Mission accomplished in Iraq

The year is 2011. Our next president, whoever he or she may be, will literally have cemented in place the original objective Vice President Dick Cheney and his disciple, President Bush, sought with the invasion of Iraq: the establishment of several giant, permanent U.S. military bases right in the heartland of the Middle East — one near Basra, one in Anbar province and possibly one in the Kurdish North. They will be tasked to protect the world's major source of oil from untoward characters, to control with a Damocles' sword nations in the area who oppose our interests, and to provide a security umbrella for Israel. A puppet regime, perhaps even headed by America's good friend Ahmed Chalabi, will be paid handsomely to provide some legitimacy to the venture. The Iraqi people living outside U.S. military or Iraqi government fortresses will have to fend for themselves. One wishes them luck.

To be sure, this blunt "realist" objective is at variance with the American self-image of a peace-loving people. Therefore, it could not have been used in 2003 to market the invasion of Iraq to the electorate. Furthermore, many of the proponents of the invasion of Iraq probably did believe that Saddam Hussein might have or soon could develop weapons of mass destructions (WMD). But that prospect alone would not have compelled the urgency of an invasion in the spring of 2003, with poorly equipped troops and nary a thought on the management of the invasion's aftermath. It might not even have compelled an invasion at all. At the least, one could have granted the United Nation's weapons inspectors another six months or a year to finish their work in Iraq and, in the meantime, not only equip our troops properly, but also have made ready a huge array of humanitarian relief that would have put a kinder face on the American occupation.

Many of the hawkish nouveau moralists at John's Hopkins, the American Enterprise Institute, the Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal editorial board probably did believe that Iraq could be "done" like Germany and Japan after World War II — that it would be a cinch to establish in conquered Iraq a flourishing democracy in which the Sunnis, Shias and Kurds would live together in harmony and prosperity, burying their mutual hatreds. Being sorely mistaken about how the real world really works is one of the wondrous prerogatives of people considered "intellectuals."

But it is hard to believe that Cheney, one of the chief architects of the invasion, harbored any illusions about the prospects awaiting Americans there. Asked upon the conclusion of Desert Storm in 1991 why the huge armada assembled in Kuwait had not proceeded to liberate all of Iraq from Saddam Hussein, whom former President George Bush had called "worse than Hitler," then Secretary of Defense Cheney replied, "I think for us to get American military personnel involved in a civil war inside Iraq would literally be a quagmire. Once we got to Baghdad, what would we do? Who (sic) would we put in power? What kind of government? Would it be a Sunni government, a Shia government, a Kurdish government? Would it be secular, along the lines of the Ba'ath party, would it be fundamentalist Islamic? I do not think the United States wants to have U.S. military forces accept casualties and accept responsibility of trying to govern Iraq. I think it makes no sense at all."

After the murderous persecution of the Shia by Saddam Hussein's mainly Sunni hordes in the intervening decade, nothing could have persuaded the Vice President that in 2003 a harmonious democracy would quickly flourish in Iraq. Realist workhorse of the Bush Sr. era that he is, he probably thought that a few rough years there would be a price worth paying for a permanent U.S. military presence in the Middle East.

I doubt that many in the U.S. military will object to permanent bases in Iraq because they will be fairly secure fortresses that can offer their occupants many comforts. There might be only occasional, potentially dangerous forays beyond their perimeters. For all we know, many members of the military may actually welcome serving some time near danger's edge, as long as casualties remain relatively low. For the entrepreneurial hangers-on who make their living off military ventures here and abroad, these bases would represent a perpetual source of profits as well. And in profit, under our style of democracy, resides political support.

Finally, an American public, preoccupied with home economics and the latest ado about sundry celebrities, will acquiesce peacefully, as before. Indeed, against the baseline of over $150 billion or more currently spent on Iraq, the cost of maintaining these U.S. bases in Iraq will seem chump change. The resulting savings and the associated troop draw-down to, say, a permanent 50,000 or so could be pitched by the next President to the public as a "peace dividend."

For better or for worse, depending on your outlook, the Cheney-Bush team finally can claim "Mission Accomplished."

Basta cosi. Uwe E. Reinhardt is the James Madison Professor of Political Economy and a professor in the Wilson School. He can be reached at reinhardt@princeton.edu.