"Military action was now seen as inevitable."

There has been mild fervor in the public news arena, and lots of discussion on the Internet, about the Downing Street memo. I knew what it was, and had heard references to it and summaries of its content, but today was the first day that I had read it. It's at that link right there, and I encourage you to read it.

The DSM is a memo about a meeting held by top-level British officials in July of 2002, many months before the "coalition of the willing" (someone else's words) invaded Iraq. President Bush, in remarks dated August and after, insisted that the decision to go to war had not been made, and that it was a last resort. However, paragraph 3 of said memo would indicate otherwise:

"(a British official in Washington, identified only by the letter C) reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC (US National Security Council) had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."

Doesn't get much more damning than that, now, does it?

But wait, there's more...

"The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections."

There has not been a single denial of the validity of this memo. Certainly, Bush and Blair tossed a well-rehearsed denial back and forth like a good, long Wimbledon volley, but nobody has come out and said that it is a fake. It represents the contents of a real meeting, where real information was discussed. So, if this real memo is to believed, then not only was the White House orchestrating a PR campaign to convince us poor American rubes that we should invade Iraq (since, you know, they had decided to invade, and were already plotting the details), but the invasion would be timed so that Republicans running for election would be able to use it as a reason why they should be elected.

Paragraph 13:

"It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force."

This paved the way for the November passage of U.N. Resolution 1441. Of course, it passed unanimously, because the United States was cooking the evidence. Saddam Hussein could not disarm, because he had no weapons. We said he did, but he didn't. It wasn't an honest mistake, we did it on purpose.

Why would we do that?

The Project for a New American Century is a think tank "...dedicated to a few fundamental propositions: that American leadership is good both for America and for the world; and that such leadership requires military strength, diplomatic energy and commitment to moral principle."

The first step in creating this New American Century is to deal with the thorny issue of Islamist (fundamentalist Muslim) theocracies and extremists in the Middle East. In order to do this, says NYU associate law professor Noah Feldman, the Bush administration chose to create"...massive instability and uncertainty wherever we can in the Middle East in the calculated hopes that what will come out on the other side will be better than what we had to begin with.". (Feldman spoke extensively at the Aspen Ideas Festival on this topic. A realaudio recording of the speech is here.)

Perhaps the PNAC has the right idea. Perhaps if the US quickly props up democracy in a notoriously un-democratic part of the world, it will spread like a great benevolent virus to other, nearby countries that pose a strategic danger to us. After all, Saudi Arabia has a notoriously unstable government but for the fact that they have enough oil money to buy off all their enemies and hire an army to kill the enemies that can't be bought. After all, Iran just elected a hardline conservative president who has reaffirmed that country's right to posess nuclear material. After all, Syria is likely one of the largest contributors of manpower and equipment to the insurgency in Iraq.

There is just one problem. We did not invade and destabilize Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Syria. We invaded and destabilized Iraq, instead. We thought we could do it on the cheap, that once we chased out Saddam Hussein, everything would be roses and sunshine, and that our army would be "welcomed as liberators." Instead, once the Baathists fell out of power, massive looting destroyed what was left of the country's infrastructure, and the terror we were seeking to prevent showed up at our new, Mideastern doorstep with rocket-propelled grenades, car bombs, and suicide bombers. Our government broke down a tyrannical regime with the expectation that a democratic nation would spring from the ashes without our intervention; we tried to build a nation without engaging in any actual, messy, expensive nation-building.

Boy, were we wrong. We are now fighting an insurgency that is looking at "ten or twelve years" of "last throes." (two different people's words, both major architects of this occupation) We grudgingly accepted that we must spend tremendous amounts of money, time, and American lives to really build Iraq into something other than a power vacuum. We broke it, and now we've bought it. There are a couple of possible outcomes to this situation; PNAC-style democracy is one, and if it turns out that way, the Bush doctrine will be hailed as a sea change in foreign policy, and he will go down in history as a visionary. Civil war is another; a terrible, bloody, long-lasting civil war, with many of Iraq's neighbors sticking their hands into the mess as well. If it turns out that way, Bush will be remembered as a colossal failure, possibly the worst president ever.

Meanwhile, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran remain relatively unmolested and essentially unchanged. What's more, they will stay that way for quite some time, because it turns out that we can barely handle occupying Iraq, much less invading and destabilizing another country. In fact, if Iran were to start causing problems for us in Iraq, there wouldn't be much we could do about it. Our overconfident leaders have overextended our budget and our military capability, all to fight a war that they made up a reason to fight. The Iraq experiment is just that, a costly experiment in radical foreign policy. If the Bush administration had been honest about its goals from the start of this mess, and honest about the costs of the war in money, lives, and political stability, the American people would never have stood for it.

A democratic government must remain beholden to the will of its people. The Bush administration thought that they were on to a great idea, but that the people would not think it was worth the risk. They could have made the responsible choice, and sought out a consensus on how to best deal with Islamist fundamentalism. They could have acted like stewards of the world, and led a real coalition of Western nations in a coordinated effort to modernize and educate a dangerous part of the world. Instead, they wrapped themselves in the American flag and lied to anyone and everyone that would listen. First, Saddam had WMDs and was buying uranium. Next, he wasn't buying uranium, but he had biological and chemical weapons. Then, he didn't have any biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons, but we were fighting the terrorists. Now, we're bringing democracy to Iraq, bringing them freedom, liberating them from Saddam Hussein and the terrorists (who, incidentally, were never there until we, you know, destabilized the country.)

Meanwhile, massive deficits have consumed our budget. A health care crisis looms large in our country's near future, to say nothing of our energy 'plan,' consisting of more dependence on foreign oil. Nothing is being done because all the people in the powerful positions are on the same side, watching each other's backs. Congressmen who try to hold hearings about the complete, paralyzing failure of our federal government are put in basement storage rooms, and when they bring up the inability of the Republican party to govern our country like responsible adults, their microphones are simply turned off.

Let's hope that Iraq gets some democracy. Maybe then they can spread it to us.