What troubles me about the situation in Iraq is not so much how it has worked out (though that also troubles me) but that it has turned out rather much as I expected – or worse than I expected.  What is even more troubling is that many very influential people expected the war to have entirely different results.  These individuals comprised high-ranking government officials, trained diplomats and military leaders, experts on the Middle East and global politics, and others who are, unquestionably, far smarter and better informed about such matters than I am.

This is not a case of 20-20 hindsight.  Back in April of 2003, I published on this website an article titled "Thoughts of War" and subtitled "A view from the Sidelines."  My thesis was that, uncomfortable as I was with being undecided, I was ill at ease taking either side in the debate that was then raging about the wisdom of the invasion of Iraq.  I wrote:  "What I can’t understand is how readily people can entertain black-and-white thinking on an issue that, if one considers even half the implications, has many shades of gray."  Privately, I was convinced that optimistic predictions of a short war, followed by a short occupation with a gradual improvement of conditions in Iraq, was unlikely.  Though I did believe that the military victory would be swift, I had profound misgivings about the aftermath, and these misgivings placed me squarely in the "undecided" camp regarding the whole operation.

In April of 2003, however, I read and heard only extreme views.  As I described them then:  "The hawks say, 'This is the only option, and once it's over, everything will be better.' The peace advocates say, 'This is the worst possible option, and, bad as it is now, once it's over, everything will be worse.'"  I also predicted that these dogmatic stands (which I said "ignore the complexity of this war and its implications") represent "positions from which few will be willing to stand down, no matter how the future shapes up."

I felt very much out of step.  When American troops marched into Baghdad and Iraqis tore down statues of Saddam, the hawks derisively told me that I was wrong to doubt their prophesy.  As turmoil, insurrection, terrorism, and death mounted, the peace advocates told me that I was right about the complexity of the implications but wrong to have been hesitant to take a firm stand against the war.

Whether I was right or wrong is irrelevant, however.  What's baffling, and very unnerving, is that I, a largely uninformed observer who was very much on the sidelines, came closer to the truth than whole cadres of "experts" did.  And most of my peers – some of whom are news junkies and are much more knowledgeable about politics, history, war, and such than I am – accused me of engaging in my curmudgeonly habit of looking on the negative side of everything.  Yet my misgivings did not come from that source (I wanted the situation to go well), and my predictions were not merely a lucky guess.  My viewpoint was based on a profound unwillingness to reduce a complex matter to simplistic black-and-white thinking.

Now, I'm reading a different story, expressing thoughts and feelings quite similar to those that I voiced thirty months ago.  We were not as prepared for the aftermath of the military action as we should have been.  We did not anticipate the complications that have arisen – from the high civilian and military casualties, to the problems with rebuilding Iraq, to the explosion of terrorism and insurrection in the country, to the continuous infighting among the country's religious and ethnic factions.  More and more Americans are coming to doubt whether the United States can accomplish its mission in Iraq, and some are beginning to say that it was a fool's mission from the outset.  Even the hawks are admitting that matters are more complex than they expected them to be, though, as I predicted, few are willing to stand down from their original convictions.

Some of the newly minted peace advocates, who are busily engaged in Monday-morning quarterbacking, are now crying that they couldn't know it would turn out like this.  They may be excused, in part, because the experts and the leadership (aided and abetted, I might add, by large numbers of the press corps) led them to believe in a simplistic solution to a complex situation.  However, they have only themselves to blame if they bought this idea.  When people buy into a rosy scenario because they want to believe it and refuse to accept facts suggesting possible complications that make this scenario far less rosy, they shouldn't be surprised that what they get is not what they expected.

There's a lesson here that extends beyond the war in Iraq, the lesson I tried to express in my first thoughts on this subject.  It is extremely dangerous in a complex world to want and expect – whether from ignorance, laziness, stubborness, or all three – simplistic solutions to complex problems.  It's bad enough when the people do that; it's disastrous when their elected leaders (and experts who should know better) also engage in such wishful thinking.