The Foreign Service Journal, September 2024

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER 2024 95 in the Department of Defense than they were in Iraq, however. Differing Assessments Where Draper and Leffler differ is in their assessment of the chances that the war could have been avoided and whether it was justified. Leffler repeats ad nauseam that Saddam Hussein was evil and wanted WMD, as if that alone was reason enough. This was the same dictator who was so much in favor during the Reagan administration that a special envoy named Donald Rumsfeld was sent to see if there was any way the U.S. could help him kill more Iranians. Draper does not presume to know what Bush was thinking, but he makes the case for the second narrative by pointing out that in the spring of 2001, Bush confided to his CIA briefer that military action against Saddam was not “a question of if, but only a question of when.” Leffler also adds fear of a new attack, regret over 9/11, and the enormous power that America possessed as other motivations for the invasion. At the same time, he portrays Bush as an amiable frat boy who never grew up, lacked intellectual curiosity, and oversaw a government without bothering to manage it. He is remarkably credulous, however, in accepting the reasons offered by some of his interlocutors for why the war was necessary. He claims that Bush wanted to confront Hussein but that war would have been avoided if it were proven beyond any doubt that there were no WMD. Vice President Dick Cheney once said that even if there were a 1 percent chance that Saddam had such weapons, an invasion would be justified. Since nothing is ever more than 99 percent certain when assessing the intentions of a foreign leader, this was just a way of saying that war was inevitable. In a review of Draper’s book that Leffler did for Foreign Affairs, he chastises Draper for being more skeptical. “One should neither fault a president for lacking the wisdom of hindsight nor judge him on the basis of information he did not possess,” Leffler insists. But it is certainly fair to fault Bush for lacking foresight. Neither author describes a meeting where the decision to launch the invasion was actually made or where the potential negative consequences were seriously considered. That’s because, as the National Security Archive and others established years ago, there never was one. And the information that Bush was provided was only that necessary to justify what he had wanted to do. If you want to understand how we got into the mess that Iraq became, read the journalist’s book first. And then make your own decision as to which narrative is more plausible. n Dennis Jett served as U.S. ambassador to Peru and Mozambique and on assignments in Argentina, Israel, Malawi, and Liberia during his 28-year Foreign Service career. He is a professor of international affairs at Penn State University and the author of American Ambassadors: A Guide for Aspiring Diplomats and Foreign Service Officers (2nd ed., Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).

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