The Audacity of Hope

and-dried. Like most analysts, I assumed that Saddam had chemical and biological
weapons and coveted nuclear arms. I believed that he had repeatedly flouted UN
resolutions and weapons inspectors and that such behavior had to have consequences.
That Saddam butchered his own people was undisputed; I had no doubt that the world,
and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.
What I sensed, though, was that the threat Saddam posed was not imminent, the
Administration’s rationales for war were flimsy and ideologically driven, and the war in
Afghanistan was far from complete. And I was certain that by choosing precipitous,
unilateral military action over the hard slog of diplomacy, coercive inspections, and
smart sanctions, America was missing an opportunity to build a broad base of support
for its policies.
And so I made the speech. To the two thousand people gathered in Chicago’s Federal
Plaza, I explained that unlike some of the people in the crowd, I didn’t oppose all
wars—that my grandfather had signed up for the war the day after Pearl Harbor was
bombed and had fought in Patton’s army. I also said that “after witnessing the carnage
and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this Administration’s pledge to hunt
down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance” and
would “willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again.”
What I could not support was “a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but
on passion, not on principle but on politics.” And I said:
I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of
undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know
that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international
support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather
than the best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al
Qaeda.
The speech was well received; activists began circulating the text on the Internet, and I
established a reputation for speaking my mind on hard issues—a reputation that would
carry me through a tough Democratic primary. But I had no way of knowing at the time
whether my assessment of the situation in Iraq was correct. When the invasion was
finally launched and U.S. forces marched unimpeded through Baghdad, when I saw
Saddam’s statue topple and watched the President stand atop the U.S.S. Abraham
Lincoln, a banner behind him proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” I began to suspect
that I might have been wrong—and was relieved to see the low number of American
casualties involved.
And now, three years later—as the number of American deaths passed two thousand
and the number of wounded passed sixteen thousand; after $250 billion in direct
spending and hundreds of billions more in future years to pay off the resulting debt and
care for disabled veterans; after two Iraqi national elections, one Iraqi constitutional
referendum, and tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths; after watching anti-American