So, as we know, I'm kind of a fence sitter and enlightened centrist these days between the liberals and "the left". And listening to certain left wing commentators, they're already going on about how we should not only go after Bibi Netanyahu, we should try George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes. Honestly, the anti war crowd is a cantankerous bunch, and they seem to think ANY war is worthy of being tried for war crimes. As I stated back when I was more supportive of Netanyahu, these guy have no stomach to fight ANY war. War is nasty, war is brutal, war sucks. Im not saying I like it, but sometimes it is, sadly necessary. Or, at the very least, seemed necessary at the time.
So, here, I'm going to make the argument for why the US handling of the war on terror IS better than Netanyahu's behavior in gaza.
On 9/11, we were attacked by Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Bin Laden was in Afghanistan, and while the Taliban was willing to hand him over, granted certain conditions were made (like him being tried in an Islamic court, which is kinda ridiculous), we invaded because the conditions weren't reasonable.
We ended up overturning the government there, and tried to engage in nation building to rebuild the country. Bush decided to use this as an opportunity to push his neocon fantasy of wanting to "spread democracy" to Afghanistan, and we established a democratic government there.
Two years later, we invaded Iraq over false intel regarding weapons of mass destruction. It is unclear if Bush knew that the intel was false, it has been speculated it was fabricated to allow the Bush administration to invade for its oil, but, in some ways, we'll never know. Theres valid arguments to be had that it wasnt in good faith, and there's arguments to be had that Bush was legitimately convinced there were WMDs there, for better or for worse, and that we needed to invade. Either way, we overturned Saddam Hussein's government, and installed a democratic government there.
And then....we dug in. And we occupied both countries. And peace never came. Nation building is hard. Normally it's done multilaterally with the UN, but Bush was a bit of a paleocon who turned neocon after 9/11 and he snubbed the UN in typical conservative fashion. For conservatives, the rules based order is played more fast and loose. It really is about america being top dog and doing whatever the frick they want, and we lost a lot of international credibility due to the Bush administration too.
Bush...despite this, Bush did seem to believe in his own administration. He believed America was the good guy. That the rest of the world wasnt good for not being behind us, and he believed his actions were righteous.
And...in all fairness, despite all the screeching from the left over war crimes, most collateral damage was that...collateral damage. We clearly did have rules of engagement in place where we tried to not kill civilians and avoid destroying infrastructure. We did not level Kabul or Baghdad. Sure, we occupied them, but we were trying to be a security force. To keep things safe. We only responded, mostly, to violence against us, and tried to bomb people we thought were terrorists. Despite this, did we make mistakes? Yes, we did bomb civilians with drones. Sometimes that terrorist camp ended up being a wedding, or that building that AL Qaeda were in ended up being a hospital. We didnt intentionally, however, bomb the hospitals mostly. That's what Netanyahu is doing now, but when we did it, it was clearly an accident. An oopsie. We tried.
And yes, we had crap like Abu Ghraib and bad treatment of prisoners by the US. And you know what? We literally held those who committed abuses accountable in a court of law. We understood that yes some people crossed the line, and we tried to hold them accountable. Because we tried to be moral. We didn't always succeed. The war on terror deserves a lot of criticism. Bush was incompetent at best, and malicious in some ways at worst, but his maliciousness was within acceptable legal bounds and grey areas. He wasnt outright genociding people. He was, in his own mind, trying to help them and bring them democracy.
I think that if he were able to quickly invade like we did, and then establish stable governments and leave, that his presidency would be much more highly regarded. If it ended with the mission accomplished banner on the aircraft carriers, Bush would be regarded as a hero.
What went wrong was that from there, it turned into a quagmire. We were there for years, we couldnt keep the order. The people there had no intention of fighting for their own freedom. We were propping up their governments at our expense, with our tax dollars and our soldiers and our blood when it was spilled, and what were we getting out of it? nothing. We can't stand down, unless these people stood up, and they didn't. And the terrorists kept attacking us, and we just kept occupying them.
What was the point? What was the end game? Stable governments, where we leave when they could standup and defend themselves. The conservatives argued that we needed more time. McCain argued for a hundred year war. But by 2008, almost everyone wanted this crap to end and that's why the republican party was on the verge of collapse, and Obama won by such overwhelming margins. THe war became insanely unpopular. It wasnt because we were bad in humanitarian terms, although there were legitimate questions about abuses and oopsies, which the far left described as war crimes. ANd yes, the far left anti war weirdos were saying things like Bush should be tried in the hague. I was never on those peoples' side. That's ridiculous.
But...at the same time...was the war on terror, in retrospect, a mistake? Yes. It taught me that interventionism isnt always a good idea, that in reality, international politics and its morality isnt black and white, it was grey, and we thought we were the good guys, but in reality, we kinda just ended up making a mess. It was a costly mess, it cost thousands of american lives, tens of thousands of innocent civilians lives, and trillions of dollars. it was a major screw up. And we got nothing from it outside of Bin Laden's corpse (and even that took 10 years).
And as Biden left Afghanistan at the beginning of his term, marking the end of 20 years of occupation, it looked a lot like Vietnam. But unlike the hardliners who think that war was winnable, i dont think anyone thinks Afghanistan was. It wasnt winnable. It was a quagmire, and remaining there was a sunk cost fallacy, and we just ended up making things worse.
And that was the issue with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. I think, in some ways, the neocons underwent the wars with relatively good intentions. And sure, they were no angels (although maybe they were biblically accurate warrior angels), but they tried. They didn't try to kill civilians. They didn't try to level cities. They tried to engage in war in a relatively honorable and moral way, and even though we can pick on their failings all day long, they did, clearly, try to make SOME good faith effort to minimize casualties. And even though the left constantly complained and whined and moaned about "war crimes' well into the obama administration with his drone strikes, I think as long as youre TRYING to do the right thing, and youre not TRYING to kill and massacre civilians, that youre good in my book.
The war on terror was a failure primarily because it was a war with no viable end goal or exit strategy and devolved into a quagmire. It wasnt because we were just massacring civilians, intentionally, with the purpose of killing them and taking the land, which is what is happening in Israel. THe reason the public turned on the war on terror is because it dragged on for years, with no end in sight, and people just stopped wanting to send their children to war and spend tax money on such a useless venture. That was why the public shifted on it. The "Bush is a war criminal" people were always a minority. Normies turned on it because we werent getting anywhere with it and we weren't getting anything from it. It was a failure only in retrospect. It seemed like a good idea at the time and it was a learning experience for better or for worse. And it has made me less interventionist. Because intervening in foreign affairs like we did in the war on terror is a mistake. And maybe, no matter what Israel does, they made the same mistake. But you know what? I expect them to engage by the same moral standards. And they're not.
The reason Im fine with Bibi Netanyahu being charged with war crimes is his behavior is so brazen and beyond that pale that I believe no reasonable person can defend it any more. And I find it kind of sickening Biden is playing defense for them on the world stage. Let the dude be tried. If he's innocent, let him be found to be innocent. But we all know he's guiilty. And maybe he should be held to account, with more moderate Israelis being left in charge of the war and its cleanup. This slaugher should end. And we cant defend Bibi in this context. By this point, the presumption of innocence and good faith behavior is gone. He is NOT like Bush. Bush, even if you disagree with him, he was honorable. Netanyahu isn't honorable. And that's the difference. The scale of the atrocities and the brazenness with which they were committed is the difference. I can respect a good faith effort to minimize casualties , even if it leads to occasional oopsies. I cant respect what Israel is doing. And that's where I draw the difference.
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