The War They Sold

A reader writes:

Your honest neocon wrote:

"What the leftist and media critics get wrong about Rumsfeld, Cheney and Bush is that they screwed up by going in halfhearted and without demanding real sacrifice upfront from the American people."

I think what your reader fails to recognize is that the premises on which the selling of the Iraq War was based were the only ones that could have been successful in convincing the public. I have long believed that most Americans did indeed have justifiable uncertainty about the true threat the Hussein regime in Iraq posed to America. At the same time, they were assured that no significant sacrifices by citizens were warranted, since we would be "greeted as liberators". Thus, even if the threat proved less significant than was advertised, war would be "worth it," since the cost would have been relatively insignificant.

An honest assessment of the potential costs balanced against a potential threat about which there was much uncertainty would have likely produced a level of public support insufficent for intervention in Iraq. The goal was intervention in Iraq (I make no accusations of conspiratorial motivations for this), and the only means by which the goal could be achieved was precisely the means the administration and war supporters outside of government used.

Honesty would have led to better policy. Someone alert Cheney.