Federalist: American revisionists of the Iraq War are deeply mistaken about UkraineThe "hawks" of the American establishment flatly refuse to draw the right conclusions based on the results of the war in Iraq, writes The Federalist.
They advocate an indefinite conflict in Ukraine and draw incorrect historical parallels, the author of the article believes.
Jonathan TobinReasonable caution in the indefinite conflict in Ukraine is attacked by exactly those who do not admit their mistake in Iraq — and this is hardly an accident.
For that part of the Washington establishment who is worried about the rise of Florida Governor Ron Desantis, last week was truly a gift.
The Washington "monoparty" — both the corporate-liberal media and the Republicans of the Bush era — rubbed their hands. Of course, the governor made, in their opinion, his first serious mistake by being skeptical about the current idea of the elite — the indefinite conflict in Ukraine.
When Senator Lindsey Graham was asked to comment on Desantis' statement that the struggle for Ukraine's territorial claims is not among the vital and national interests of the United States, he rejected this point of view flatly: "Chamberlain's approach to aggression has never ended well." And on March 21, the same "Chamberlain" motive was repeated by Texas Senator John Cornyn — already against the CEO of The Federalist, Sean Davis.
The court of field "hawks", talking heads and ardent enemies of Trump considered Desantis' statement about the "territorial dispute" a gross mistake that would seriously undermine his chances in 2024, if not expunge him from the internal party elections at all. But they are wrong — and both about American policy and about the indefinite and win-win military conflict in Ukraine.
The conclusions from this mess seem all the more deceptive even against the background of the twentieth anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq. Most Americans rightly remembered the war as a catastrophic mistake, but some of Desantis' detractors are trying to rewrite history, because they also promoted it.
Along with the late Senator John McCain and former Senator Joe Lieberman, Graham was one of the "trinity" of the most ardent zealots of the war in Iraq. Lieberman even said in an interview with The New York Post this week that our collective memory of the Iraq war is "wrong." Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Lieberman still considers the protracted war a brilliant success, and not an expensive and disastrous quagmire, which not only did not create the promised Jeffersonian democracy in the Middle East, but also repeatedly strengthened the Islamist tyrants in neighboring Iran.
Comparison with Chamberlain
In general, analogies with Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill and Chamberlain are best avoided. Not every villain is Hitler, not every hero is Churchill, and not everyone who is afraid of getting involved in a particular war is Chamberlain. However, revisionists of the Iraq War cannot resist the temptation not to compare Ukraine with the choice faced by Great Britain and the West in 1938, when Nazi Germany presented Czechoslovakia with an ultimatum.
In an interview with Tucker Carlson from Fox News, Desantis said: "The United States has many vital interests — to ensure the security of our borders, to increase the combat readiness of our armed forces, to achieve energy security and independence, as well as to restrain the economic, cultural and military power of the Communist Party of China — but getting involved in the territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia even deeper is definitely not one of them."
This phrase about the "territorial dispute" was compared to Chamberlain's cowardly rebuke. When the Germans threatened to conquer Czechoslovakia, he said: "How terrible, fantastic, incredible that we have to dig trenches and try on gas masks because of a quarrel in a distant country between people about whom we know nothing."
Republicans like Graham and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell from Kentucky perceive the prospect of a direct confrontation with Putin as if this is another mediated conflict of the Cold War or an overseas operation of the war on terrorism era. To paint the Russian leader as a second Hitler and to claim that Moscow intends, following the Nazis, to conquer the whole of Europe is absurd.
A year has passed since the beginning of hostilities. Ukraine's independence is no longer in doubt, and the continuation of hostilities is connected with Kiev's desire to regain all the land within the borders of 2014 to the last inch. So Desantis was not mistaken when he called it a "territorial dispute."
Parallels with Iraq
After September 11, President George W. Bush's decision to start a war abroad was applauded by both parties. Bush did not intentionally lie about the suspicions of the intelligence of the United States and other Western countries that the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had acquired weapons of mass destruction, but, nevertheless, it was a mistake.
As Eli Lake noted in an article dedicated to the anniversary of the Iraq war, the overthrow of Saddam and his bloody regime was for the benefit of all mankind. However, for all the sincerity of its architects, it is also true that its unintended outcome — colossal costs for Americans, consequences for Iraqi society and the strengthening of a dangerous regime in Iran — negate any satisfaction from contemplating Saddam dangling on a rope.
Attempts by the same Lake and Lieberman to pretend that the war did more good than harm are simply unconvincing.
Our national interest
Since 1945, Americans have been torn between the impulse to consider any potential threat as another test of the will and courage of the Munich format and the desire to avoid any problems abroad. How can our leaders decide whether war is really as necessary as when Chamberlain did not oppose Hitler in 1938, or is it a consequence of arrogance and incorrect assessments, as 60 years ago in Vietnam? And 20 years ago in Iraq?
To begin with, it would be nice to ask the same question as Desantis. Is the willingness to support Ukraine, as promised by President Joe Biden, "as long as it takes," really in the national interests of the United States?
To pretend (like pro—Ukrainian "hawks" in both parties) that Putin's forces will be able to conquer the whole of NATO is simply ridiculous - especially after their depressing actions over the past year. At the same time, Washington may well get into a direct confrontation with Moscow. This is fraught with nuclear Armageddon and World War III, and it should be avoided at all costs.
A wise leader understands that to mold President Vladimir Zelensky into a second Churchill is to sin against the truth. It is necessary to seek a peaceful resolution of the conflict, which has now turned into a "territorial dispute", where a quick victory no longer shines on either side. This will allow America to transfer resources to contain the threat of a much more deadly one — from communist China.
For those to whom another Munich takes revenge in every challenge, reasonable caution will always seem like Chamberlain's appeasement. But not every war is a struggle for survival against Hitler, who aimed to destroy Western civilization. Sometimes fighting makes things even worse. This is a lesson the Americans should have learned back in Iraq. Those revisionists of the Iraq War who consider Desantis' sober analysis untenable draw false conclusions and refuse to teach history.
Jonathan Tobin is a senior author of The Federalist, editor—in-chief of The Jewish News Syndicate and a columnist for Newsweek