not to repeat the mistakes of our past.

By contrast, we preemptively and unilaterally invaded Iraq without the support of the international community. We spent no time planning the occupation. The results have been catastrophic. Let me enumerate our mistakes:

1. President Bush railroaded the 2002 authorization of force through Congress before the midterm. This in contrast to the way his father handled the 1991 Gulf War. As Al Gore writes in The Assault on Reason, “back in 1991, President George H. W. Bush purposely waited until after the midterm elections of 1990 in order to push for a vote at the beginning of the new Congress in 1991. President George W. Bush pushed for a vote in the fall of 2002, immediately before the midterm congressional election.”

   This made any real debate about Iraq impossible and politicized the decision so thoroughly that even those who might have opposed the war after more careful deliberation were compelled to support it.

2. We refused to work with a broad coalition of international allies to make the Iraq war an international effort morally, militarily and financially.
3. Perhaps most disturbingly, we assumed that a democratic America-friendly government would magically fill the power vacuum left by Saddam. This is in a part of the world that has never had a tradition of democracy. This is in a nation whose inherent endemic ethnic enmities go back thousands of years.

   As a result, we utterly botched the occupation. We allowed rampant looting and failed to declare martial law in the days after Saddam’s fall. In the months that followed, we disbanded the military and purged all B’aath party members from the ranks of the government. We lost the Iraqi people when they saw that we had no plans to help them hold onto and build upon their tenuous national stability.

The lesson from this is that we should fight, invade and occupy nations only when we have no other choice. And when we must never neglect to plan for an occupation. We must understand the nations we are invading. Their cultures, character and ethnic diversity must be a primary concern. Even as we fight the war, we must be prepared to win the aftermath.

WWII and the Marshall Plan followed these precepts. The Iraq War has not. I’m sure you can see which side of history we are standing on.