that stinking war we’re fighting over there

As you will have noticed, I’m neither running for public office nor interested in a position in the punditocracy or the commentariat. If I were, I’m sure I’d have to think about the appropriate time and place to exercise vigorous public self-criticism and self-flagellation and renounce and reject and denounce my agreement in 2003 with the decision of our Asshole in Chief to topple Saddam Hussein.

In fact, though, I do not renounce my decision. Considering what we knew and feared at the time—and considering the way that Saddam reacted to the pressure placed on him (evasively)—it seemed like the right decision. I have no reason now to second-guess what was my best judgment at the time (which is one reason I support Hillary Clinton; she thinks the same was I do about t his—and she has a lot more to lose and still she has stuck to her guns ***).

Yesterday, on 60 Minutes, one of the architects of the war, Doug Feith, spoke to Steve Croft:

Kroft begins by asking, “Why did the United States invade Iraq?” Feith responds, “The President decided that the threats from the Saddam Hussein regime were so great that if we had left him in power, we would be fighting him down the road, at a time and place of his choosing.”

If Feith doesn’t look or sound much like a warrior that’s because he isn’t; he’s an intellectual, a hawkish, neo-conservative defense policy wonk, who occupied one of the top rungs on the Pentagon ladder, playing a key role in shaping the military’s response to 9/11 and the decision to go to war with Saddam Hussein.

Asked why was the decision made to go after Saddam Hussein after 9/11, when even then, the United States government realized Saddam didn’t have anything to do with the attacks, Feith answers, “What we did after 9/11 was look broadly at the international terrorist network from which the next attack on the United States might come. And we did not focus narrowly only on the people who were specifically responsible for 9/11. Our main goal was preventing the next attack.”

Kroft follows up, asking, “So you’re saying you didn’t think it was that important to go after the people who were responsible for it — more important to go after people who weren’t responsible for it?”

“No,” Feith explains, “I think it was important to go after the people who were responsible for 9/11. But it was also important to disrupt the international terrorist networks and prevent whatever plans there were for follow-on attacks.”

Kroft observes that using those standards, the U.S. could have invaded North Korea or Syria or Iran. Feith concedes the point, but counters that Iraq was a special case, in large part, because of Saddam’s record.

Saddam had already attacked Kuwait, Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia; that he had defied the United Nations, evaded economic sanctions, used weapons of mass destruction on his own people and had the know-how, if not the wherewithal, to build a nuclear weapon. Feith believes the U.S. invasion was justifiable as an act of self-defense. In his book, he uses the term “anticipatory self-defense.”

“In an era where WMDs can put countries in a position to do an enormous amount of harm,” he tells Kroft, “the old of idea of having to wait until you actually see the country mobilizing for war doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

Whatever you think of Feith’s rationale (and of my support for it!), there’s no question that the next president will encounter the same geopolitical problems and the same terrible uncertainties. That person will get calls at 3 a.m. and at 5 a.m. and at 10 p.m. and at midnight.

Today, Henry Kissinger posits an even scarier scenario—a world situation without precedent:

The long-predicted national debate about national security policy has yet to occur. Essentially tactical issues have overwhelmed the most important challenge a new administration will confront: how to distill a new international order from three simultaneous revolutions occurring around the globe: (a) the transformation of the traditional state system of Europe; (b) the radical Islamist challenge to historic notions of sovereignty; and (c) the drift of the center of gravity of international affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Indian Oceans. …

No previous generation has had to deal with different revolutions occurring simultaneously in separate parts of the world. The quest for a single, all-inclusive remedy is chimerical. In a world in which the sole superpower is a proponent of the prerogatives of the traditional nation-state, where Europe is stuck in halfway status, where the Middle East does not fit the nation-state model and faces a religiously motivated revolution, and where the nations of South and East Asia still practice the balance of power, what is the nature of the international order that can accommodate these different perspectives? What should be the role of Russia, which is affirming a notion of sovereignty comparable to America’s and a strategic concept of the balance of power similar to Asia’s? Are existing international organizations adequate for this purpose? What goals can America realistically set for itself and the world community? Is the internal transformation of major countries an attainable goal? What objectives must be sought in concert, and what are the extreme circumstances that would justify unilateral action?

This is the kind of debate we need, not focus-group-driven slogans designed to grab headlines.

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*** Michael Tomasky, writing today in the Guardian, says that if and when Hillary finally loses, it will be because of her “refusal to renounce her support of the war,” for which he lays blame at the feet of Mark Penn.

Whatever. The only people who give a shit about which side you were on in the run-up to Iraq are partisan Democrats vying for jobs in Washington and/or the media elite, and of course the whippersnappers, for whom this is the Great Moral Question of the Day.

No one else cares.