The march to the battlefield

No war in history has been covered as rapidly and in as much detail as the war in Iraq. The many new books have made a notable contribution to the dissemination of knowledge not only about Washington political decision-making but also about subjects such as geopolitics, terrorism, theology (Islam) and even political philosophy (Leo Strauss and the Straussians). But a price was paid, of which repetition and overlapping are probably the least important features. Most of the new books contribute something to our knowledge. But even if an author interviewed the president at length, even if he had the highest security clearances, even if he had the most wonderful sources -- and most of the writers were not in this fortunate position -- the revelations may be fascinating but create a picture that is incomplete and even misleading.

Authors like John Bamford who write about intelligence tend to forget that the CIA and other professional agencies, like the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, had no monopoly on gathering information. The media and the academic experts shared their interest (and sometimes had easier access), and if there was an “intelligence failure” concerning the 2001 terrorist attacks or about the nature of Saddam Hussein’s weaponry, a postmortem should not really be limited to government agencies even though, with George Tenet’s resignation as CIA director, the inclination to solely blame the government seems clear.

In the first part of “A Pretext for War,” Bamford relates what various famous and not-so-famous people were doing on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and this is followed by an account of the activities of leading terrorists during the 1990s. This is by now very familiar ground and one wishes the author would have concentrated on what he knows best, signal intelligence, about which he wrote an excellent, detailed book some 20 years ago.

Bamford explains in “A Pretext for War” why the challenges facing the NSA have become infinitely more difficult because of technical developments. Twenty years ago, most of the world’s communications were transmitted via satellite (and could be intercepted), whereas now fiber optics have taken over, and they can only occasionally be intercepted and with great difficulty. There are other technical reasons that are discussed, but unfortunately this is the shortest part of a book based on two propositions: that the Bush administration was out to get Hussein, believing that he was up to no good, and that it fabricated, falsified and abused intelligence to make a case for an invasion.

Bamford’s first proposition is no doubt correct, though not exactly new or sensational. The second is doubtful: Bamford does, in fact, undermine it over many pages, claiming that the performance of the intelligence agencies had been lamentable. They failed, he writes, to alert the administration not just in regard to terrorist dangers but also on many other occasions. If his allegations are true, charges of abused intelligence no longer seem as convincing: For information that does not exist -- or hardly exists, as he suggests -- cannot be abused.

Like some writers on intelligence, Bamford believed at one time that many activities of the NSA were dangerous intrusions into the private sphere of citizens: Generally speaking, these agencies had turned into something harmful and unpredictable, like a rogue elephant or a Frankenstein-Big Brother-type monster. But this was 20 years ago, and now he says that “the decision to keep CIA employees at arm’s length from the terrorist organizations was a serious mistake.” This is perfectly correct but unfortunately, it was not that easy to infiltrate Al Qaeda.

There is a great deal about Israel in this book that, the author thinks, played a paramount role in the decision to attack Iraq. But confusion abounds: Bamford writes that the Israelis really had no idea what had happened in Iraq and fed Washington, knowingly or unwittingly, bad intelligence. This could well be true, but Bamford also argues that the Israelis knew early that there was no real danger from Iraq but did not want to spoil President Bush’s scenario. What to believe?

According to the author, only Osama bin Laden benefited from President Clinton’s 1998 decision to bomb a factory in Sudan (mistakenly) believed to be producing poisonous substances. But whether the substances were poisonous remains a matter of controversy to this day among the experts. In any case, the attack induced Sudan to withdraw from involvement with Islamist terrorism -- hardly a victory for Bin Laden.

There is a notable lacuna in “A Pretext for War” as in many other books of this kind: A discussion of the other side is missing; there is more on Richard Perle than on Hussein. In some ways it resembles the account of a boxing match with all the attention fixed on one fighter. Was Hussein in the final analysis a weak and harmless man to whom injustice was done, or were his ambitions perhaps not so innocent? Had there been at one time weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and, if so, which ones and how many? Or was it all an invention of the warmongers? About this, unfortunately, readers learn little.

Sir John Keegan is one of the leading military historians of this generation. His “The Iraq War” is a long essay that is a useful addition to our knowledge; British aspects play a greater role in this book than in those written by American authors. Keegan interviewed Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers and presents a brief outline that is authoritative (at least until further details will be known) and is more on the state of affairs on the other side of the hill, in Iraq, about which we know little.

In contrast with Bamford, there is also a brief discussion of Iraq in modern times and the politics of Saddam Hussein. Keegan thinks that Saddam Hussein was not only a cruel, ruthless dictator but that his impulse to dominate informed all his acts. His aim was to become the chief warlord of the Persian Gulf region, a nuclear warlord, if possible, with the leadership of the Arab world as the culminating aspiration. He failed in this because of stupid actions such as the war against Iran, later the invasion of Kuwait and finally his attempt to play cat-and-mouse over weapons inspections with the United Nations. Hussein, in other words, brought the war on himself and his poor, long-suffering people.

To Bamford, the war was unprovoked: It is a disaster, if not a crime, with the neoconservatives as the main villains. To add weight to these charges, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky and Abraham Lincoln are called in as witnesses for the prosecution. Keegan’s conclusions are different. The war was justified, he says, and the neoconservatives acted not out of ignoble motives but were “generally rational and enlightened if not always realistic.” Their weakness was that they believed that democracy was transportable. They wanted to transform absolutist, monarchist and autocratic regimes into free-enterprise democracies. Their weakness was also their belief in American particularism -- that their country stood for certain superior principles and that this gave them the right, if need be, to act unilaterally in foreign affairs. The other weakness was a close identification with the Israeli Likud party. Keegan also thinks that British Prime Minister Tony Blair acted wholly out of moral conviction, which is more than can be said of France’s Jacques Chirac and some other European leaders.

About the military operations, not much need be said; there were, as always, some unforeseen complications, but they were over quickly -- much to the surprise of the pessimists who, as in 1991, predicted a long and costly battle. In the event, 155 American and British soldiers were killed, mostly in accidents or by “friendly fire”; the number of Iraqi victims was also small -- their divisions simply melted away.

But, as one gathers from reading “The Iraq War,” the truly important story was not that of the war, nor its prehistory, but its aftermath. Keegan believes that the disbandment of the Iraqi army was a serious mistake, but it was not the only one or the most important. A reasonable case can be made, of course, for the deposition of Saddam Hussein and the dismantling of his regime; even in the Middle East there is no great enthusiasm to restore him to power. But the idea that a democratic regime could be installed from the outside within a short time period was sheer fantasy. The United States should have withdrawn from the country within the shortest possible time. That this might have resulted in a struggle for power goes without saying; this has been the case everywhere in the world in similar circumstances. South Africa was a rare exception, but there is no Iraqi Nelson Mandela. Even civil wars do not last forever, and eventually a new Iraq, or several Iraqs, should emerge from the chaos. But the story of the ill-conceived occupation is as yet unfolding and more literature about it is still to come. *