On Another Planet

Andrew Sullivan: “For me and many others, the Iraq War of 2003 was a life-altering lesson in humility. In the wake of 9/11, with trauma warping my frontal cortex, I backed a pre-meditated, pre-emptive war for regime change in the Middle East — something stupid and immoral I soon realized, however well intentioned. It changed me. But at least in those tense, polarized months of 2002 and 2003, we had hashed out the case for war thoroughly beforehand, as democracies do. A thousand op-eds bloomed; critical votes were taken in the Congress; political careers were weighed in the balance; and Colin Powell went to the UN to present the ‘evidence.'”

“Seems like a wholly different world, doesn’t it?”

“Come with me a little further back in time to the Persian Gulf War of 1991. That was a war started by Saddam Hussein, not us. How did we go about a new war in the Middle East back then? Well, we had another big public debate, another trip to the UN, and then another vote in the Congress. It was closer than we remember: just 52-47 in the Senate (with one abstention). We then went to war with a very precise aim — ending the occupation of Kuwait — after amassing a coalition of 35 countries, and did so to cement the status of international law in the post-Cold War world.”

“Seems like another planet, doesn’t it?”

“And there’s a reason for that. We had a functioning liberal democracy then, a constitutional system that was imperfectly but actually followed, a responsible president, and international law on our side.”