7th Anniversary of Iraq War Passes, But Myths Endure

Seven years ago The New York Times ran a prominent photo
from a meeting of past Pentagon chiefs who had gathered at the White
House for a discussion about 10 days into our invasion of Iraq. Victory
still seemed assured but it was also becoming clear that we were not
being greeted as liberators in most areas. The picture showed current
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with a past master,
Robert McNamara.

That day I supplied what I imagined McNamara whispering: "What part
of 'Vietnam' don't you understand?"

The seventh anniversary of the start of the Iraq War dawned with very
little notice in the media, despite the huge (and ongoing) costs of the
war, not the least of which are the nearly 4,400 dead US military
personnel and at least 100,000 deceased Iraqi civilians. What we have
heard from commentators, again, this year is that the United States went
to war with the overwhelming support of the public and the press.
Actually, this is a myth.

It's true that polls showed that Americans believed Saddam had WMD --
and no wonder, given the deceitful propaganda from the Bush
administration -- and that they backed an invasion if it came to that.
But most surveys also showed a clear split between those who wanted to
go to war soon, and those who wanted to wait for more diplomacy or to
give the United Nations inspectors more time to work (remember, they had
found nothing and then were withdrawn by the president).

Another myth: the nation's newspapers on their editorial pages backed
the invasion strongly.

You may be surprised to learn that in their final pre-attack
editorials, at least one-third of the top newspapers in this country
came out against President Bush taking us to war at that time. Many of
the papers may have fumbled the WMD coverage, and only timidly raised
questions about the need for war, but when push came to shove seven
years ago they wanted to wait longer to move against Saddam, or not move
at all.

"For apparently the first time in modern history, the US government
seems poised to go to war not only lacking the support of many of its
key allies abroad but also without the enthusiastic backing of the
majority of major newspapers at home," Ari Berman and I wrote at Editor
& Publisher on March 19, 2003. Berman had just completed his
fifth and final prewar survey of the top fifty newspapers' editorial
positions.

I had certainly been critical of overall press coverage of the war --
and the editorial writers and pundits largely backed the adventure for
years -- but at least there was some sense of protest on the eve of the
invasion.

Following Bush's forty-eight-hour ultimatum to Saddam Hussein on
March 17, newspapers took their last opportunity to sound off before the
war started. Of the forty-four papers publishing editorials about the
war, roughly one-third reiterated strong support for the White House,
one-third repeated their abiding opposition to it and the rest--with
further debate now useless--took a more philosophical approach.

But in the end, the majority agreed that the Bush administration had
badly mishandled the crisis. Most papers sharply criticized Washington's
diplomatic efforts, putting the nation on the eve of a pre-emptive war
without UN Security Council support--and expressed fears for the future
despite an inevitable victory.

Once-equivocal editorial pages got straight to the point. "This war
crowns a period of terrible diplomatic failure," the New York Times
argued, "Washington's worst in at least a generation. The Bush
administration now presides over unprecedented American might. What it
risks squandering is not Americans' power, but an essential part of our
glory."

Other papers were even more blunt. The Sun of Baltimore,
consistently one of the most passionate dissenters on the war, began
their editorial with the sentence, "This war is wrong. It is wrong as a
matter of principle, but, more importantly, it is wrong as a matter of
practical policy."

USA Today asked Bush to finally disclose risks, costs and
democratic government estimates for Iraq, while the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch wondered "what 'the peaceful entry' of 280,000 troops
would look like." The Arizona Republic in Phoenix said that
Bush and his "coalition of the willing," with prodding by the French,
"have left the United Nations in tatters."

The Houston Chronicle said it remained "unconvinced" that
attack was preferable to containment, and the Orange County Register
of Santa Ana, California, declared it was "unpersuaded" that the threat
posed by the "vile" Hussein justified military action now. The San Jose
(California) Mercury News wrote, "War might have been avoided,
had the administration been sincere about averting it."

Even a hawkish paper expressed criticism. "The war will be conducted
with less support than the cause should have commanded," the Washington
Post, in backing the attack, wrote. "The Bush administration has
raised the risks through its insistence on an accelerated timetable, its
exaggerated rhetoric and its insensitive diplomacy; it has alienated
allies and multiplied the number of protestors in foreign capitals."

There was always in the run-up a group of roughly a dozen papers that
strongly supported regime change as the only acceptable vehicle toward
Iraq's disarmament. They included the Wall Street Journal, New York
Post, New York Daily News, Chicago Sun-Times, and Boston Herald.
They continued their praise of the president this week and celebrated
the fact that "the regime of Saddam Hussein is doomed," as the Kansas
City (Missouri) Star put it.

The majority of papers, however, remained deeply troubled by the
position the United States found itself in. Even large papers such as
the Los Angeles Times , the Oregonian in Portland, and
Newsday of Melville, New York, which have long advocated (or
at least accepted) using force to disarm Hussein, criticized their
president as he prepared to send young men and women into battle.

"The road to imminent war has been a bumpy one, clumsily traveled by
the Bush administration," the Buffalo News wrote. "The global
coalition against terror forged after the atrocities of 9/11 is
virtually shattered. The explanation as to why Iraq presents an imminent
threat requiring immediate action has not been clear and compelling."

Many papers expressed hopes that a better world could prevail. "So
the United States apparently will go to war with few allies and in the
face of great international opposition," the said. "This is an
uncharted path...to an uncertain destination. We desperately hope to be
wrong in our trepidation about the consequences here and abroad."