[Webstral]

I agree completely that the thought process of the Administration that initiated the Iraq war had some serious flaws, regardless of whether one accepts the thesis that the White House of the day was motivated principally by the desire to control Iraqi oil. However, while there is a certain visceral satisfaction in tarring the younger Bush Administration with not seeing the Iraqis as people (a satisfaction to which I have given in more than once), there is an explanation better suited to development of events. President W. Bush and his senior people genuinely seemed to believe that the Iraqi people in effect were Americans just waiting for liberation from Hussein, the Ba’ath Party, and the Ba’athist state security apparatus. With the noteworthy exception of General Powell, these are men who a) ducked out of Vietnam and b) matured in Reagan’s America. Both these factors led to the debacle in Iraq.

Like so many men of the Vietnam generation I meet these days who did not serve, the W. Bush Administration looked back at their youthful decisions with regret. They decided against the discomfort of basic training and toting a rifle when they were young men, and this decision didn’t square with the self-image they would have preferred to have. Engineering a great conquest for America seemed like a good way to set straight the record regarding their manliness. As an added bonus, Iraq offered the opportunity to secure oil for America and show up that dirty Democrat Clinton, as well as finish family business. Never mind that Rumsfeld and others were hip deep in dealings with Hussein when he was a useful counter to revolutionary Iran.

Reagan’s America gave rise to the neocons. Among the Reagan tenets is the idea that capitalism is sacred and natural. It’s a half-baked behavioralist notion. All peoples want to live in free market societies, according to the neo-con outlook, because the free market allows people to use their gifts and motivation to create success and wealth for themselves. In theory, a market economy uses resources more efficiently than any other. Since everyone wants personal success, and since a market economy creates the maximum space for personal success, the market economy is the natural goal and outcome of human behavior and aspirations. An important underlying assumption, of course, is that Western individualism is universal and that wherever Western individualism is not in evidence the cause is an artificial control of some sort that need only be removed for a given society to assume its natural state.

Another critical part of the neo-con attitude is the idea that the ideals of the Founding Fathers are truly human ideals. If all men are created equal, this means all men—not just Americans or Westerners or whatever subcategory of humanity one wants to identify. All men. For Americans to enjoy the blessings of freedom while nodding at the lack thereof for large segments of humanity is hypocritical. Whereas the traditional conservatives are wary of rocking the boat, neo-cons see rocking the boat as the only course consistent with American values. Just as the US was anti-colonial before and after WW2, neo-cons are anti-totalitarian. It’s our job to set people free whenever we can bring it off—according to neo-con thinking.

Take all these things together, and you get a willingness to believe that Iraq was ready to be a virtual Middle Eastern America. All that was needed was enough force to kick out Hussein and the Ba’athists (sounds like an Arab rock band, doesn’t it?). Freed from the state security apparatus, the Iraqis would promptly start behaving like freedom-loving Westerners.

Of course, as we know this notion was horribly misguided. My point is that the W. Bush Administration didn’t mean to kill 300,000 (or more; I’ve read figures as high as 600,000) Iraqis. They bungled their way to it. The deaths of so many Iraqi civilians is a result of parochialism, not a deliberate policy of extermination. The distinction is probably lost on the Iraqis themselves. However, if we hope to learn anything from history we have to get the narrative driving history right.