In this essay, Dr. Arthur Herman, author of The Idea of Decline in Western History, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, and Gandhi and Churchill: Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age, assesses the invasion of Iraq from a broad perspective, one informed by closer attention

to the Clinton administration's policies, a better understanding of the Bush administration's decisions, and information gained from those who interrogated Saddam Hussein, studied documents seized after his fall, or helped make U.S. policy. All that considered, Herman argues that, "the decision to go to war takes on a very different character. The story that emerges is of a choice not only carefully weighed and deliberately arrived at but, in the circumstances, the one moral choice that any American President could make."

In his second term, President Clinton recognized that attempts to contain Iraq had begun to collapse, and in the fall of 1998 a nearly unanimous Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act calling for Saddam Hussein's overthrow. Six weeks later the president attempted to do so with a four-day bombing attack. "You allow someone like Saddam Hussein," he warned Americans, "to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons. How many people is he going to kill with such weapons? ... We are not going to allow him to succeed." [Herman's emphasis] With the UN Security Council split and invasion seemingly the only--but unattractive--option, Clinton turned aside to give his attention to an Arab-Israeli settlement.

When George W. Bush took office in January 2001, the United States had long been effectively at war with Saddam Hussein for his failure to honor the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease fire, impeding UN arms inspectors, corrupting the UN sanctions regime, and making almost daily efforts to bring down British and American planes patrolling Iraq's no-fly zones in order to prevent further murder of Iraqi Kurds and Shiite Muslims. With his administration divided over Iraq policy, the president elected to do nothing--until September 11 convinced him that he must not only respond to present dangers like Afghanistan but also respond to future threats. He put Iraq at the top of his list. Though American intelligence erred in claiming Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), we now know that that Saddam Hussein had encouraged that mistaken belief, prepared to resume their production when UN sanctions weakened, and had growing ties to terrorist organizations, to include al Qaeda.

Had Bush, like Clinton, ignored bipartisan support and turned away from anticipatory self-defense, Saddam Hussein could have gone on murdering Iraqis, resumed building WMD as he told FBI interrogators he intended, and reestablished his dominance of the Middle East. He would have demonstrated that President Bush as well as the UN would only threaten but lacked the will to act. In response the American people might have voted him out of office in 2004, replacing him with Al Gore, an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq Liberation Act, or John Kerry, who in 1998 told a former UN arms inspector that the time had come to use force. Having defined his job as "to secure America," Bush had little choice but to invade Iraq, rebuild it, and begin the effort to reform a Middle East too long supportive of violent political Islam.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/special-preview-br--why-iraq-was-inevitable-11456

By Arthur Herman

Reviewed by James L. Abrahamson, contributing editor