Former Vice President Dick Cheney's book is coming out. We'll see what he has to say about the George W. Bush Administration's biggest blunder: the conquest of Iraq.
Our war on Iraq was a proxy attack on Saudi Arabian Wahhabiism, which has been the inspiration and funding source for Sunni global jihad, including Al Qaeda. Since we could not invade Saudi Arabia directly, the goal was to topple an oil-rich dictatorship with a relatively educated populace and to establish a pluralistic government with a market economy that would drive down the price of oil and provide a counter-example to other Moslem dictatorships, especially Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria.
The war was a huge strategic gamble, akin to the U.S. invasion of Guadalcanal, which we launched before we were ready, but which took the Japanese so much by surprise that they did not view the invasion as a serious challenge until it was too late.
Where Bush, Cheney, et al, failed was in confusing overrunning Iraq with conquering it. Army Chief of Staff Shinseki correctly estimated before the war that 300,000 occupation troops would be required. For his outspoken prescience, he was forced to retire.
I suspect the decision to invade Iraq was made not long after September 11, 2001. While Bush had the mandate, he should have called for 3,000,000 volunteers to go through basic training and to enter the Reserves. This would have established an adequate pool of occupation troops to prevent Iraq from unraveling as it did. The Administration also demonstrated cultural and historical ignorance in post-overrun relations with Iraqi society. One example was the disbanding of the Iraqi army, which took its weapons, went home, and started an insurgency.
Bush and Cheney bear responsibility for their mistakes. Now Obama and Hillary -- without Congressional authorzation -- have attacked Libya, a sovereign country that did not threaten us. The country has been overrun by anti-government forces backed by U.S. airpower and likely elite ground units. Is the U.S. any better prepared -- materially or morally -- for post-overrun conquest than the U.S. was in Iraq?
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