Forgetting the question of whether Kon Pollack was wrong about the wisdom of invading Iraq (he was, and he made a lot of other people wrong too), if he'd been terrifically prescient about the likely consequences, outcomes, and trajectory, there'd still be a strong case for listening to him. The guy is well-versed on the region, and if he thought that ejecting Hussein was worth decades of occupation, thousands of lives, and trillions of dollars, he'd be worth hearing out, if only for an analysis of how the war would go. But I totally forgot that he said things like, “it is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars,” and “we should not exaggerate the danger of casualties among American troops. U.S. forces in Bosnia have not suffered a single casualty from hostile action because they have become so attentive and skillful at force protection.”
I remember that the war was sold on invisible WMDs -- which a lot of people genuinely believed in -- but I forget how pervasive folks telling us the invasion would be safe, easy, and cheap were. That's the really unforgivable sin. Lots of people, ranging from Paul Wolfowitz to Paul Wellstone, believed Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, and a far-from-completion nuclear program. The difference came in how you imagined the war would go, how difficult, and bloody, and expensive, and long, it would be. You could convince the American people, particularly after our illusory win in Afghanistan, that a short victory would be good all around. But no one would have signed up for this mess. And that's where we needed our analysts to interject a dose of reality, a grounded take on how hard this would be, not a heap best-case, wishful thinking. And they failed us.
