The NPR Politics Podcast - US Still Has Lessons To Learn From Its Misguided War In Iraq

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

It's been twenty years since the U.S. launched a war in Iraq — a conflict justified by faulty intelligence. More than 4000 Americans died along with tens of thousands of Iraqis. The war undermined Americans' trust in government and further highlighted the inability of the U.S. government to export democracy by way of regime change. This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and international correspondent Deb Amos.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It is edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Giveaway: npr.org/politicsplusgiveaway Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger. On my orders, coalition forces have begun striking selected targets of military importance to undermine Saddam Hussein's ability to wage war. These are opening stages of what will be a broad and concerted campaign. Twenty years ago, President George W. Bush announced the beginning of the war in Iraq with a speech to the nation from the Oval Office. And today on the NPR Politics Podcast, we'll get into why the U.S. started that war

and its long shadow into the present. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. It's 1 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, March 20th, 2023. And I'm joined by NPR national political correspondent Mara Liason and our international correspondent Deb Amos. Hey there. I am very excited to speak with both of you all. Hi there. Great to be here. So let's begin with the basics, because I think there is a lot to be learned from how the United States found its way into this war. And Deb, what led up to the U.S. bombing campaign? You know, I've spent a lot of time reading over all

the 20th anniversary coverage, and I come away with this notion that no one is really quite sure what the lead-up was about, what one thing or one event led the United States into this invasion of one of the biggest Middle East countries, unless you look at 9-11. 9-11 appears to be the animating event of this invasion of Iraq. And it comes from this notion that the U.S. felt it had to do something big in the heart of the Arab world, in the heart of the Muslim world, to counter 9-11. America was feeling vulnerable. It wanted to show its power, and it invaded because it could. Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq, was a known bad guy to the American public. And

it was not a hard thing to sell that he had something to do with 9-11. It turned out he did not. But that was the argument that was being made at the time. So Deb, I want to ask you a follow-up there, because you mentioned 9-11, but there was, I recall, an intelligence claim made by the Bush administration that turned out not to be valid. And let's talk a bit about that. I mean, this was the premise that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney at the time made was that there were these weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that could potentially be used in a variety of ways. Long story short, those weapons did not materialize. Indeed. However, if you look at some polling from that time, the Washington

Post had one out in 2003, and a vast majority, something like 79, 80 percent of Americans believed that Saddam had something to do with 9-11, that he had cooperated with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and that he was building weapons of mass destruction to wreak havoc in the region, even that of intelligence, state-sponsored, as it turned out, that the intelligence agencies did have a sense that Saddam was not building those weapons, but was cowed into not saying it. What Deb is referring to, when you read interviews of people who were in decision-making roles advising the White House, people like Richard Haass, they say to this day, they cannot say why the U.S. did this. What was the one reason that did it? You could say that the U.S. invaded Iraq because it believed in this neoliberal foreign policy thinking that democracy was the preeminent form of government and it would sweep the world, including the autocratic Middle East, that we were in a

post-9-11 psychology, some people might even call it derangement syndrome, where we wanted to take revenge for that and Afghanistan wasn't enough. And then there were all sorts of breakdowns in the process where intelligence gets filtered up to the decision makers. And along the way, it lost all of its nuance and its uncertainty and became what one CIA director infamously said, that this war would be a slam dunk. And it was anything but. You know, Mara, I hear what you're saying about this neoliberal vision, but explain why Iraq, because there were many other countries that you could argue the United States could propagate its version of democracy to within

the Middle East. Sure. But the U.S. had a long standing problem with Saddam Hussein. He wasn't cooperating with international weapons inspectors. Don't forget George W. Bush's father, President George H. W. Bush, had the first Persian Gulf War to get Iraq out of Kuwait. They had invaded a smaller country there. But George W. Bush's father stopped after he expelled Saddam from Kuwait. He didn't go all the way and try to overturn Saddam Hussein. So we talked on Friday on this show about the cost of the war, financed, you know, basically entirely on deficit spending, the dollars and cents there. But there was also a huge, huge toll in terms of lives lost and on Iraq itself, you know, as we see today. You know, the Americans lost a little more than 4,000 people who were killed in the war. For Iraqis, it was much broader in terms of death. You know, after the invasion, the American presence kicked off this sectarian civil war

in the country that was incredibly brutal. You had moments that there were 2,000 Iraqis every single day crossing the border into Syria to leave the country. You know, there was more than a million Iraqis who left. What now you have is this generation, they were born after the war. They hear about it from their parents. They know that there is still this sectarian divide in the country. In fact, there is a rule in the government that in every ministry, you have to hire people by their sectarian affiliation,

which keeps this system in place. This should be a very rich country. It has oil. There are still energy blackouts. There are still problems with free speech. And Iraq has not settled since the 2003 invasion. All right. It is time for a quick break and we'll have more to discuss on the long legacy of the Iraq war when we are back. And, you know, one of the things I've been struck by, I will say politically, is how much the legacy of the Iraq conflict has shaped how Joe Biden himself operates now as president. You know, he's been in politics for a very long time and he was on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the war started. He, in fact, voted to authorize the Iraq war.

And when he was running for president in 2020, I actually asked him about all of this for an interview he did with us on the NPR Politics Podcast. Immediately, the moment it started, I came out against the war at that moment. Now, the judgment of my trusting the president to keep his word on something like that, that was a mistake. And I apologize for that. I will say, frankly, that is a bit of a revisionist history. And, you know, some public remarks he made after the invasion of the war, he did openly support the war effort. So that all being said, I will say, Mara, you know, by the time he gets to 2020,

by the time I think the country has gotten to 2020, there is a clear acceptance amongst many people, I would say, including amongst President Biden, that the vote for this war was a mistake. So what lessons do you think he has taken from the Iraq war? Yeah, well, I think that he's the main lesson is that U.S. boots are not going to be put on the ground anywhere abroad. We might be able to provide weapons to a country like Ukraine to defend itself. But in a recent polling shows that two-thirds of Americans think the U.S. made the wrong decision to go into Iraq. So Joe Biden is very careful about that. He has said over and over again that U.S. troops will not be sent to Ukraine. And this is the legacy of

that huge mistake. I mean, voters don't believe the US government anymore. There's a lack of confidence in all sorts of institutions, including in the intelligence community. And you think that started in Iraq? No, I don't think it started in Iraq. I think it started in Vietnam. But I don't think you could have had the rise of Trump and the strengthening of the isolationist wing of the Republican Party if you didn't have the debacle in Iraq, I don't think Iran would be as strong in the region if you didn't have the botched invasion of Iraq. There's so much about American politics, just the belief that America does the right thing when it goes overseas. That has really been destroyed by Iraq.

I mean, Deb, how did it change the United States' relationship to other countries at standing on the world stage? Well, you know, it's been interesting. In February, Joe Biden had a quote that was puzzling. The idea that over 100,000 forces would invade another country since World War II, nothing like this has happened. He's talking about Ukraine, but it's as if Iraq didn't happen. It is pretty much the description of 2003. And I think the relation to other countries is this sense that America, the U.S. now has a regime change aversion, that that was the lesson of Iraq, that it was to be regime change on the cheap. It turns out it was longer, bloodier, and costlier than its planners had anticipated.

And the U.S. has stepped back from that kind of change ever since. Nation building got a bad name in the Iraq War. And when Biden talked about 100,000 troops going into another country, that might have been a kind of obtuse statement. But George W. Bush made an incredible faux pas when he was giving a speech recently, and he was trying to condemn Putin for launching the invasion of Ukraine. He said the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. And he, that was a Freudian slip. He immediately corrected himself. But, you know, this has been a colossal mistake that the United States has still not recovered from. It's affected everything, domestic politics, foreign policy. You know, George W. Bush was an extremely consequential president, I think, in a negative way because of this. You know, Mara, you mentioned earlier this reluctance about putting boots on the ground. I will say, you know, it seems like the Iraq war changed how lawmakers in Congress, how the president himself thinks about engagement now in future conflicts. That is not, you know, boots on the ground is not something on the table for discussion in Ukraine. But frankly, I'm not even sure if this

conflict were to spread into NATO territory in Europe, if the American public would have the appetite for boots on the ground, right, to actually send U.S. forces to intervene, to help fight in a war that is not on American soil. And that makes me really wonder, like, where and how does intervention ever occur now in the aftermath of the war in Iraq? Well, that's a good question. And we started having this discussion during the Trump administration when he at times was openly anti-NATO and even raised questions about whether the United States would honor its Article 5 obligations, which is an attack on one is an attack on all. That is the beating heart of NATO, the Western alliance. And I don't think that a president, a Republican president, could have

said that, said those things about NATO, if it hadn't been for Iraq. So there's no doubt that the isolationist wing in the Republican Party is large and growing. And, you know, it's an open question. Yes, if Russia decided to invade a NATO country, what would the U.S. do? Certainly, Joe Biden has reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to NATO and to Article 5, but the fact that we're discussing it at all shows how much things have changed. All right, well, let's leave it there for today. Deb Amos, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.