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President Obama's address to the nation about the Iraq War is a welcome, if principally symbolic, action - but at least it cleanses the Office of the President from the dishonorable stain of duplicity and delusion imposed by the prior administration of George W. Bush.
This war was anticipated well before Bush took office. A Neocon position paper laid the foundation for it. The famous "mystery meeting" with Dick Cheney, GOP Senators, and oil industry leaders early in the Bush Administration did not yield much public discussion, apart from one Senator who remarked, "Well, if you want the oil, why don't you just go TAKE it?" Bush didn't need 9/11 to justify his invasion of Iraq - although he purposely lied to the country about Iraq's involvement with al Quaeda. Nor did Bush ever tell the truth about his objectives for this war:
1. "A short, victorious war." To Bush taking Iraq looked like a win-win deal - the evil Saddam Hussein disposed of, revenge for the attempt on Bush I's life, some chest-thumping good ol' American power demonstrated, and home front political benefits all around.
Bush, of course, in one sense got his wish, for the invasion was swiftly successful. But the kind of thorough-going incompetence of the entire Administration was exposed when it was realized the there were virtually no plans for what happened AFTER the invasion. There were no plans for a war that would drag on, and on, and on - and, ultimately, not be so victorious, after all.
2. A major American presence in the heart of the Middle East. Ultimately, even Bush had to foreswear this interest, but it was clearly an initial war aim. With a powerful U.S. presence sited to project authority over the entire region, the balance of world power would have been greatly altered.
In a weltpolitik sense, this had a very significant strategic appeal - except that it failed to account for the responses of all the other nations (and peoples, such as the Kurds) affected. As Britain learned to its rue and great cost between about 1920 and 1960, it is impossible to sustain peacefully such a presence in that fragmented region. Most of the nations of the Middle East are artificial constructs dictated by victorious WWI allies, carved out of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and awarded as plum prizes to England and France.
Not merely religious differences animate tension and conflict in the Middle East - during the Cold War, the West and the USSR struggled mightily for the allegiances of various countries, ultimately to the detriment of governmental stability and social progress in all of them. None of the principal states in the Middle East in 2003 would have taken an assertion of complete American hegemony in the region laying down.
This secret war aim of the Neoconservatives and the Bush Administration was a cloud castle in the sky from the very beginning - and the Iraq War has rather damaged American influence in the region rather than enhance it.
3. A self-liquidating war - victory and influence literally for free! Bush did articulate this aspect of his Iraq invasion as a benefit - suggesting that Iraq would be glad to pay America for deposing Saddam Hussein and extending a benevolent U.S. umbrella of protection over the area. However, this "benefit" was never openly acknowledged as one very significant reason for the decision to conduct the war.
Again, this concept was not very well thought out (very little actually was, in the final analysis, in the Bush Administration's approach to and prosecution of the Iraq War). The U.S. did eventually receive some Iraqi money from oil production but even then most of it turned into phantom funds - $8 billion missing in a recent audit. More wishes and dreams in cloud-cuckoo land is what the Bush war aim really was.
4. Near-monopoly domination of Iraqi oil resources by American companies. At no point in time did anyone associated with the Bush Administration make any public statements about tthe Iraq War being one for control of the oil. Charges of this, laid before the invasion, were either violently rejected or ignored. Only the secret Cheney meeting, desperately and successfully kept secret by battling a number of lawsuits over the records, ever hinted at it: "Well, if you want the oil, why don't you just go TAKE it?"
Rather, the actions of the Bush Administration following Saddam's defeat, showed that this had indeed been a war aim. The Administration forcefully rejected efforts by French, Russian, and British companies to take out contracts for oilfield reconstruction, operation and production, steering those instead to American firms. That, too, succeeded at first, but now has given way to other deals made when American ability to dictate all decisions to the Iraqis weakened.
It is possible to articulate a few more unspoken war aims that the Bush Administration never disclosed to the nation or the world. All of the American ambitions, apart from deposing Hussein and establishing a new government (which may not survive as a democratic institution), were frustrated. Most were just as vaporous as the presence of "weapons of mass destruction" threatening the U.S. homeland through delivery by non-existent long range drones.
The Bush Administration threatened the American nation, still terrified after 9/11 and already at war in Afghanistan, with nightmare scenarios of Iraq. These threats, inflated by false intelligence reports and a drumbeat of die warnings, presented American politicians in all parties with a choice - call the President a liar (a few did, too) or support his approach. To do otherwise was to risk the wrath of terrified, angry American voters.
President Bush lied to the nation and to the world. He lied about the dangers, he lied about his resolve to only resort to combat if Iraq rejected all overtures (Saddam Hussein was desperate to forestall the attack, when it came, and had already begun cooperating with U.N. inspectors), and he most certainly lied about the real reasons for the Iraq War.
