Why we need an "Iraq syndrome"

Andrew Bacevich states the case concisely in The plan for what comes after Iraq Boston Globe 02/24/08. He describes the way in which "humanitarian" intervention helped paved the wave for the Bush Doctrine of preventive ("aggressive", illegal) war:

The United States once adhered to principles that were both sound and eminently straightforward. As recently as the 1970s and 1980s, the so-called Vietnam syndrome exercised a restraining influence. Americans saw military power as something to be husbanded. The preference was to use force as a last resort, employed to defend vital interests. Overt aggression qualified as categorically wrong.

After the Cold War, enthusiasm for precision weapons and a brief infatuation with "humanitarian interventionism" eroded those principles. During the 1990s, the use of force, usually on a small scale, became increasingly commonplace. The lessons of Vietnam lost their salience. Then came the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, which prompted the Bush administration to jettison those lessons in their entirety.

In their place, the administration substituted a breathtakingly ambitious new framework. Through the use of preventive war (the Bush doctrine) the United States set out to transform the greater Middle East (the freedom agenda), thereby liberating the people of the Islamic world and preventing further terrorist attacks. Rather than a last resort, force became a preferred instrument. Given the right motives, aggressive war became justifiable and even necessary.

My qualification to this would be that it was Old Man Bush's Gulf War of 1991 that did the most to further the notion that war would be quick and easy. Certainly, the seeming success of air power in the Kosovo War of 1999, whose consequences we're still seeing directed against the United States, added a great deal to that deadly notion. And, while their were humanitarian issues involved in the Balkan Wars, there was also a very real strategic concern about the spread of unrestrained warfare and the creation of massive waves of refugees.

But Bacevich is certainly right in saying, "Although the White House may pretend otherwise, the Bush doctrine and the freedom agenda [i.e., wars of liberation to install friendly regimes] have failed their trials."

Tags: andrew bacevich, iraq syndrome, kosovo war