In January 2003, two months before U.S. forces invaded Iraq, Kemal Karpat was so incensed over the Bush administration's bullheaded rush to war that he could hardly contain himself.

The president and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were intoxicated with power, the esteemed professor of Middle East history at UW-Madison told me during an interview in his office in the Humanities Building.

Yes, Saddam Hussein was a despicable tyrant and the United States should continue to work behind the scenes to force his ouster, he said.

But to invade Iraq without any real proof that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction - and risk killing thousands of innocent people - was morally indefensible. It would, he predicted, inflame the entire region and do irreparable damage to the United States' reputation.

"It is sheer madness," he said.

I found myself thinking of Karpat earlier this month after I'd interviewed Mohammed Ameen, a Kurdish Iraqi who's lived in Madison since 2000 and has spent considerable time in Iraq the last two years assisting in the rebuilding effort.

Ameen, who had celebrated the day Saddam was overthrown, told me that in his opinion Iraq was now a lost cause. The insurgents have grown so powerful, he said, the United States has little choice but to set a timetable for the withdrawal of our troops and get out as soon as we can.

That got me to wondering: Does Karpat share that view? Or had he perhaps modified his position since our interview two years ago? After all, he had admitted voting for Bush in 2000 and even had donated money to the Bush campaign.

Karpat, who is now in his 80s but is still as articulate and brutally candid as he was when we first met 15 years ago, sighed deeply when I posed that question to him last week.

No, his views have not changed, he says. On the contrary, he considers the Iraq war one of the great tragedies of modern times. It is, he says, "a terrible loss for all humanity - and particularly for poor developing nations ... because there's never been a superpower with the sense of ethics and the sense of helping the underdogs of the world like the United States."

Iraq, he says, "has undermined all that. Because it's a war without a reason and has been conducted in the worst possible manner, with total disregard for the welfare of the local people."

Space limitations don't allow me to list all the reasons Karpat believes this war will be remembered as one of the low points - if not the low point - in the history of U.S. foreign affairs. But two years after U.S. troops stormed into Baghdad, a few things are now clear, he suggests:

• Incomprehensible as it may seem, the U.S. never had much of a long-range plan.

• The decision to disband the Iraqi Army shortly after the invasion - which put 400,000 armed, unemployed men on the streets - was "arrogant" and "stupid," and compromised the safety of U.S. troops from the beginning.

• If part of the U.S. strategy was to develop a presence in the Mideast and exert pressure on Iran - as Karpat speculated in our 2003 interview - the war has accomplished exactly the opposite.

Over time, the Shiite-led Iraqi government very likely will develop close ties to the religious extremists controlling Iran, he says. "Which means Iran can manipulate (Iraq) all it wants."

• The war has been a recruiting boon for al-Qaida. And unless we get out, thousands of Muslims will continue to pour across Iraq's borders for the opportunity to kill U.S. soldiers.

At this point, Karpat says, the Bush Administration needs to do three things: Publicly declare that we will not under any circumstances establish military bases in Iraq or take control of the country's oil. Help the Iraqis choose a small group of leaders - "genuine leaders who aren't puppets of the United States."

And set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops - but leaving behind a force of about 30,000, "not to fight the insurgents but to back the government."

Of course, Karpat doesn't expect the Bush Administration to do any of that.

If we've learned anything else from this war, he says, it's that George Bush doesn't admit to mistakes and considers stubbornness a virtue.

Worse yet, "this is a man who truly believes that God is behind him and that in the end God will solve everything."

Karpat says there are two other points that need to be made.

The U.S. military has done a magnificent job under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. "Any other Army would have been defeated by now," he says.

And nobody is more distressed by the situation in Iraq than U.S. Muslims like himself who feel an intense loyalty to this country.

"People say, 'Who are you? A foreigner,'" Karpat says. "Well, I came here two generations ago, which means I'm more American than a lot of people here. And I can tell you I'm profoundly saddened by what's happened in Iraq."

In the eyes of the world, "the United States was a huge beacon of hope," he says. "Now that trust and prestige is gone."

Rob Zaleski is a 32-year veteran of the news business. His columns appear every Monday and Wednesday in the Communities section.

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