94 SEPTEMBER 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL were largely false, and those who adhere to this narrative think the intelligence supporting them was deliberately cherry-picked and stovepiped in order to sell the war to the American public. The UN speech was simply part of a campaign to do that, which included hundreds of false and misleading statements by top administration officials. A Journalist and a Historian Two recent books that examine the decision—To Start a War by Robert Draper and Confronting Saddam Hussein by Melvyn Leffler—both provide a detailed account of the process that led to invasion. Both relied on interviews with many of those involved. Even though those accounts are very similar, the books reflect the dueling narratives described above. This difference illustrates why it matters who the author is. Draper is a veteran journalist and the author of several books, including one on the presidency of George W. Bush. He is used to interviewing multiple sources at various levels in government to discern the difference between what top officials say, what they do, and why. Leffler is a distinguished historian who has also written a number of books. BOOKS The Iraq War: Competing Narratives Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq Melvyn P. Leffler, Oxford University Press, 2023, $27.95/hardcover, e-book available, 368 pages. To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq Robert Draper, Penguin Books, 2021, $16.99/paperback, e-book available, 496 pages. Reviewed by dennis jett The 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq last year has prompted some reconsideration of that decision. There are many opinions on why it was taken, but there are mainly two competing narratives trying to gain space in the history books. Those who supported the war say it was the right decision, based on good intentions but bad intelligence. They lay the blame on the intelligence community for not knowing that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction (WMD). They assert Saddam Hussein was a threat, and it was worth the cost of eliminating him despite the fact that the toll amounted to hundreds of thousands of people killed and wounded, millions displaced from their homes, and trillions of dollars expended. The second narrative is that President George W. Bush, for whatever reason, decided to take military action long before Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his Feb. 5, 2003, speech to the United Nations justifying the move. The arguments offered in that speech Where Draper and Leffler differ is in their assessment of the chances that the war could have been avoided and whether it was justified. But, as he admits in his preface, he had never before relied on interviews. He then states: “I wondered how much I would gain from talking to former policymakers whose ability to spin, I wagered, might exceed my ability to probe.” It did. A historian would have difficulty relying on the written record on Iraq when much of it has been destroyed or remains classified. And interviewing those who participated in the process, and therefore have a vested interest in defending it, is difficult for someone who deals mostly with documents. Despite their different backgrounds, Leffler and Draper reach the same conclusion with regard to the execution of the war: It was a short-term military success but also a longterm fiasco with disastrous consequences. They both describe how disbanding the Baath Party and Iraqi army created hundreds of thousands of dangerous men who kicked off a civil war rather than simply go home and watch their families go hungry. They note how there was no plan for what to do after a military victory was secured other than to turn things over to the Pentagon’s favorite exiles and get out. Those Iraqis were far more popular
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