What Did We Know and When Did We Know It?
As America revisits the rationales for war in the aftermath of Plamegate, the
topic of revisionist history has been repeatedly highlighted in the mainstream
media . A barrage of charges has been hurled into the public forum these past
several months, emanating from Left and Right alike, that Bush Administration
and Democratic leaders are engaging in “Cover Your Ass” revisionist historical
accounting.
It got me thinking. Just what is it that we were actually thinking
and saying back then? And what is it that we have simply come to
believe we were thinking and saying? That curiosity, along with a
personal desire to be intellectually honest in myself as I continue to oppose the
Bush Administration’s militaristic impulses, provoked me to poke my head
back in to old email bins and review correspondences from those days just
before “Shock and Awe” streamed American might across a billion television
screens worldwide.
After reviewing that correspondence, what most strikes me with respect to
current day rhetoric, even more so than the continuing lack of transparency
and seemingly deliberate obfuscation of the Bush “cabal,” is the constant
Democratic refrain these days that “we didn’t know then the things we know
now.” By and large I see more clearly than ever, after reviewing my own
thinking, and knowing that I was not alone, that we did know
then much of what we now know, or at least we knew enough then to know
that we weren’t sure. The truth was out there, or at least plausible alternative
views were, for anyone willing to look for it beyond the Bush Administration
spoon-fed front pages of the New York Times.
We knew that we believed Iraq had WMDs, not that they had them. We knew, or
felt strongly, that we would only find out “yay” or “nay” if Saddam Hussein were
to be confronted with credible use of force. We knew then, based on the
available, now discredited, intelligence, that Congress did not vote for “war,”
but had authorized war only as a last resort if weapons
inspections failed. That’s what we knew even if that sinking feeling in our guts
told us the Dems had just given away the store and turned the prospect of
violence into the inevitability of it.
After all, anyone paying attention then could also see plainly that the rationale
for war was shifting on an almost daily basis, that U.S. engagement with the
U.N. was not sincere, or was not coming across as such, and that, short of
Saddam relinquishing the reins of power, we were setting up Herculean
milestone measures for the Iraqis that a reasonable person knew they could
not possibly meet especially if they were telling the truth that
they had no WMDs.
Simply put, it was clear to me then, as it was to many others, that the Bush
Administration was rushing our nation to war. It was as clear to me then as has
only become clear to me since that, while we were busy tossing out ideas of
how best to deal with Saddam, our nation’s leadership was busy tossing out,
quite literally, State Department plans to deal with the post-war Iraq they knew
was on the way.
In early March of 2003 I sent out an appeal encouraging friends and family to
sign an online petition in support of continued U.N. diplomacy backed by force.
I received back a scathing reply from a male relative two days later, a missive in
which I was charged with offensiveness for advocating continued diplomacy, a
preconceived dislike for Bush, and, perhaps most hurtfully at the time for
someone who prided himself on going out of his way to be well-informed,
naivete.
Would that this matter were so trivial that I could tell him “I told you so” a little
more than two and a half years later. I know I can’t and wish I couldn’t. For that
matter, I imagine he thinks he was not wrong based on what he knew at the
time. He may even still believe we did the right thing. In any case, there is no
glee in being right about an issue wherein being right has meant unnecessarily
lost lives, an expansion of the very terrorism the military action was intended
to curb, and an unprecedented loss of American prestige. Or to put it another
way, I would gladly grant my relative a smug smile and an “I told you so” in
return for just one single American soldier’s lost leg or one Iraqi child’s lost
mother.
As for the charges my relative leveled my way? I stand by my views on
diplomacy over force as easily as I will grant him his point on Bush. As for
naivete, I thought him wrong then, but now recognize the truth in what he
said.
Back in 2003, the last thing in the world I was thinking was “insurgency” and a
Vietnam-like quagmire. I was not thinking outright lies, misdeception and
cover-up by high-ranking government officials. I was most certainly not
thinking Internet televised beheadings of Americans, the “outing” of our own
post 9/11 intelligence assets in the interests of partisan gain, or, absurdly,
even the glimmer of the idea of torture by Americans and attempts by our own
Vice-President to codify that torture into law.
Back in 2003 we as a nation were divided on means, bitterly so; but, by and
large, we were still unified in purpose, the knowledge that 9/11 had changed
everything, and in our beliefs in the indominitability of American force and our
determination to do good in the world, even if we get it wrong sometimes.
Doves and hawks alike back in 2003 believed we would “win” the war if fought
and, while I was not certain, and didn’t think we could assume, that we would
be greeted with cheers and bouquets and flowers as my relative had
suggested, I was still on some level surprised and saddened when we weren’t.
So, yes, he was right on that count. I was more nave then. I think we all were.
I’m less so now, but think of that lost part of me as just the most minimal of
the most minimal casualties bestowed upon us by the “Law of Unintended
Consequences.” I can’t say I mind that loss, particularly when placed against,
just to name one example, the 600 lives lost on an Iraqi bridge when
inaccurate reports of a suicide bomber created a stampede, the effects of
which were worsened dramatically by concrete barriers at an American
checkpoint. As for me, I still sit here from the same safe perch I sat on then
and toss out words to the world. I consider myself fortunate. I mind very much,
however, the reasons behind that loss, all the thousands upon thousands who
have lost so much more because we chose not to know all those things we
could have and assumed we knew all those things we didn’t.
Raphie Frank is a New York City-based interactive producer, writer,
photographer and designer, but at heart a simple storyteller. At the moment he
is looking for stories to tell with happy hopeful endings, but such stories,
sadly, are far and few between these days.
Additional writings from a “far left centrist” can be viewed on Politinotions.
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