Ten Year Anniversary of the Iraq War

Ten Year Anniversary of the Iraq War

Last week was the tenth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. I did not support the invasion in 2003 because I lived in Belgium and barely knew anything about it. But I have supported since returning home, and after learning all I could about it (and while going to school I wrote a 56 page paper supporting the decision to invade; I cited more than 150 sources). In the end, here is my ten year, very quick, final analysis:

The arguments for either side can be classified as moral or strategic. The moral arguments against invading were perhaps the most widely discussed in the news and by pundits. I rarely found any of them compelling; they tended to be devoid of historic insight and scope (though they often pretended to be highly cognizant of history). Moral arguments for invading were more often compelling, yet less often heard. Strategic arguments were strong on both sides. The issues here are much more complex and when tied to US grand strategy the issues become quite vexing and difficult to clearly side with or against.

So, for my calculation, I sum up the two types of arguments and give them a score. The pro-invasion moral arguments get a score of 1, and the uncompelling anti-invasion moral arguments were zero. The pro-invasion strategic arguments are a 1; but the anti-invasion strategic arguments are also a 1. So, they cancel out, leaving me with only the positive 1 from the pro-invasion moral arguments, and so I continue to believe it was a good idea. It is too bad that in the real world decision makers cannot use my simplified system. It makes it so easy for me to pretend to analyze important events from a great distance.

From a ten year perspective, here are 2 insights I don’t think I've read in any news: The greatest intelligence failure on the US side had nothing to do with WMD. It was the failure to predict the scope of the insurgency which followed the toppling of the Baathist regime. There were really two wars: the US vs Iraq, which ended in 3 weeks of the initial invasion. Then, the US, allied with Iraq, vs the insurgents (as well as others who flooded into Iraq, such as al Qaeda). And that is the second insight: one of the main reasons al Qaeda degraded so much from 2006 to 2009 was that they all went to Iraq and then got destroyed by the US military. They came to Iraq to fight, and they lost and became a terrorist movement with franchises (AQAP, AQIM and Al Qaeda Iraq, the latter of which is now dismantled), rather than one big terrorist group. In other words, the Iraq War actually had a big part to play in defeating al Qaeda globally, putting it where it is today.

And of course, this mini-commentary of the ten year anniversary would be incomplete without mentioning that the biggest intelligence failure of Saddam was his belief that the US would not invade at all. Had he believed we were going to really invade, he might not have pushed us so far and deceived us so much, and he might still be there, destroying the lives of his people. Thank goodness he misread George W. Bush.

Tragedy and Guns

As both a teacher and a parent, tragic events such as the recent Connecticut shooting rattle me greatly. At our school there was increased security for about a week following the shooting. The national and pundit debates have followed similar courses this time as other mass murders involving guns. One broad view is that gun control must be strengthened because precious innocent lives trump the second amendment. Another is that, while what happened was a tragedy, it can't be used as a reason to destroy the constitution. My thoughts followed a different course. I believe that preventing tragic innocent deaths and upholding the constitution are not mutually exclusive. And when practicality and constitutionality go hand in hand, that's a good recipe.

Here is a thought experiment. Imagine that on that day at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, every single mentally capable and emotionally stable adult had been carrying a handgun. Further imagine that they have all been trained to use the handgun! Now, imagine what the result would be under these different circumstances. The murderer, through surprise, might still have killed one or two individuals. But he certainly would not have slain 26, no matter what kind deadly assault weapon the killer had. He would have been stopped by any of those adults, whether a teacher, counselor, school nurse, or even janitor or lunch lady!

Self Defense
The only real and practical way to prevent gun crime in the moment is by having a gun yourself. Is it really practical to have every adult in a school bear a firearm? Probably not. But, I know that where I teach, at a high school, there are several teachers with concealed handgun licenses. By law, they cannot even take their guns to the parking lot, however. What if adults with CHLs had their weapons with them? How is this not a practical solution? There would almost certainly be several responsible, emotionally and mentally stable individuals at every campus in America who would be willing to step up and provide this security secretly from the students. This would incur no cost from the government, it would not be unconstitutional, and it would provide a practical solution. When I took my own CHL class for my Texas permit I found a veritable diversity of individuals - old ladies, young fashionable women, businessmen. In fact, I only saw one or two that I would have thought to myself, "that looks like a Texan good 'ol boy who hunts and loves to shoot his gun on his ranch." Average people are willing to learn how to use a handgun to protect themselves.

The Gun Control Fantasy
Estimates for how many firearms are owned by citizens range from 200 to 350 million. That number is high enough that it must be wishful thinking to believe that there could be a gun control law which effectively prevents criminals from acquiring a gun. By definition a criminal is not going to follow the law, so even if controls are tight enough to prevent them from illegally purchasing a gun, they could steal one or acquire it from the gray or black market. In the end, a person with murderous intent will eventually get a gun.

Here is my challenge: propose a thought experiment in which a particular set of gun control laws or practices could have effectively prevented the Newtown massacre.