Not sure if they coordinated, but NYTimes columnists Maureen Dowd and William Safire offered competing versions of "what if we hadn't invaded Iraq" in their most recent columns. Dowd, playing off "It's a Wonderful Life" (as experienced by Rumsfeld seeing the world as it would have been if he never existed) offered these conclusions:
Sam Nunn. He's the defense secretary. Sam consults with Congress. Never acts arrogant or misleads them. He didn't banish the generals who challenged him - he promoted 'em. And, of course, he caught Osama back in '01. He threw 100,000 troops into Afghanistan on 9/11 and sealed the borders. Our Special Forces trapped the evildoer and his top lieutenants at Tora Bora. You [addressed to Rumsfeld] weren't at that cabinet meeting the day after 9/11, so nobody suggested going after Saddam. No American troops died or were maimed in Iraq. No American soldiers tortured Iraqis in Abu Ghraib. No Iraqi explosives fell into the hands of terrorists. There's no office of disinformation to twist perception abroad. We're not on the cusp of an Iraq run by Muslim clerics tied to Iran.
[...] With the help of our allies around the world, we have won the war on terror. And Saddam has been overthrown. Once Hans Blix exposed the fact that Saddam had no weapons, the tyrant was a goner. No Arab dictator can afford to be humiliated by a Swedish disarmament lawyer.
Safire, taking his license in the form of a parody/sequel to Philip Roth's book The Plot Against America, sees it differently:
The C.I.A.'s Tenet notes that Saddam's Iraq harbors the terrorists Nidal and al-Zarqawi. Adviser Rice adds that world intelligence services agree that Saddam seeks awful weapons. The Pentagon's Rumsfeld warns it is "only a matter of time" before Iraq shoots down one of our planes enforcing the no-flight zone protecting Iraq's Kurds from genocide.
State's Powell counsels relaxing U.N. pressure on Iraq by calling them "smart sanctions," hoping this will persuade Saddam to permit inspections. Bush glumly agrees.
Dissolve to a scene in a Tikrit palace where Saddam lays out his plan to (a) amass billions through a U.N. oil-for-food scam and his secret oil pipeline to Syria, (b) increase contacts with Al Qaeda, (c) take leadership of the Arab world by developing W.M.D. or pretending to have them already, and (d) openly challenging Bush.
Back in D.C., at a critical go-no-go meeting in the Situation Room, Bush sides with Powell not to invade Iraq. Wolfowitz enters with news of a shoot-down of our "Northern Watch" aircraft by Iraq. Kofi Annan, on CNN, asks: What do we expect - the U.S. flies over sovereign Iraqi territory. Bush decides against his aides' audacious regime-change proposal, and chooses a restrained, Clintonian pinprick response with cruise missiles.
Having gloriously faced down the U.S. - and gaining greater financial and weaponry strength every day - Saddam becomes an iconic, heroic figure in the Arab and Muslim world. Through massive kickbacks and smuggling operations involving France, Russia and China, the murderous despot ensures U.N. protection from inspections. Free from fear of retaliation, Saddam offers safe haven in Iraq to bin Laden and followers seeking a center of operations.
With Dowd, you have the presumption of an unhappy ending in real life compared with the happy ending in her fantasy. With Safire, you have an unhappy ending in his fantasy, compared with the presumption of a happy ending in real life. Of course, Dowd's happy ending is much happier than Safire's happy ending by far; the same goals are achieved with much less bloodshed. Wish we had given Dowd's version a chance anyway.
I think much of Dowd's version is somewhat unrealistic, but this is crazy:
In the Middle East after a Blix report showing no weapons (after much resistance to inspections from Saddam as seen by the Nov-Jan inspection period that he did allow) everyone--and especially the other Middle East tyrants--would assume that Saddam had just gamed the system yet again.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | December 20, 2004 at 03:47 PM
I agree about that being Dowd's weakest bit there. I was just delighted she had found some way to address Hussein. Without it, her version was easy to shoot down given that it's virtually tauntamont to treason to suggest that Hussein remaining in power was acceptable (despite other brutal dictators being acceptable for some reason).
Posted by: Edward | December 20, 2004 at 03:55 PM
The link to Dowd's piece is broken.
Posted by: Jesurgislac | December 20, 2004 at 04:01 PM
Hmmm..it just worked for me now...but here's the printable page.
Posted by: Edward | December 20, 2004 at 04:06 PM
Dowd's version is at least somewhat realistic; a Saddam without weapons (and knowing his conventional military strength was a hollow shell after Gulf War I) ceases to be a factor in the ME. He hasn't the capability to threaten his neighbors and his country remains the equivalent of a zoo animal.
Safire rehashes the old, tired GOP stereotypes: the UN is against us, all our allies are crooks or worse, Saddam and bin Laden are fraternity brothers, etc.
Posted by: Jadegold | December 20, 2004 at 04:12 PM
By the way, this isn't a hypothetical:
This is pretty much what happened after the 1998 cruise missile attack.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | December 20, 2004 at 04:15 PM
OK, two can play that game, Sebastian, this too is pretty much undeniable: had we not invaded we'd find:
Posted by: Edward | December 20, 2004 at 04:22 PM
How 'bout if we consider MY counterfactual, where Bush invites Saddam over to Crawford in 2001, the two have a bonding experience, and Saddam becomes born-again and turns Iraq into a fundamentalist Christian theocracy?
Posted by: kenB | December 20, 2004 at 04:31 PM
If we didn't invade without good reason, we could never ever challenge Saddam in any way EVAR! Nurse! More applesauce! Damn the torpeodes!
Posted by: carpeicthus | December 20, 2004 at 04:32 PM
Seb, it's a hypothetical that Bush would have had to come out of it looking like a coward. I mean, sure you could rely on the China spy plane debacle for precedent, but there's a world of options in between. As long as his country was crawling with inspectors, for example, he might not have looked like a conquering hero.
Posted by: carpeicthus | December 20, 2004 at 04:35 PM
Clarence, to Rumsfeld: You weren't at that cabinet meeting the day after 9/11, so nobody suggested going after Saddam.
Except for George W. Bush.
Posted by: Jesurgislac | December 20, 2004 at 04:39 PM
This is pretty much what happened after the 1998 cruise missile attack.
You and Pat Buchanan agree. But not many others.
Posted by: Jadegold | December 20, 2004 at 04:44 PM
I read Dowd's as more lighthearted fantasy, and Safire's as more dark prediction. IOW, I think Safire takes his column more seriously than Dowd takes hers. I'm not sure if I had that reaction because of who they are, or who I am.
Posted by: Doh | December 20, 2004 at 04:47 PM
"As long as his country was crawling with inspectors, for example, he might not have looked like a conquering hero."
We don't need to talk about this as if it were a hypothetical. Saddam did in fact have his country crawling with inspectors, and he also in fact was celebrated as a hero throughout the Middle East for standing up to the US during the period from 1991 until the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | December 20, 2004 at 04:55 PM
he also in fact was celebrated as a hero throughout the Middle East for standing up to the US during the period from 1991 until the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Cite?
I thought we chose Iraq to invade because Hussein was a pariah with no friends...who was "celebrating" his hero-hood?
Posted by: Edward | December 20, 2004 at 04:57 PM
and he also in fact was celebrated as a hero throughout the Middle East for standing up to the US during the period from 1991 until the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Why do I have the feeling this is going to be supported in much the same manner of an earlier claim the Sandinistas killed off their political opposition?
Here, I'll do the heavy lifting:
USIA World Reaction
Of all these op/eds, two portray Saddam as a "hero"--although the Kuwaiti paper calls Saddam "a filthy criminal."
Posted by: Jadegold | December 20, 2004 at 05:23 PM
Jadegold, what period did I suggest? 1991-2003. You are looking at a single moment in a single report? For years we heard about how much the Arab street lionized Saddam for standing up the the US.
Here is a retrospective look .
And another.
And a short paper
And a Pakistani article arguing that Saddam is no longer a hero to Muslims now that he has been captured (implying that he was before) here
BBC caption "Saddam's Hero-like image is destroyed"
According to the Times of India : "Describing former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's capture as the "blackest day for the Islamic world", the chief cleric of India's largest mosque said he would be remembered as the symbol of Islamic resistance."
According to USA Today:
Note that Arabs 'increasingly portray him as a reckless despot' when the US is about to invade, but before he was "applauded as a hero who stood up to the United States when no other Arab leader would." When was that? That would be the period after the 1991 Gulf War and before the 2003 invasion. It couldn't have been earlier. When did Saddam 'stand up to the United States' earlier?
A Reason article.
In the BBC:
He then tries to say that of course Saddam is a tyrant and what Palestinians really want is someone who will stand up from their rights, but not really Saddam. But doesn't really seem supported by the fact that many Palestinians seemed to like him just fine.
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | December 20, 2004 at 06:21 PM
Jadegold, what period did I suggest? 1991-2003. You are looking at a single moment in a single report?
At 4:15, you suggested it was the 1998 attack that made him a hero. Later, you claimed it was 1991-2003.
I'd also note many of your cites counter the notion of Saddam as a hero in the ME. Most actually say he was reckless and/or a tyrant.
Posted by: Jadegold | December 20, 2004 at 07:06 PM
I'm sorry if I was unclear. Surviving the 1991 war made him a hero because he survived a direct clash with the US. 1998 confirmed again that he could win in a battle of wills against the US.
You use 'reckless' and 'tyrant' as if they were antonyms for 'hero'. Do you believe that is completely true in the Middle East?
Posted by: Sebastian Holsclaw | December 20, 2004 at 07:11 PM
This is an argument I heard a lot before the war:
"We have to go into the Middle East and punch someone in the mouth to show 'em all we mean business. That means getting Saddam, the most conspicuous rebel against U.S. authority."
This seems like a bizarre argument to use now. Punching the other guy in the mouth is only impressive if you don't break your hand in the process. Can anyone honestly say that our prestige in the Middle East has been increased by the debacle in Iraq? If I'm an Iranian mullah I'm thinking, "these guys can't even police a nation of 25 million and defeat a ragtag insurgency. No way they can handle us."
Posted by: WillieStyle | December 21, 2004 at 02:16 AM
This is an argument I heard a lot before the war:
Cite?
If I'm an Iranian mullah I'm thinking,"these guys can't even police a nation of 25 million and defeat a ragtag insurgency. No way they can handle us."
Ofcourse that would only be plausible if the majority of Iranians were mullahs you speak of.
Posted by: Stan LS | December 27, 2004 at 12:51 PM