Fix: I think the correct idiom is: and regime change couldn’t have come too soon.

President Clinton knew.

From Saddam, to al Qaeda, to Russian discontent, to European sullenness about US “hyperpower” – the international challenges that Bush had to navigate were all inherited from Clinton. Bush’s Iraq policy and count-terror policy were built from the Iraq and counter-terror policies he inherited from Clinton.

The thing that most angers me about the Democrats is that all the Democrats who served in Congress or the Clinton administration in the 1990s knew the difficulties facing Bush. In many cases, they likely appreciated the problems better than Bush did entering office.

Those Democrats, Clinton and his officials most of all, were in the best position to educate the American people on America’s challenges – the balls Bush had to juggle – after 9/11.

Instead, the Democrats who understood America’s challenges the best made the deliberate choice to bamboozle the American people for partisan gain.

At first, Clinton did support Bush and try to share perspective by citing to Clinton’s own presidential experience. But when Clinton caved into the leftist activist pressure and betrayed his successor in the White House, I knew it was bad.

Well, I am trying to be comprehensive because even supporters get basic parts wrong. It is broken down by Q&A with sub-points. I suggest deploying the parts smartly in a responsive sequence rather than dumping everything all at once in a jumble.

The concepts are easy to understand and ought to make sense, though some parts like the legal controversy require a little more explanation.

What should work for the Rule 12 counter-attack is to build up the schema by using a repetition of the Bush-right/Dems-lied/Obama-wrong with each point of the Q&A. Remember, the goal isn’t only to set the record straight on the Iraq mission. This is activism. The 1st prong’s re-frame is the foundation only. The counter-attack works as a 3-prong formula.

I agree about the Left’s cult liturgies. They’re tough, but it can be beat.

‘Liberal international system’ is a euphemism for ‘liberal world order’. ‘System’ downplays that the pluralistic liberal international community, such as it is, is structured – ordered – by the will and power of the American hegemon, the alpha wolf of the pack.

The need for American leadership is less evident on the inside of the ‘system’ than on its edges, but you know, things fall apart, the center does not hold. Failed American hegemonic leadership anywhere resonates everywhere that’s tied into American leadership.

Matt_SE: “By the same token, we had the right to go to war with Saddam, but things didn’t end up as rosy as predicted.”

But that’s normal. What wars in US military history unfurled like their optimistic predictions?

Our victories almost invariably have been built on defeats. In Iraq, as previously, failure taught American soldiers like GEN Petraeus how to win.

The standard of perfect preemptive anticipation, preparation, accounting, and execution that critics apply to OIF is ahistorical. Consistent with military history, the learning curve for victory in Iraq was driven by necessity on the ground.

Our military has always undergone steep learning curves in war. OIF just demanded a steeper learning curve in the post-war.

Keep in mind, we were only in Iraq for 8 years.

8 years is a very short time when compared to past post-war occupations. Heck, 8 years after we took charge of South Korea from the Imperial Japanese, we were fighting the Red Chinese there. Who predicted that on VJ day, or 07Dec41 for that matter? Yet almost 70 years since we took stewardship, South Korea has exceeded the most optimistic predictions with our steadfast partnership.

So, what did we accomplish in our brief 8 years in Iraq, despite the incredibly, many said impossibly, difficult circumstances in the post-war?

The objectives for resolution of the Saddam problem set by President Clinton were achieved: Iraq in compliance, Iraq at peace with its neighbors and the international community, and Iraq internally reformed with regime change.

The problem isn’t that we went to Iraq to resolve the Saddam problem. Our peace-building in Iraq was well on track when Obama bungled the SOFA negotiation. With the perspective gained from our 20th century peace operations, the problem is we left Iraq much too early, before we secured the permanent peace.

Matt_SE: “When one tinkers with a system as complex as the geopolitical balance-of-power, one cannot be even reasonably sure of the outcome. And Iraq was a very large piece to remove from such a system.”

Iraq wasn’t removed. Saddam was removed.

The ship sailed on “tinkering” when we intervened with Iraq in 1990-1991, then decided to give Saddam a chance to rehabilitate rather than oust him with the Gulf War. Everything else followed from Bush I’s decision not to remove Saddam as a “very large piece” from the system.

Somehow, in some minds, Saddam has been retroactively transformed since his death into a stabilizing force who served US interests. Yet the US was pulled into Iraq in the 1st place because Saddam was an out-of-control destabilizing force acting against US interests. At every step after we intervened, Saddam was given opportunities to rehabilitate and didn’t.

By 2002, we were down to 3 options: Kick the can, free Saddam, or a last chance to comply with credible threat of regime change.

By then, the indefinite ‘containment’, which was toxic to us in its own right, was broken and a dead end. Freeing Saddam meant a winning and irrational Saddam rearming with WMD.

None of the 3 options were pretty, but it’s what we had. It’s clear to me that faced with 3 ugly options, Bush made the most responsible choice for the long term, though certainly not the easiest choice in the short term. The easiest choice for Bush would have been kicking the can and hoping that when the ‘containment’ collapsed, it collapsed on the next President’s watch.

Of the 3 options, what would you have chosen rather than a last chance to comply – kick the can or free Saddam?

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blert: “Saddam was even nuttier that Hitler or Stalin or Mao. That puts him truly ‘out there.’”

An all-time propaganda coup of the Left was to characterize the Duelfer Report as discrediting OIF when it actually shows that Saddam was growing more dangerous, and regime change couldn’t have come sooner.

According to the Duelfer Report, Saddam was growing increasingly irrational, in the various senses of the word, and removed from whatever checks and balances remained in his circle. Why is that dangerous? Because at the same time, Saddam wasn’t withdrawing from his ambition. He was consolidating power and pursuing his vision quest, which included WMD.

An ambitious tyrant with bad judgement and WMD is really bad. A crazy, ambitious tyrant with bad judgement and WMD has to go.

The Left handles it by having a priest-politician craft the propaganda, and then every zombie in their ranks regurgitates the propaganda, word for word, thought for thought. That kind of centralized system doesn’t work with free individuals. Free individuals must be trained up to a standard, to understand what they are doing and why they should be doing it to get the most bang.

Propaganda is an indirect weapon. I started to prefer direct weapons after seeing what the Left wrought in Iraq, after 2006.

I said “I think that covers the usual range of questions that people have about the Iraq mission”.

On afterthought, I left out two of the usual questions: ‘Was Operation Iraqi Freedom illegal?’ and ‘The reasons kept changing – was OIF about WMD or democracy?’.

Before I answer them, you said Bush “had to make the case”. Bush did make the case. Read his statements on the issue. Preceding Bush, Clinton made the case for the Iraq enforcement.

The Iraq enforcement was over a decade along in 2002; by then, the President shouldn’t have needed to explain the Saddam problem to us. But Bush, along with former President Clinton, did explain it. The rest was up to the people, where activists, including media activists, determine whether the truth or a lie predominates.
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Q: Was Operation Iraqi Freedom illegal?

A: There’s no domestic legal controversy. According to American law, OIF was legal.

The lawsuits claiming Public Law 107-243 did not rise to a declaration of war by Congress or that Congress improperly delegated the power to declare war to President Bush have been dismissed as a ‘political question’, meaning President Bush’s decision on OIF – right or wrong – was within the Constitutional scope of the Executive.

Under Presidents Bush I and Clinton, Congress had repetitively made clear the President was authorized to use military action to bring Iraq into compliance with the UNSC resolutions. OIF was well grounded in the national interest, multiple statutes, as well as modern foreign-policy precedent. For example, P.L. 107-243 and UNSC resolution 1441 included strong humanitarian grounds. In 1999, while still bombing Iraq in the wake of Operation Desert Fox, President Clinton used humanitarian grounds to bypass Congress and the UNSC altogether when he deployed airpower and ground forces against Serbia. (Over a decade later, President Obama cited humanitarian grounds, specifically Responsibility to Protect, to deploy airpower in Libya without Congressional authorization.)

A2: While there is no domestic legal controversy over OIF, there is an international legal controversy, ie, the episodic view that UNSC authorization was required for each US military action and erased (for some critics) Iraq’s presumption of guilt, versus the American progressive view that longstanding a priori and de facto authority for the US-led enforcement of the UNSC resolutions carried over the legal authority of the original Gulf War resolutions to all enforcement of the ceasefire and subsequent resolutions.

President Clinton’s military enforcement with Iraq cited to the US law and UNSC resolution in the original Gulf War authorization:

P.L. 102-1, passed on January 12, 1991, stated, “The President is authorized, subject to subsection (b), to use United States Armed Forces pursuant to United Nations Security Council Resolution 678.”

UNSC Resolution 678, adopted on November 29, 1990, stated, “[a]cting under Chapter VII of the Charter . . . [a]uthorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements, as set forth in paragraph 1 above, the above-mentioned resolutions, to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area.”

The same legal basis for military enforcement with Iraq, which Clinton inherited from Bush I, was inherited by Bush from Clinton.

There is no dispute that by Spring 2003, Iraq was established to have remained in breach of its obligations. At that point, the international legal controversy was over whether the US President or the UNSC held ultimate authority to trigger the credible threat of regime change.

According to President Clinton, based on the foundational US law and UNSC resolution from the Gulf War, the US President held the ultimate – as well as sovereign – authority to deploy US forces for the Iraq enforcement.

The claim that OIF was illegal by international law is based on language in UNSC resolution 1441 that the UNSC was “seized” on the issue, which opponents interpret as requiring UNSC authorization for each US military action with Iraq.

International law is murky on the question of OIF due to the loose and ‘gray’ character of UN enforcement.

On balance, I believe the American progressive view wins out over the episodic view due to precedent set in Iraq and elsewhere, and UN reliance on sovereign authorities, especially US sovereign authority, for military enforcement.

In Iraq for over decade and other contemporary international enforcements, the US had deployed the military with sovereign authority, and only at times with concurrent UN authority. The US-led Balkans intervention, conducted without UN authority, was the closest precedent for OIF.

The regime-changing intervention in the Balkans, like OIF, was not green-lit by the UNSC, but also like post-war Iraq, the post-war peace operations in the Balkans were conducted with UN authorizations.

Q: The reasons kept changing — was OIF about WMD or democracy?

A: OIF was about both. The issues of Iraq’s WMD and regime change in Iraq were tied together. There was a bundle of reasons for OIF. The short answer to ‘Why?’ is ‘All of the above’.

The regime change mandate in Clinton’s 1998 Iraq Liberation Act was based on Clinton’s conclusion that the source of the “clear and present danger” posed by Saddam was not Iraq’s WMD, but rather the intrinsic nature of Saddam’s regime.

In other words, Iraq’s WMD was a symptom only, albeit a very dangerous symptom. The cancer of Iraq was Saddam, unreconstructed, and curing Iraq’s cancer required regime change.

For the liberal hegemonic leader of the free world, regime change equaled pluralistic liberal reform, commonly called democracy.

The objectives set by President Clinton to resolve America’s Saddam-Iraq problem were achieved with Operation Iraqi Freedom: Iraq in compliance, Iraq at peace with its neighbors and the international community, and Iraq internally reformed with regime change.

Compared to the achievement of the first two goals, however, the future progress of Iraq’s internal reform has been left uncertain by the premature departure of US forces from Iraq.

We all know or suspect it is Truth now.

Korea’s still occupied by American troops. Iraq isn’t. If America’s problems are oversea entanglements, having forever entanglements isn’t a good idea.

I’m also bugged by the the constant criticism of the religion of peace phrase. Should he have said that all Muslims are retrograde terrorists? How would that have played in places like Jordan and Morocco, to say nothing of the Euro countries with large numbers of Islamic immigrants? How could these countries support us even behing the sceenes with intel sharing etc when we had just announced that their populations were are enemies? Some people have no idea of the number of balls Bush had to juggle during his administration. Meanwhile the Dems lined up for the opening of a Michael Moore film, lending credibility to the books he was selling all over. Some sold more in Germany than in the US because Germans love to feel they are getting inside information, especially when it confirms their own predjudices.

“The 1991-2003 Iraq enforcement is actually exceptional among modern-era international enforcements for its abnormally strong grounding in law, policy, and precedent.”

I’m reminded of the speeches of Edmund Burke regarding the impending English war against the colonies (us). He said that the crown absolutely had the right to go to war with us, but was it wise?
He lost the debate, but was proven correct.
By the same token, we had the right to go to war with Saddam, but things didn’t end up as rosy as predicted. That includes the opposition from the left: What did the brain-trust in the White House expect? That the left would get all patriotic and just sit idly by as the war was prosecuted?
The left has been trying to re-live the “glory days” of Vietnam for as long as I can remember, all the while shouting “LOYAL OPPOSITION!”
If neocons didn’t take their perfidy into account, then that shows a lack of vision on their side.

The main conservative argument, and the view of the founders, I might add, is epistemological humility. Imperfect knowledge.
There is a limit to what we can know.
When one tinkers with a system as complex as the geopolitical balance-of-power, one cannot be even reasonably sure of the outcome. And Iraq was a very large piece to remove from such a system.

“If the precedent has been established that the Iraq mission was wrong specifically, then that means American leadership of the pluralistic liberal international system we have known all our lives is wrong generally.”

Yep. Pretty much.
There is no “liberal international system,” per se. Just a loose collection of interests among countries. After all, something like 2/3 of U.N. member states are autocracies of one type or another. What interests, exactly, do we have in common with such states?
And as someone quoted Margaret Thatcher in another thread, there is no rogue state that prospers but for the support of an advanced state in the “civilized” world.

“…you need to become a Marxist-method activist, because the activist game is the only social-political game there is.”

Other than telling the simple truth. If we can’t win without resorting to Marxist-method manipulation and lies, then it’s an implicit admission that American citizens are dumb cattle that can’t handle the truth and can’t be trusted to make an informed, rational decision.
And if that’s the case, this country is lost no matter what any of us do.
Until I see that confirmed, I will continue to fight the good fight.

In the meantime, I am buoyed by the comment of Winston Churchill, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.”