The 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq was observed this week. In light of this, The Chronicle spoke with Peter Feaver, professor of political science and public policy, who advised former President George W. Bush on the War as a member of the National Security Council. Feaver, director of both the Triangle Institute for Security Studies and the Program in American Grand Strategy, also served on the NSC under former President Bill Clinton. He is known for his expertise in civil-military relations, weapons of mass destruction and public opinion.
The Chronicle: What was your role in the Bush administration? What amount of influence did you have on policy?
Peter Feaver: I was the special adviser for strategic planning and institutional reform on the National Security Council staff from 2005 to 2007, so I joined well after the Iraq War decision was made. Invasion and much of the unraveling of the postWar period had already happened. However, since the War got much worse while I was there—2006, as you know, became a particularly difficult year for the War—I was part of a small group that reviewed the Iraq strategy and came up with options we presented to the president.
TC: What are the repercussions of the Iraq War that can still be felt 10 years later?
PF: The costs of the War have been terribly heavy— much higher than people thought or certainly much higher than the Bush administration expected. While Iraq is in a better position than it looked to be headed in 2006—the darkest days of the War— it is not as good as the administration thought it would when they launched the War 10 years ago. It’s probably not as not as good as it could have been, but that’s due to decisions made over the last four to five years. There’s been a significant erosion of progress in the last couple of years due in part to decisions that the Obama administration has made and has unraveled some of the gains by which we made in 2007 and 2008.
Whatever we think it is, the assessment made today is likely to be different 10 years from now, and maybe 20 years from now, a third different assessment. That’s what happens as you look back at a War from greater distance than the closing times of it. The pros and cons of it take on different shape.
For example, many of the problems that arose in Iraq were blamed on the administration who invaded Iraq. So administering action produced these bad outcomes in Iraq. But what we are seeing in Syria is the same set of bad outcomes produced by a rampant inaction. The Obama administration has been very careful to avoid intervening in Syria, and yet Syria’s situation is spiraling down and looks to be having worse outcomes, perhaps, than the Iraq War—worse for the Syrian people, that is. Of course, the U.S. plight won’t be as high, but the consequences for the region and the strategic challenges the U.S. will have to manage will be just as high.
TC: What was the most significant thing you did while working for President Bush? What decisions were especially important?
PF: When I got there in 2005, we thought—the administration thought—that the War had turned in our favor. The invasion went well, and things unraveled after that in 2003, 2004. By 2005, we thought that we finally had a strategy that was working, and we were making progress. But we were having difficulty communicating that to the American people. But we thought we had the right strategy. We had a communication problem, not a strategy problem. That’s what we thought in 2005.
One of the earlier projects I got involved in was helping the administration explain that Iraq has more effects to the American people and that led to a series of white papers, a series of speeches in 2005 while things were indeed improving.
In 2006 the strategy unraveled—the situation in Iraq unraveled—and we discovered we had not a communications problem but a strategy problem. We had the wrong strategy. I shifted from working on the Iraq communications angle to the Iraqi strategy angle. The fall of 2006 had dramatic change to Iraq strategy. That was one of the more consequential decisions in the Iraq War.
TC: How were universities and scholars involved Iraq War?
PF: The War didn’t captivate campuses the way the Vietnam War did. Protestors in the Vietnam War really gripped university campuses, and that did not happen in the Iraq War. Public support gradually eroded, but it didn’t turn into protests the way it did in Vietnam.
TC: Why wasn’t the Iraq War a significant issue at universities? What role have they played instead?
PF: There wasn’t a draft. The average student didn’t feel like they were headed to Iraq. That’s the most obvious explanation.
The role for universities should be a healthy wealth of social ideas. There are many, many myths about Iraq War that the average person or, in fact, the average student believes because during the War they only lift the one side of the news facts— in a way creating cartoon image of the War. The university is in the business of promoting a more healthy marketplace of ideas.
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