Mande Wilkes | Presidential hopefuls really, really like war

Interesting thing about the Iraq War: While it began as mightily divisive, it’s ended up bringing the country to a consensus. Indeed, it’s very few people who think it was anything other than a resounding failure.

Seriously, from the right to the left — from officials to voters to servicemen to scholars — everyone agrees that the whole thing was an unmitigated disaster that continues to sap our resources at home and abroad.

Even worse than our crushing loss is the fact that the winners were (and are) none other than ISIS and Iran. Saddam Hussein, for all his faults, kept ISIS in check. In his absence (and in our presence), ISIS has flourished. As for Iran, its historic enemy was Iraq — so Iraq’s elimination has been a blessing to Iran, allowing it to assert itself as the preeminent force in the region.

And now we somehow find ourselves in the collective position of having as our presidential contenders a pack of war hawks. Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and Hillary Clinton are all itching to go right back to war. The bunch of them demonstrate a heady mix of retrograde policy and a refusal to benefit from historical hindsight. That is, they’re all stuck in 2003 — petrified in the wake of 9/11 — and yet they’re stubbornly resistant to take in the lessons we’ve since learned.

The 2016 presidential hopefuls want to declare war on Iran and Syria and Libya, meanwhile failing to grasp that the problems in that region exist largely because of our previous (and ongoing) involvement.

It’s remarkable, even astonishing, that this war-weary nation is likely to elect another trigger-happy president. I can’t figure out who’s more to blame — we the people or they the candidates.

Of course, there is one contender who seems committed — so far — to learning from the past. Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning senator, has spent much of his time in office fighting the national spy program, opposing the use of drones, and reminding Washington that we can’t afford more war.

Can he win, though? Can a candidate — a Republican, at that — win a national election on an anti-interventionist platform? Sure, Rand’s father made major waves during the last couple of election cycles, but those inroads were on the fund-raising and messaging fronts. Ron Paul didn’t get many votes, and while his son will get many, many more, I worry it won’t be enough.

If it’s not enough, we’ll end up, alas and again, with another hawkish leader. To be sure, this isn’t a partisan issue — the left, too, is complicit both in leading us into wrongheaded war and in failing to extricate us from the mess we’ve made of it.

Personally I’m wincing at having to stomach another two years of campaign slogans promising “strength.” We’ve seen enough muscle, by God. Haven’t we? Too much muscle, and not enough backbone.

This story was originally published April 18, 2015 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Mande Wilkes | Presidential hopefuls really, really like war."