Was Iraq worth it?

Was It Worth It?
Three years into the Iraq war, TIME posed the question to a wide array of experts and thinkers. The answers may surprise you
By NANCY GIBBS

Was it worth it, of course, is only one of the questions. What were the alternatives? What could have been done differently? Are things getting better or worse? And however we got here, what do we do now?

As the Iraq war's third anniversary approached, the news fed both doubts and hopes. Saddam Hussein took the stand in his trial for the first time, reminding people of what they were missing. Meanwhile, the brand-new Iraqi parliament met in a capital under curfew to pull together some kind of future amid warnings of civil war. U.S. forces launched Operation Swarmer, the biggest air assault since the invasion, to root out insurgents north of Baghdad. President Bush embraced realism: "We will see more images of chaos and carnage in the days and months to come," he warned as he argued why that was a price worth paying.

This war has brought division from the start, not just among but also within us. In between those who were always against the war and those who are still for it lie the shifting ambivalents who want this whole massive gamble to work but increasingly fear that it won't. Among the more ardent critics these days are pundits and policymakers who favored the strategy three years ago, even helped shape it, and are now doing a kind of public penance for their failure of foresight. Defense hawk Richard Perle, for example, has declared that the U.S. got the war right and the postwar wrong.

There has been a pattern for modern American wars going back to Korea: broad public support at the outset, growing concern as casualties rise or progress stalls and then a new resolution either do what it takes to win or get us out. In Vietnam, nine years passed after the first U.S. servicemen were killed and more than 20,000 others died before a majority of Americans concluded we were on the wrong course. Opinion swung more quickly this time, as the cost-benefit analysis changed. When the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) weren't found and the Saddam-9/11 connection was discredited, the sense of urgent threat receded. However generous and idealistic Americans may be, a half-a-trillion-dollar nation-building venture is a harder case to make.

So support for the war thickens and thins as events unfold. While polls showed that 68% of Americans were in favor of the invasion three years ago, that figure fell as what looked like a quick victory stalled, rose when Saddam was pulled from his spider hole, sank with the sickening pictures from Abu Ghraib, but then rose a bit again as Iraqis defied threats and went to the polls, setting an example for a region where free elections are about as common as leprechauns. In recent weeks the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine, the bodies dumped in shallow graves, the girls blown up on the way to school, the dwindling faith not in U.S. abilities and intentions but in Iraq's all drove down support for the war again.

So was it worth it? In a Gallup poll last week, 60% of those surveyed said no. In the pages that follow, a diverse and international group of thinkers give their opinions. Many people approached by TIME refused to answer. Perhaps they share the view expressed last week in Sydney by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: "I think the outcome, the judgment, of all of this needs to await history."

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. No. Emphatically no. Were we wrong to undertake what we did? The objectives were sound, but our reach proved insufficient to realize them.

Buckley is a conservative author and syndicated columnist

TOMMY FRANKS Yes. America remains very proud of and very thankful to our sons and daughters serving in Iraq and around the world in the cause of freedom. The events of 9/11 taught us a valuable lesson: ignoring terrorism will not make the problem go away. The sacrifices of our military members and their families are giving Iraqis a chance for freedom. And a free Iraq serves not only Iraqis. It will stand as a model in the Middle East, a model that represents to millions of people that there is an alternative to terrorism.

As chief of U.S. Central Command, General Franks, now retired, oversaw the invasion of Iraq

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA I believe that the balance sheet for the war at this moment is quite negative. The war foreclosed the possibility of Saddam restarting his WMD programs and replaced his dictatorship with Iraq's new democracy--both real gains. Balanced against these gains are costs that go well beyond the direct human and financial ones. The occupation of Iraq has served as a tremendous stimulus for Arab and Muslim anti-Americanism and thus has made radical Islamist terrorism significantly worse than it would otherwise be. America's reputation around the world has taken a huge hit among ordinary people who are now more likely to associate our democracy with scenes of prisoner abuse than with the Statue of Liberty. We, of course, do not know what the future will bring, but the upside potential of Iraq's post-Saddam order looks more and more limited. The central state will remain weak for years to come, and where the Shi'ite parties have established their rule, we get not a liberal democracy but an Iranian-style rule by clerics.

Fukuyama is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the author of America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy

HISHAM KASSEM Sadly, I have to say yes. It is difficult to commend such a bloody scene. But it achieved something useful. Parallel to the chaos and bloodshed, there is a political process evolving in Iraq. Bloodshed is the price of the transition from Saddam's psychopathic dictatorship. The losses would have been higher had Saddam stayed on. You could easily see that regime lasting another 30 years, under his sons and top generals. Negotiating with Iraq was not an option. There had to be a military intervention. You have a bloc of 22 countries in the Arab world dominated by authoritarianism and dictatorship. It is not a bloc you could engage politically and pressure for reform. By military intervention, the U.S. is able to pressure the region into adopting the reforms we are beginning to see across the region that might avert many countries from becoming failed states. The world cannot put up with state failure in the backyard of the world's oil fields, Israel and Europe.

Democracy activist Kassem is vice chairman of the Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Masry al-Youm

BERNARD-HENRI LEVY No. Because it was the wrong target: Iran and Pakistan are infinitely more threatening. Because it was the wrong approach: the neoconservatives, who put no stock in government policy at home and thus can't do so abroad, produced no plans for democratic nation building. And, above all, because this war, which aimed to reduce the number and strength of terrorists, has instead increased them. What was needed was to break the infernal cycle of the "clash of civilizations," Ã la Sam Huntington and Osama bin Laden. Instead, the war breathed new life into it. In short, rarely have the famous words of Blaise Pascal rung more true: "He who would act the angel becomes the beast." What begins as a noble moral intention to bring down a tyrant becomes a political disaster and a gigantic step backward in the long, necessary war against fascislamism. A field of ruins!

French philosopher Lévy is author of the recently published American Vertigo

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER Is the cause of freeing a people and pushing for progressive political and economic change in the most dangerous region in the world worth fighting and dying for? Undoubtedly. But has this war--with its disdain for allies and institutions, its willful blindness to any scenario other than easy victory and immediate democracy, and its planners' irresponsibility so deep as to be immoral in failing to protect the heritage, infrastructure and lives of a people who never asked for war--been worth it? Squandering lives and vast sums of money through a combination of arrogance and negligence can never be worth it. And if the Administration had been willing to make a full and honest assessment of the true costs and the uncertainty of the benefits before invading Iraq, I doubt that a majority of the American people would have supported the war.

Slaughter is the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University

LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON I'm principally a strategist, and from that perspective the war has been a disaster. First, the foremost winner has been Iran: it rid itself of its greatest threat, Saddam and his military, without firing a shot; won the Dec. 15 Iraq elections; owns the south, particularly Basra; and has felt the freedom to elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, in turn, has felt the freedom to reclaim leadership of radical Islam, leadership Osama bin Laden claimed on 9/11. Second, the foremost loser--after Iraq itself--has been Israel, whose leaders must now fear more than ever the new strategic maneuver room afforded Iran by the U.S.'s ineptitude. Third, the general war against global terrorists has been affected greatly by the failure in Iraq. Recruiting among Muslim ranks has been aided significantly, while America has squandered the upper hand in the world of ideas, which is the real battlefield of this conflict.

U.S. Army Colonel Wilkerson, now retired, was chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell

MICHAEL YOUNG Yes, Iraq was worth it, because it exposed more clearly than ever the brutal underpinnings of Arab nationalist rule. From an Iraqi perspective, there is much uncertainty today but also no nostalgia for the savagery of Saddam's rule. From the U.S.'s perspective, the struggle to stabilize Iraq will discourage similar endeavors in the future, but the war also highlighted how subcontracting American interests in the Middle East to supposedly stable Arab dictatorships is no longer viable. The shoddy edifice that U.S. soldiers so quickly dismantled in Iraq is no less present in countries Washington considers allies. Iraq may or may not be the pivot of a regional democratic resurgence, but it is a reminder to Americans that much can be gained by challenging the debilitating status quo if the aftermath is gotten right. Unless democracy becomes a cornerstone of Washington's efforts, its alliances will seem more than ever built on a mountain of illegitimacy.

Young is opinion editor at Lebanon's Daily Star newspaper

BERNARD KOUCHNER No, because of the way Americans went about it. I think it was up to the international community to pull together and get rid of Saddam for the Iraqi people. I have long argued for the "right to intervene." But you have to succeed. To do that, you need the international community standing with you. Saddam had been a major assassin in his country for 35 years. What difference would a few weeks have made? They should have done as we did in Kosovo, setting up a contact group and relying on international cooperation and peacekeepers.

Kouchner, former U.N. administrator for Kosovo, co-founded France's Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde

CHIBLI MALLAT Yes, the U.S.-led war to get rid of the dictatorship was worth it for most Iraqis and for those who, like me, supported them against one of the most ruthless governments in modern history. But for the young Marine from Oklahoma or the child in Iraq blown up this past week or the one before, it wasn't. Better things must obtain from the demise of Iraq's dictatorship, even if it is largely accepted now that the end of Saddam's rule represents a positive precedent for Iraq and the modern Middle East. Democratic Iraq, like democratic Germany or Japan, might make all the sacrifices less painful.

Mallat is an Arab democracy campaigner and a candidate for Lebanese President

RICHARD HAASS After three years, my answer would be no, although any judgment at this point is necessarily an interim one. The war has absorbed a tremendous amount of U.S. military capacity, the result being that the U.S. has far less spare or available capacity to use in the active sense or to exploit in the diplomatic sense. It has weakened our position against both North Korea and Iran. It has exacerbated U.S. fiscal problems. The war has also contributed to the world's alienation from the U.S. and made it more difficult to galvanize international support for U.S. policy toward other challenges. Iraq's legacy could also lead to renewed American public resistance to international involvement.

Haass, a former aide to President George H.W. Bush, is president of the Council on Foreign Relations

KENNETH ROTH When this war started, human rights were only a very minor reason to enter Iraq. Human rights became more of an after-the-fact justification only when it turned out that there were no WMD or prewar links to international terrorism. So, no, I don't think the war should have ever been or can now be justified as a successful humanitarian intervention. The extreme measure of military invasion should be reserved for stopping ongoing or imminent mass slaughter, and that wasn't happening in Iraq in March 2003. Humanitarian intervention might have been justified to stop the Anfal genocide in 1988 against the Kurds, but there was nothing like that going on in 2003. Clearly, Saddam was an awful dictator, but there are many awful dictators in the world, and toppling an awful dictator, in my view, does not justify military intervention.

Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch

DAVID M. KENNEDY From the outset, the war was a colossally bold and breathtakingly risky gamble. Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, the U.S. has failed to beat the odds. Forget about WMD and links to al-Qaeda. The real purpose for invading Iraq was the extravagant ambition to transform the political culture of the entire Middle East. The Bush Administration bet American might and good intentions against the accumulated weight of centuries of religious rivalry, tribal tensions, wanton bloodletting and authoritarian rule. Even American hyperpower has proved no match for the burden of all that sorry history.

Kennedy is a history professor at Stanford University and a 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1174699-2,00.html