Next Tuesday, the Iraq War will enter its fifth year. Thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in the conflict. Iraq is embroiled in a civil war, and there's no end to the bloodshed in sight.
Thankfully, many of the politicians who got us into this disastrous struggle have been voted out of office, and a good chunk of the rest will be unemployed after November 2008. No such reckoning has taken place in the American media — where prominent pundits and intellectuals, including more than a few Princeton professors — argued in support of or against the Iraq War. I think that at this point in time, it's worth taking a trip down "Lexis-Nexis Lane" to see who was right and who was wrong on Iraq.
Writing for The New York Times Opinion page, Thomas Friedman was wrong on Iraq. Friedman told us that "all the Euro-whining about the Bush policies toward Iraq" — you know, like their concern for regional stability and fear of massive civilian casualties — was "deeply unserious." He then told us that "war ... is a risk worth taking." David Brooks was wrong on Iraq. He predicted a future in which Iraq became "a beacon of freedom in the Middle East" and everyone came to the realization that "Bush did the right thing."
Many supposedly liberal pundits and periodicals were wrong on Iraq. Liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen was so convinced that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, he wrote that "Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise." But much worse than the liberals were the conservatives. People like Bill O'Reilly, Charles Krauthammer, William Buckley and George Will were unabashed supporters of the Iraqi invasion. We were told that the war "would be a cakewalk," and we would be "greeted as liberators," but they were wrong, wrong, wrong.
The point of this exercise is not to gloat, but to introduce skepticism. These pundits, despite being wrong about the most important foreign policy question of the past 25 years, still control our national discourse. They're writing in newspapers or appearing on TV, telling us that the "surge" is working and beating the war drums for a military escalation against Iran.
Those who were right about Iraq deserve our recognition. A number of Princeton professors had the wisdom and foresight to be opposed to the Iraq War from the beginning. Peter Singer appeared on the "O'Reilly Factor" and utterly embarrassed the hawkish host with his careful explanation of how the Iraq War would unnecessarily jeopardize innocent lives. G. John Ikenberry worried that preemptive war was an extraordinary step for American foreign policy and that it wasn't justified given the circumstances. Lastly, of course, the venerable Paul Krugman acted as a calm counterpoint to his belligerent colleagues on The New York Times Opinion Page. In 2003, he wrote that Iraq was "the wrong war, fought for the wrong reasons," and he predicted that there would be "a heavy price to pay."
Unfortunately, some Princeton professors were absolutely wrong on Iraq. Robert George defended an invasion of Iraq in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. He endorsed America's right to act unilaterally against Iraq, writing that "nothing in just war theory places unique authority to prevent aggression in the hands of the 'international community.'" His piece concludes with a powerful exhortation: "[When] statesmen cannot fulfill their moral duties to prevent aggression and resist tyranny relying exclusively on diplomatic means ... just war theory supposes that the decision to fight is not merely optional; it is morally required." George was joined in the pages of The Wall Street Journal by emeritus professor Bernard Lewis, who haughtily warned that "a regime change may well be dangerous, but sometimes the dangers of inaction are greater than those of action."
Lewis and George, as well as Richard Cohen, William Buckley and the others, are exceptionally smart men who were incredibly wrong on a crucial issue. In the coming months, if we hear similar things from this cast of characters about "the way forward in Iraq" or the threat Iran poses to stability in the Middle East, we should treat it with a large dose of skepticism. At least until these individuals have some accurate predictions under their belt, we should defer to the Krugmans and the Ikenberrys who've been right all along. Jason Sheltzer is a molecular biology major from St. Davids, Pa. He can be reached at sheltzer@princeton.edu.
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