Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS, June 19, 2025
“Of course, the Trump administration is already part of this war.”
Pundits, like generals, seem always doomed to refight the last war. That’s the main thing to remember as the world watches the debate over whether the United States should join Israel in action to ensure that Iran doesn’t acquire a nuclear weapon. Such weapons have nothing to do with civilian use and everything to do with attempting to perpetrate another Holocaust or to threaten American allies in the Middle East.
For those who oppose action against Iran, the main argument is the obligation not to repeat the mistakes of 2003, when the George W. Bush administration invaded Iraq. For many on the political right, the Iraq War—and to a lesser extent, the war begun in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks—were the great original sins of 21st-century American foreign policy. While there were reasonable arguments for American involvement in both conflicts—the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and Taliban government in Afghanistan were both despotic, and supported and exported terrorism—they ultimately were undone by the basic problem of sustaining a long-term commitment to wage an unpopular war in a country where the inhabitants did not want America to stay.
Lessons of war in Iraq
Iraq was particularly problematic because the rationale for the conflict was based on a massive intelligence failure. Most of the world, including the American intelligence establishment, believed Saddam when he boasted about possessing weapons of mass destruction. Sitting back and waiting for him to use them was thought to be a catastrophic mistake. That the administration also believed that it could help transform the Middle East by bringing democracy to an Arab and Muslim world in desperate need of it only strengthened the argument for intervention.
While it was easy to believe that a monster like the Iraqi dictator might be working on nuclear or chemical weapons and had, in the past, done so, those programs were, in fact, no longer operating…..Source