Salon: Dark Victory (Book Excerpt)

Why Bush's war in Iraq has damaged America's standing in the world and made us less safe.

By Jeffrey Record

No one who despises tyranny can regret the destruction of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom swept away more than thirty years of neo-Stalinist brutality and oppression. Whether or not Saddam Hussein posed a security threat to the United States in the spring of 2003, he had been a mortal threat to Iraqis ever since coming to power in 1968 and an open transgressor of numerous United Nations resolutions since 1990. Saddam Hussein ran one of the few totalitarian regimes to survive the collapse of Soviet Communism, which formed the last major totalitarian state threat to Western values and interests.

Nor can any student of military history ignore the extraordinary performance of U.S. forces in bringing down Saddam's regime. Allies and adversaries alike could not fail to be awed by the combination, on the one hand, of the Bush administration's unshakable determination to proceed against Iraq despite the loss of the Turkish "front" and to press on to Baghdad in the face of unexpected rear-area Iraqi resistance, and, on the other, of the remarkable operational and tactical flexibility displayed by masterfully coordinated ground, air, and naval forces. And who could not admire the courage, skill, and firmness of purpose with which U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines went about their professional business? Operation Iraqi Freedom, coming on the heels of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, underscored America's unchallengeable conventional military supremacy.

But the Bush administration did not attack Iraq in 2003 for the purposes of liberating its people and demonstrating America's mastery of modern warfare. It went to war to remove what it asserted was a direct and imminent threat to U.S. security and to remake Iraq as a precursor to the Middle East's political transformation. It did so, moreover, over the objections of most of its friends and allies.

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