by Sohrab Ahmari at UnHerd
In 2002, the Bush administration was met with scant resistance from the mainstream media or wider establishment as it drummed up the case for toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. But there were a handful of dissenters, above all Brent Scowcroft. The two-time former national-security adviser (under Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush) urged the nation to consider the law of unintended consequences — and to open its imagination to nightmare scenarios.
A similar imagination is desperately needed today, as hawks in Washington and Jerusalem gleefully fantasize about collapsing the Iranian regime. It’s a bewildering replay of the same overconfidence that gave birth to the Iraq catastrophe — with some of the same figures who pooh-poohed counsels of caution and restraint back then doing the same thing today.
An invasion of Iraq, Scowcroft argued early on, would distract Washington from the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the actors behind 9/11. Drawing on his experience as the elder Bush’s adviser during the Gulf War, he warned that regime change would mean “occupation of an Arab land, hostile Arab land”. Not for months, but for years. In short, Scowcroft predicted everything that went wrong with Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The war’s advocates quickly dismissed his warnings…
Continue Reading