Shock, awe and humility

THREE YEARS AGO TODAY, Iraqis were “shocked and awed” by the power of the U.S. military. Today, Americans are shocked and awed by its limits. If the “cakewalks” of the 1980s and 1990s -- Grenada, the Gulf War, Kosovo -- restored America’s belief in its omnipotence, so badly shaken in Vietnam, the occupation of Iraq has been a humbling letdown.

With a mere 38% of the public still thinking that the war is going well, and more than 2,300 U.S. troops dead, it’s become fashionable for the war’s initial supporters to have second thoughts. We opposed the decision to go to war. But we will resist the temptation to be fashionable and will take this opportunity to at least concede that the Bush administration’s actions were rooted in a strain of American idealism most often identified with Woodrow Wilson. The decision to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime was a Wilsonian attempt to preserve the notion of collective security; even more idealistically, it was an attempt to create an oasis of American-style democracy and prosperity that would alter the complexion of the entire region.

So much for the vision. The reality has been -- to use a term from another unpopular war -- a quagmire. Bush’s messianic idealism was never justified, and in any event the administration’s flawed execution would have undermined his purpose. The list of gaffes is by now distressingly familiar: the flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, the lack of sufficient troops, the tainted contracting process and so on.

To be fair, Washington has persevered in its quest to create a representative democracy in Iraq. But American surprise at the unfolding Sunni-Shiite schism, and our lack of preparedness to deal with the early dismantlement of the Iraqi military, have made the world’s reigning superpower look, once again, oddly naive.

And though it pledges to “stay the course” in Iraq, the Bush administration has long since fled the battlefield of ideas. It embarrassingly resorts only to Orwellian talk of a “war on terror” instead of addressing real issues, and its claims of relentless success are not to be taken seriously.

Most opponents of the war are hardly in a position to gloat about American difficulties in Iraq. Russia, France and Germany all cynically manipulated the run-up to the war for their own purposes, and they comforted Hussein by allowing him to believe that the international community would never take concerted action against him. And much of the mocking by Bush critics about the supposed absurdity of the administration’s claims about weapons of mass destruction is revisionist nonsense. As the New York Times reported last Sunday, Hussein’s own top military commanders were stunned to learn three months before the start of the war that they had no WMD at their disposal. There is a Shakespearean quality to the tale of the dictator bluffing his way to his own demise, and it’s hard for those of us who opposed the war to bemoan his removal.

As it enters its fourth year, the war in Iraq defies simplistic characterizations from both ends of the political spectrum. The heroism of U.S. forces and of ordinary Iraqis going about their daily lives is inspiring. But the future of Iraq remains shrouded in gray uncertainty.