Letter | Bush didn’t make mistake about Iraq war, Obama did

The headline for the May 18 article in The Sun News, “Candidates: Iraq war was a mistake,” was at best misleading and, at worst, a flat out lie.

I saw and heard most of the Republican candidates’ interviews on the weekend talk shows. Not one of them used the word “mistake” in reference to the decision by President Bush and Congress to invade Iraq. (Where were the Democrat candidates?)

A mistake is an error in interpretation of facts, such as 2+ 2 = 5.

In spite of almost rude badgering by Fox News Channel host Chris Wallace, Sen. Marco Rubio refused to call the Iraq invasion a mistake. Instead, he pointed out that presidents do not have the advantage of future hindsight. This attempt to educate Wallace was interpreted by the press as Rubio stumbling.

There is a generally true military saying that late intelligence is worse than no intelligence. In other words, intelligence, always incomplete at best, you go with what you have.

In 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson made a mistake when he omitted South Korea from the list of nations we considered to be worthy of our protection. North Korea took him at his word and invaded. Was the invasion a mistake on their part? No. Did they misjudge U.S. policy and fail to wait until all U.S. troops were gone? Yes; two mistakes.

Hindsight is useful in making a judgment, and had anyone in our intelligence community suspected the Russians would facilitate the transfer of Saddam’s WMD arsenal to Syria at the last minute before the invasion and confirmed that that had occurred, okay; but you go with what you have.

By the way, where does the media think the Syrians got their WMD capability?

The colossal mistake of the Iraq war was the total pullout. History has shown that to win the peace you must win the war unconditionally and occupy. The Roman Empire left troops. The British Empire left troops.

In WWI, we followed our naïve, academic president, negotiated a peace with Germany and came home; 20 years later we were fighting them again. We learned that lesson and after WW2 maintained sizable forces in Europe, Japan and South Korea with no promise of withdrawal.

The Vietnam War was a mistake because:

1) There was no second Tonkin Gulf attack and President Johnson lied about it to Congress and proceeded with escalation anyway.

2) We had no intent to invade and occupy North Vietnam or leave troops in South Vietnam.

After the invasion of Iraq was successful, both U.S. and Iraqi military experts decided that 20,000 was the residual troop level needed for stability. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki would have grudgingly agreed to a Status of Forces agreement on as low as 10,000 troops.

To meet a campaign pledge of complete pullout, President Obama offered only 3,000, blaming the failure on Maliki. The mistake was Obama’s.

Residual forces are not popular, with them or us. However, history shows that it is the only way to keep a peace in place.

Finally, residual forces might have worked in Iraq because it is the richest and most westernized of the area nations. If the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds could ever be forced into a peaceful coalition without the iron fist of a Saddam Hussein, it would most likely be there.

Afghanistan, however, is a poor, multi-tribal, basically uncivilized country. To hammer out a lasting peace there, even with a residual force, will be a Herculean task for the best of leaders, but it must be tried.

The writer lives in Pawleys Island.

This story was originally published May 21, 2015 at 1:56 PM with the headline "Letter | Bush didn’t make mistake about Iraq war, Obama did."