Every once in a while on the Blogosphere--especially at Ordinary Times--I'll run across someone who admits to having supported the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Usually, I'm very, very surprised because these people seem like the type who wouldn't support an invasion. And in fact, the three people at Ordinary Times I have in mind have repented of their earlier support. They admitted they were wrong. It just seems strange to me that any sensible person would have supported that endeavor. And yet those three people I am thinking of are all sensible and from what I know of them by what they've written, much smarter and better writers than I.
I suppose one lesson to take from this is to be wary of assigning what is or is not a sensible position, because there but for the grace of a politician I happen to support go I.
I never supported the war or the invasion. There was a point, about six years ago, when I came to the conclusion that protests against the war might be counterproductive or at least have the unhappy effect of unwittingly supporting the insurgents (even then, I would never outlaw protests) and when I conceded that the invasion having happened, it's not an easy call about what the US should do next. But I've never really changed my assessment of the war itself. The invasion was wrong and a mistake, and the subsequent troubles were the fruit of that mistake.
I believe I was right in my position. But I wasn't wholly right. I "opposed" the war more because I thought I was supposed to. I disliked war and thought war was something to be opposed. Being a leftist (which I no longer identify as), I thought the war was basically a manifestation of capitalist-imperialist blah blah blah.* I probably would have opposed the war if it had been President Gore's project, but the fact that it was President Bush II's project made it easier for me to oppose it. (And for the record, I strongly suspect the US was on a collision course with Iraq and that a President Gore might very well have initiated some action beyond the Clinton-era policy of flyovers. But we'll never know, and your counter-factual is as good as mine.)
But I must stress a couple points here. First, I didn't follow the issue all that closely. I knew the US was approaching war. I knew something about Mr. Bush's and Mr. Powell's speeches before the UN. Once in a blue moon I read letters to the editor of the local newspaper who discussed the war. And I remember hearing something about Hanx Blix and investigations of weapons of mass destruction. But I dropped the ball where it mattered and didn't keep myself informed.
Second, before the invasion, I did absolutely nothing to make my opposition known. There were at least a couple of marches I could have participated in. I could have written my congresspersons. I could have done much more than I did. That probably would not have made a difference. But I could have done something. I did nothing.
Here's a scene from shortly after the invasion started. I was on a bus in Denver. The bus wasn't full, but there was a sizeable number of people riding it. A young lady, probably in her early twenties, got on. She war an antiwar button. It was prominently placed so anyone could see it if they looked in her direction. I remember thinking at that time--and since that time--how brave that action must have been. That wasn't a safe time or place to sport such a button. As far as I know, she suffered no consequences--at least not that night on that bus ride--for wearing it. But she couldn't have known that when she got on the bus.
*As of now, I think it was definitely imperialist, but I have a lot of
difficulty seeing the "capitalist" part of it, perhaps because I despair
of really finding a workable definition of capitalism and of outlining
how that definition can explain the war. The reasons might be both
simpler and more complex than "it was capitalism." To quote Gandalf,
there is such a thing as malice and revenge.
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