“Gore lied! People died!”
It’s quite remarkable how so many people are able to distance themselves from the responsibility of taking action, particularly when that action is in the distant past and the results were not as favorable as had been expected.
I remember the months following the attacks of 9/11, and I recall the sense of outrage felt towards Sadam Hussein and his continued refusal to allow weapons inspectors into Iraq. In today’s National Post Frank Harvey is interviewed regarding his recent study on the Iraq war:
My point is very simple, — when we combine 9/11 with the powerful effects of entrenched institutional and bureaucratic infrastructures that surround the President of the United States (e.g., intelligence organizations), the domestic political and societal pressures Presidents are forced to consider when contemplating big decisions (pre- and post-9/11 consensus on Saddam’s WMD was virtually unanimous), and the complex array of international factors Presidents (and British and Australian Prime Ministers) are compelled to confront, these forces create and shape the conditions AND motivations under which American leaders process information and ultimately act. With respect to the decision to go to war in Iraq, these forces would have compelled Gore to make many of the same interim (generally praised) decisions for many of the same reasons. Momentum would have done the rest. I am still waiting to see a carefully constructed, historically informed case study that supports the alternative (Gore-peace) counterfactual. Until someone comes up with that story the only reasonable conclusion is mine — the most commonly accepted understanding of the Iraq war is just wrong. The really interesting question, which I will address at length in the book manuscript, is why the wrong version of the “truth” remains so popular despite all of the evidence to the contrary.