May 1, 2003 and After: Neoconservative Foreign Policy Adviser Says ‘Relax, Celebrate Victory,’ Prepare for Further Invasions

Many neoconservatives join President Bush in celebrating “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq (see May 1, 2003). Foreign affairs adviser Richard Perle, in a USA Today article entitled “Relax, Celebrate Victory,” calls it “the most important military victory since World War II,” and writes: “This was a war worth fighting.… It ended quickly with few civilian casualties and with little damage to Iraq’s cities, towns, or infrastructure (see Early April 2003-April 9, 2003, April 9, 2003, April 13, 2003, May 20, 2003, and October 10, 2004). It ended without the Arab world rising up against us, as the war’s critics feared, without the quagmire they predicted (see April 28, 2003, June 9-13, 2003, and October 19, 2003, among others), without the heavy losses in house-to-house fighting they warned us to expect” (see July 3, 2007, January 10, 2007 and March 24, 2008). While advising readers to “relax and celebrate,” he also makes his case to invade other countries: “The idea that our victory over Saddam will drive other dictators to develop chemical and biological weapons misses the key point: They are already doing so. That’s why we may someday need to preempt rather than wait until we are attacked. Iran, Syria, North Korea, Libya, these and other nations are relentless in their pursuit of terror weapons. Does anyone seriously argue that they would abandon their programs if we had left Saddam in power? It is a little like arguing that we should not subdue knife-wielding criminals because, if we do, other criminals will go out and get guns. Moreover, this argument, deployed by those who will not take victory for an answer, confuses cause and effect: Does any peaceful state that neither harbors terrorists nor seeks weapons of mass destruction fear that we will launch a preemptive strike against it? Who are they? Why would they?” [USA Today, 5/1/2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 305]