The Audacity of Hope (36 page)

This new blueprint never arrived. Instead what we got was an assortment of outdated policies from eras gone by, dusted off, slapped together, and with new labels affixed. Reagan’s “Evil Empire” was now “the Axis of Evil.” Theodore Roosevelt’s version of the Monroe Doctrine—the notion that we could preemptively remove governments not to our liking—was now the Bush Doctrine, only extended beyond the Western Hemisphere to span the globe. Manifest destiny was back in fashion; all that was needed, according to Bush, was American firepower, American resolve, and a “coalition of the willing.”

Perhaps worst of all, the Bush Administration resuscitated a brand of politics not seen since the end of the Cold War. As the ouster of Saddam Hussein became the test case for Bush’s doctrine of preventive war, those who questioned the Administration’s rationale for invasion were accused of being “soft on terrorism” or “un-American.” Instead of an honest accounting of this military campaign’s pros and cons, the Administration initiated a public relations offensive: shading intelligence reports to support its case, grossly understating both the costs and the manpower requirements of military action, raising the specter of mushroom clouds.

The PR strategy worked; by the fall of 2002, a majority of Americans were convinced that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and at least 66 percent believed (falsely) that the Iraqi leader had been personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. Support for an invasion of Iraq—and Bush’s approval rating—hovered around 60 percent. With an eye on the midterm elections, Republicans stepped up the attacks and pushed for a vote authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein. And on October 11, 2002, twenty-eight of the Senate’s fifty Democrats joined all but one Republican in handing to Bush the power he wanted.

I was disappointed in that vote, although sympathetic to the pressures Democrats were under. I had felt some of those same pressures myself. By the fall of 2002, I had already decided to run for the U.S. Senate and knew that possible war with Iraq would loom large in any campaign. When a group of Chicago activists asked if I would speak at a large antiwar rally planned for October, a number of my friends warned me against taking so public a position on such a volatile issue. Not only was the idea of an invasion increasingly popular, but on the merits I didn’t consider the case against war to be cut-

and-dried. Like most analysts, I assumed that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and coveted nuclear arms. I believed that he had repeatedly flouted UN resolutions and weapons inspectors and that such behavior had to have consequences. That Saddam butchered his own people was undisputed; I had no doubt that the world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

What I sensed, though, was that the threat Saddam posed was not imminent, the Administration’s rationales for war were flimsy and ideologically driven, and the war in Afghanistan was far from complete. And I was certain that by choosing precipitous, unilateral military action over the hard slog of diplomacy, coercive inspections, and smart sanctions, America was missing an opportunity to build a broad base of support for its policies.

And so I made the speech. To the two thousand people gathered in Chicago’s Federal Plaza, I explained that unlike some of the people in the crowd, I didn’t oppose all wars—that my grandfather had signed up for the war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed and had fought in Patton’s army. I also said that “after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this Administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance” and would “willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again.”

What I could not support was “a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.” And I said:

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than the best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda.

The speech was well received; activists began circulating the text on the Internet, and I established a reputation for speaking my mind on hard issues—a reputation that would carry me through a tough Democratic primary. But I had no way of knowing at the time whether my assessment of the situation in Iraq was correct. When the invasion was finally launched and U.S. forces marched unimpeded through Baghdad, when I saw Saddam’s statue topple and watched the President stand atop the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, a banner behind him proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” I began to suspect that I might have been wrong—and was relieved to see the low number of American casualties involved.

And now, three years later—as the number of American deaths passed two thousand and the number of wounded passed sixteen thousand; after $250 billion in direct spending and hundreds of billions more in future years to pay off the resulting debt and care for disabled veterans; after two Iraqi national elections, one Iraqi constitutional referendum, and tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths; after watching anti-American

sentiment rise to record levels around the world and Afghanistan begin to slip back into chaos—I was flying into Baghdad as a member of the Senate, partially responsible for trying to figure out just what to do with this mess.

The landing at Baghdad International Airport turned out not to be so bad—although I was thankful that we couldn’t see out the windows as the C-130 bucked and banked and dipped its way down. Our escort officer from the State Department was there to greet us, along with an assortment of military personnel with rifles slung over their shoulders. After getting our security briefing, recording our blood types, and being fitted for helmets and Kevlar vests, we boarded two Black Hawk helicopters and headed for the Green Zone, flying low, passing over miles of mostly muddy, barren fields crisscrossed by narrow roads and punctuated by small groves of date trees and squat concrete shelters, many of them seemingly empty, some bulldozed down to their foundations. Eventually Baghdad came into view, a sand-colored metropolis set in a circular pattern, the Tigris River cutting a broad, murky swath down its center. Even from the air the city looked worn and battered, the traffic on the streets intermittent—although almost every rooftop was cluttered with satellite dishes, which along with cell phone service had been touted by U.S. officials as one of the successes of the reconstruction.

I would spend only a day and a half in Iraq, most of it in the Green Zone, a ten-mile- wide area of central Baghdad that had once been the heart of Saddam Hussein’s government but was now a U.S.-controlled compound, surrounded along its perimeter by blast walls and barbed wire. Reconstruction teams briefed us about the difficulty of maintaining electrical power and oil production in the face of insurgent sabotage; intelligence officers described the growing threat of sectarian militias and their infiltration of Iraqi security forces. Later, we met with members of the Iraqi Election Commission, who spoke with enthusiasm about the high turnout during the recent election, and for an hour we listened to U.S. Ambassador Khalilzad, a shrewd, elegant man with world-weary eyes, explain the delicate shuttle diplomacy in which he was now engaged, to bring Shi’ite, Sunni, and Kurdish factions into some sort of workable unity government.

In the afternoon we had an opportunity to have lunch with some of the troops in the huge mess hall just off the swimming pool of what had once been Saddam’s presidential palace. They were a mix of regular forces, reservists, and National Guard units, from big cities and small towns, blacks and whites and Latinos, many of them on their second or third tour of duty. They spoke with pride as they told us what their units had accomplished—building schools, protecting electrical facilities, leading newly trained Iraqi soldiers on patrol, maintaining supply lines to those in far-flung regions of the country. Again and again, I was asked the same question: Why did the U.S. press only report on bombings and killings? There was progress being made, they insisted—I needed to let the folks back home know that their work was not in vain.

It was easy, talking to these men and women, to understand their frustration, for all the Americans I met in Iraq, whether military or civilian, impressed me with their dedication, their skill, and their frank acknowledgment not only of the mistakes that had been made but also of the difficulties of the task that still lay ahead. Indeed, the entire enterprise in Iraq bespoke American ingenuity, wealth, and technical know-how; standing inside the Green Zone or any of the large operating bases in Iraq and Kuwait, one could only marvel at the ability of our government to essentially erect entire cities

within hostile territory, self-contained communities with their own power and sewage systems, computer lines and wireless networks, basketball courts and ice cream stands. More than that, one was reminded of that unique quality of American optimism that everywhere was on display—the absence of cynicism despite the danger, sacrifice, and seemingly interminable setbacks, the insistence that at the end of the day our actions would result in a better life for a nation of people we barely knew.

And yet, three conversations during the course of my visit would remind me of just how quixotic our efforts in Iraq still seemed—how, with all the American blood, treasure, and the best of intentions, the house we were building might be resting on quicksand. The first conversation took place in the early evening, when our delegation held a press conference with a group of foreign correspondents stationed in Baghdad. After the Q&A session, I asked the reporters if they’d stay for an informal, off-the-record conversation. I was interested, I said, in getting some sense of life outside the Green Zone. They were happy to oblige, but insisted they could only stay for forty-five minutes—it was getting late, and like most residents of Baghdad, they generally avoided traveling once the sun went down.

As a group, they were young, mostly in their twenties and early thirties, all of them dressed casually enough that they could pass for college students. Their faces, though, showed the stresses they were under—sixty journalists had already been killed in Iraq by that time. Indeed, at the start of our conversation they apologized for being somewhat distracted; they had just received word that one of their colleagues, a reporter with the Christian Science Monitor named Jill Carroll, had been abducted, her driver found killed on the side of a road. Now they were all working their contacts, trying to track down her whereabouts. Such violence wasn’t unusual in Baghdad these days, they said, although Iraqis overwhelmingly bore the brunt of it. Fighting between Shi’ites and Sunnis had become widespread, less strategic, less comprehensible, more frightening. None of them thought that the elections would bring about significant improvement in the security situation. I asked them if they thought a U.S. troop withdrawal might ease tensions, expecting them to answer in the affirmative. Instead, they shook their heads.

“My best guess is the country would collapse into civil war within weeks,” one of the reporters told me. “One hundred, maybe two hundred thousand dead. We’re the only thing holding this place together.”

That night, our delegation accompanied Ambassador Khalilzad for dinner at the home of Iraqi interim President Jalal Tala-bani. Security was tight as our convoy wound its way past a maze of barricades out of the Green Zone; outside, our route was lined with U.S. troops at one-block intervals, and we were instructed to keep our vests and helmets on for the duration of the drive.

After ten minutes we arrived at a large villa, where we were greeted by the president and several members of the Iraqi interim government. They were all heavyset men, most in their fifties or sixties, with broad smiles but eyes that betrayed no emotion. I recognized only one of the ministers—Mr. Ahmed Chalabi, the Western-educated Shi’ite who, as a leader of the exile group the Iraqi National Congress, had reportedly fed U.S. intelligence agencies and Bush policy makers some of the prewar information on which the decision to invade was made—information for which Chalabi’s group had received millions of dollars, and that had turned out to be bogus. Since then Chalabi had

fallen out with his U.S. patrons; there were reports that he had steered U.S. classified information to the Iranians, and that Jordan still had a warrant out for his arrest after he’d been convicted in absentia on thirty-one charges of embezzlement, theft, misuse of depositor funds, and currency speculation. But he appeared to have landed on his feet; immaculately dressed, accompanied by his grown daughter, he was now the interim government’s acting oil minister.

I didn’t speak much to Chalabi during dinner. Instead I was seated next to the former interim finance minister. He seemed impressive, speaking knowledgeably about Iraq’s economy, its need to improve transparency and strengthen its legal framework to attract foreign investment. At the end of the evening, I mentioned my favorable impression to one of the embassy staff.

“He’s smart, no doubt about it,” the staffer said. “Of course, he’s also one of the leaders of the SCIRI Party. They control the Ministry of the Interior, which controls the police. And the police, well…there have been problems with militia infiltration. Accusations that they’re grabbing Sunni leaders, bodies found the next morning, that kind of thing…” The staffer’s voice trailed off, and he shrugged. “We work with what we have.”