by
Stephen Zunes
Former
senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton is the only candidate
for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination who supported the
invasion of Iraq.
That war not
only resulted in 4,500 American soldiers being killed and thousands
more permanently disabled, but also hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
deaths, the destabilization of the region with the rise of the
Islamic State and other extremists, and a dramatic increase in the
federal deficit, resulting in major cutbacks to important social
programs. Moreover, the primary reasons Clinton gave for supporting
President George W. Bush’s request for authorizing that illegal and
unnecessary war have long been proven false.
As a result,
many Democratic voters are questioning — despite her years of
foreign policy experience — whether Clinton has the judgment and
integrity to lead the United States on the world stage. It was just
such concerns that resulted in her losing the 2008 nomination to
then-Senator Barack Obama, an outspoken Iraq War opponent.
This time
around, Clinton supporters have been hoping that enough Democratic
voters — the overwhelming majority of whom opposed the war — will
forget about her strong endorsement of the Bush administration’s
most disastrous foreign policy. Failing that, they’ve come up with
a number of excuses to justify her October 2002 vote for the
authorization of military force.
Here they
are, in no particular order.
“Hillary
Clinton’s vote wasn’t for war, but simply to pressure Saddam
Hussein to allow UN weapons inspectors back into Iraq.”
At the time
of vote, Saddam Hussein had already agreed in principle to a return
of the weapons inspectors. His government was negotiating with the
United Nations Monitoring and Verification Commission on the details,
which were formally institutionalized a few weeks later. (Indeed, it
would have been resolved earlier had the United States not repeatedly
postponed a UN Security Council resolution in the hopes of inserting
language that would have allowed Washington to unilaterally interpret
the level of compliance.)
Furthermore,
if then-Senator Clinton’s desire was simply to push Saddam into
complying with the inspection process, she wouldn’t have voted
against the substitute Levin amendment, which would have also granted
President Bush authority to use force, but only if Iraq defied
subsequent UN demands regarding the inspections process. Instead,
Clinton voted for a Republican-sponsored resolution to give Bush the
authority to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his own
choosing.
In fact,
unfettered large-scale weapons inspections had been going on in Iraq
for nearly four months at the time the Bush administration launched
the March 2003 invasion. Despite the UN weapons inspectors having not
found any evidence of WMDs or active WMD programs after months of
searching, Clinton made clear that the United States should invade
Iraq anyway. Indeed, she asserted that even though Saddam was in full
compliance with the UN Security Council, he nevertheless needed to
resign as president, leave the country, and allow U.S. troops to
occupy the country. “The president gave Saddam Hussein one last
chance to avoid war,” Clinton said in a statement, “and
the world hopes that Saddam Hussein will finally hear this ultimatum,
understand the severity of those words, and act accordingly.”
When Saddam
refused to resign and the Bush administration launched the invasion,
Clintonwent on record calling for “unequivocal support”
for Bush’s “firm leadership and decisive action” as
“part of the ongoing Global War on Terrorism.” She
insisted that Iraq was somehow still “in material breach of the
relevant United Nations resolutions” and, despite the fact that
weapons inspectors had produced evidence to the contrary, claimed the
invasion was necessary to “neutralize Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction.”
“Nearly
everyone in Congress supported the invasion of Iraq, including most
Democrats.”
While all
but one congressional Democrat — Representative Barbara Lee of
California — supported the authorization of force to fight al-Qaeda
in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, a sizable majority of
Democrats in Congress voted against the authorization to invade Iraq
the following year.
There were
21 Senate Democrats — along with one Republican, Lincoln Chafee,
and one independent, Jim Jeffords — who voted against the war
resolution, while 126 of 209 House Democrats also voted against it.
Bernie Sanders, then an independent House member who caucused with
the Democrats, voted with the opposition. At the time, Sanders gave a
floor speech disputing the administration’s claims about Saddam’s
arsenal. He not only cautioned that both American and Iraqi
casualties could rise unacceptably high, but also warned “about
the precedent that a unilateral invasion of Iraq could establish in
terms of international law and the role of the United Nations.”
Hillary
Clinton, on the other hand, stood among the right-wing minority of
Democrats in Washington.
The
Democrats controlled the Senate at the time of the war authorization.
Had they closed ranks and voted in opposition, the Bush
administration would have been unable to launch the tragic invasion —
at least not legally. Instead, Clinton and other pro-war Democrats
chose to cross the aisle to side with the Republicans.
“Her
vote was simply a mistake.”
While few
Clinton supporters are still willing to argue her support for the war
was a good thing, many try to minimize its significance by referring
to it as simply a “mistake.” But while it may have been a
terrible decision, it was neither an accident nor an aberration from
Clinton’s generally hawkish worldview.
It would
have been a “mistake” if Hillary Clinton had pushed the “aye”
button when she meant to push the “nay” button. In fact, her
decision — by her own admission — was quite conscious.
The October
2002 war resolution on Iraq wasn’t like the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin
resolution authorizing military force in Vietnam, which was quickly
passed as an emergency request by President Lyndon Johnson when there
was no time for reflection and debate. By contrast, at the time of
the Iraq War authorization, there had been months of public debate on
the matter. Clinton had plenty of time to investigate the
administration’s claims that Iraq was a threat, as well as to
consider the likely consequences of a U.S. invasion.
Also unlike
the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which was disingenuously presented as
an authorization to retaliate for an alleged attack on U.S. ships,
members of Congress recognized that the Iraq resolution authorized a
full-scale invasion of a sovereign nation and a subsequent military
occupation. Clinton had met with scores of constituents, arms control
analysts, and Middle East scholars who informed her that the war was
unnecessary, illegal, and would likely end in disaster.
But she
decided to support going to war anyway. She even rejected the advice
of fellow Democratic senator Bob Graham that she read the full
National Intelligence Estimate, which would have further challenged
some of the Bush administration’s claims justifying the war.
It was not,
therefore, simply a “mistake,” or a momentary lapse of judgment.
Indeed, in her own words, she cast her vote “with conviction.”
As late as
February 2007, Clinton herself refused to admit that her vote for the
war resolution was a mistake. “If the most important thing to
any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said
his vote was a mistake,” she said while campaigning for
president, “then there are others to choose from.” She
only began to acknowledge her regrets when she saw the polling
numbers showing that a sizable majority of Democrats opposed the
decision to go to war.
“She
voted for the war because she felt it was politically necessary.”
First of
all, voting for a devastating war in order to advance one’s
political career isn’t a particularly strong rationale for why one
shouldn’t share responsibility for the consequences — especially
when that calculation proved disastrously wrong. Clinton’s vote to
authorize the invasion was the single most important factor in
convincing former supporters to back Barack Obama in the 2008
Democratic primary, thereby costing her the nomination.
Nevertheless,
it still raises questions regarding Hillary Clinton’s competence to
become president.
To have
believed that supporting the invasion would somehow be seen as a good
thing would have meant that Clinton believed that the broad consensus
of Middle East scholars who warned of a costly counterinsurgency war
were wrong — and that the Bush administration’s insistence that
U.S. occupation forces would be “treated as liberators” was
credible.
After all,
for the war to have been popular, there would have had to be few
American casualties, and the administration’s claims about WMDs and
Iraq’s ties to al-Qaeda would have had to be vindicated. Moreover,
some sort of stable pro-Western democracy would have emerged in Iraq,
and the invasion would have contributed to greater stability and
democracy in the region.
If Clinton
believed any of those things were possible, she wasn’t paying
attention. Among the scores of reputable Middle East scholars with
whom I discussed the prospects of a U.S. invasion in the months
leading up to the vote, none of them believed that any of these
things would come to pass. They were right.
Nor was
pressure likely coming from Clinton’s own constituents. Only a
minority of Democrats nationwide supported the invasion, and given
that New York Democrats are more liberal than the national average,
opposition was possibly even stronger in the state she purported to
represent. Additionally, a majority of Americans polled said they
would oppose going to war if Saddam allowed for “full and complete”
weapons inspectors, which he in fact did.
Finally, the
idea that Clinton felt obliged to support the war as a woman in order
not to appear “weak” also appears groundless. Indeed, every
female senator who voted against the war authorization was easily
re-elected.
“She
thought Iraq had ‘weapons of mass destruction’ and was supporting
Al-Qaeda.”
This is
excuse is problematic on a number levels.
Before the
vote, UN inspectors, independent strategic analysts, and reputable
arms control journals all challenged the Bush administration’s
claims that Iraq had somehow rebuilt its chemical and biological
weapons programs, had a nuclear weapons program, or was supporting
al-Qaeda terrorists.
Virtually
all of Iraq’s known stockpiles of chemical and biological agents
had been accounted for, and the shelf life of the small amount of
materiel that hadn’t been accounted for had long since expired.
(Some discarded canisters from the 1980s were eventually found, but
these weren’t operational.) There was no evidence that Iraq had any
delivery systems for such weapons either, or could build them without
being detected. In addition, a strict embargo against imports of any
additional materials needed for the manufacture of WMDs — which had
been in effect since 1990 — made any claims that Iraq had offensive
capability transparently false to anyone who cared to investigate the
matter at that time.
Most of the
alleged intelligence data made available to Congress prior to the war
authorization vote has since been declassified. Most strategic
analysts have found it transparently weak, based primarily on hearsay
by Iraqi exiles of dubious credibility and conjecture by
ideologically driven Bush administration officials.
Similarly, a
detailed 1998 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency
indicated that Iraq’s nuclear program appeared to have been
completely dismantled by the mid-1990s, and a 2002 U.S. National
Intelligence Estimate made no mention of any reconstituted nuclear
development effort. So it’s doubtful Clinton actually had reason to
believe her own claims that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.
Additionally,
there was no credible evidence whatsoever that the secular Baathist
Iraqi regime had any ties to the hardline Islamist group al-Qaeda,
yet Clinton distinguished herself as the only Senate Democrat to make
such a claim. Indeed, a definitive report by the Department of
Defense noted that not only did no such link exist, but that none
could have even been reasonably suggested based on the evidence
available at that time.
Moreover,
even if Iraq really did have “weapons of mass destruction,” the
war would have still been illegal, unnecessary, and catastrophic.
Roughly 30
countries (including the United States) have chemical, biological, or
nuclear programs with weapons potential. The mere possession of these
programs is not legitimate grounds for invasion, unless one is
authorized by the United Nations Security Council — which the
invasion of Iraq, pointedly, was not. If Clinton really thought
Iraq’s alleged possession of those weapons justified her support
for invading the country, then she was effectively saying the United
States somehow has the right to invade dozens of other countries as
well.
Similarly,
even if Iraq had been one of those 30 countries — and remember, it
was not — the threat of massive retaliation by Iraq’s neighbors
and U.S. forces permanently stationed in the region provided a more
than sufficient deterrent to Iraq using the weapons beyond its
borders. A costly invasion and extended occupation were completely
unnecessary.
Finally, the
subsequent war and the rise of sectarianism, terrorism, Islamist
extremism, and the other negative consequences of the invasion would
have been just as bad even if the rationale weren’t bogus. American
casualties could have actually been much higher, since WMDs would
have likely been used against invading U.S. forces.
But here’s
the kicker: Clinton stood by the war even after these claims were
definitively debunked.
Even many
months after the Bush administration itself acknowledged that Iraq
had neither WMDs nor ties to Al-Qaeda, Clinton declared in a speech
at George Washington University that her support for the
authorization was still “the right vote” and one that “I
stand by.” Similarly, in an interview on Larry King Live in
April 2004, when asked about her vote despite the absence of WMDs or
al-Qaeda ties, she acknowledged, “I don’t regret giving the
president authority.”
No
Excuses
The 2016
Democratic presidential campaign is coming down to a race between
Hillary Clinton, who supported the Bush Doctrine and its call for
invading countries that are no threat to us regardless of the
consequences, and Bernie Sanders, who supported the broad consensus
of Middle East scholars and others familiar with the region who
recognized that such an invasion would be disastrous.
There’s no
question that the United States is long overdue to elect a woman head
of state. But electing Hillary Clinton — or anyone else who
supported the invasion of Iraq — would be sending a dangerous
message that reckless global militarism needn’t prevent someone
from becoming president, even as the nominee of the more liberal of
the two major parties.
It also
raises this ominous scenario: If Clinton were elected president
despite having voted to give President Bush the authority, based on
false pretenses, to launch a war of aggression — in violation of
the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Principles, and common sense — what
would stop her from demanding that Congress give her the same
authority?
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