The case for liberating Iraq

Peter D. Feaver:

On the night that John McCain secured the Republican nomination, he said about Iraq that "it is of little use to Americans for their candidates to avoid the many complex challenges of these struggles by re-litigating decisions of the past."

He is right that it would be a mistake for his campaign to focus on the past at the expense of the future. Either of his Democratic opponents will be on far more vulnerable terrain defending the incoherencies of their proposed plans to "end" the war than if they get to cherry-pick debates from the past with the benefit of hindsight.

But there are at least four reasons why Senator McCain would be making a mistake if he avoided entirely the historical debate.

First and foremost, the historical case remains an important factor in determining votes. In these times, political leaders are asking voters two questions: Will you vote for me, and do you have the stomach for continuing this costly war? As two colleagues (Christopher Gelpi and Jason Reifler) and I show in a forthcoming book, public opinion on both those questions is a function of two underlying attitudes: the retrospective opinion of whether the war was a mistake, and the prospective opinion of whether the war can ultimately be won.

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For the public to believe that a commander in chief can bring the Iraq war to a successful conclusion, they must have a strong degree of trust in that leader. If the public only hears unrebutted attacks about the original decision to invade Iraq, the lies and myths will take hold and undermine public confidence in the continuing effort in Iraq.

For instance, after the 2004 election, the Bush administration largely stopped "relitigating the past" and focused almost all of its Iraq messages on the future. The Democrats, in contrast, kept up a barrage of partisan attacks about the original decision. The Bush nolo contendere stance may have been interpreted by many Americans as tantamount to a guilty plea. Is it any surprise, therefore, that according to one CBS/NYT poll last year, as many as 60 percent of respondents said they thought "members of the Administration intentionally misled the public" in making its case for the war with Iraq whereas before the 2004 election (when the Bush team was making a stronger defense) only 44 percent believed that myth.

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Finally, the failure to defend the historical case has allowed Democrats to avoid answering tough questions about their own stances. Senator Obama, for instance, loves to praise his own judgment in coming out against the Iraq war in 2002, favoring instead containing Saddam Hussein with a vigorous weapons inspections regime. What Obama has never explained is how he thought the United States could reconstitute the containment/inspections regime absent a credible threat of force. When Obama gave his 2002 speech, there were no inspectors on the ground in Iraq and the U.N. sanctions were falling apart. It was the U.S. threat of force--the very threat Obama was protesting--that reinvigorated the Security Council and reestablished the inspections regime.

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I think Bush's failure to defend the liberation of Iraq has been a mistake. He has allowed the left to frame the debate as one about "lies" rather than the failure of Iraq and Saddam to comply with the terms of its cease fire agreement and countless UN resolutions. It was Iraq's obligation to prove it had destroyed its WMD and it did not because Saddam want to keep the illusion of WMD out there as a deterrent to Iran. He was able to fool the intelligence services of the world and those who believed what they were saying were not liars. There is much more.

I do think focusing on the incoherence of the Democrats Iraq policy is a good approach to the campaign for McCain.