Between Iraq and a hard place.

• Author: Scott, Douglas
• Position: Letters

On the whole, Joshua Micah Marshall ("Bomb Saddam?" June) offers a valuable analysis of the debate over whether to invade Iraq. Nevertheless, he may be giving too much credit to the "ideologues [who] have turned out to be right."

First, Reagan is given the standard credit for winning the Cold War. Yet, three paragraphs later, Marshall states the crucial truth--that in the 1970s the Soviet Union was "already headed for collapse, and its downfall had more to do with its own terminal rot than anything America did." In short, Reagan's wild military spending (encouraged by the CIA's Team B, led by the first Bush) coupled with tax cuts was not merely useless but devastating for the American economy in general and for civilian infrastructure in particular.

Second, George H. W. Bush obeyed Colin Powell in the Gulf War and left Saddam in power. Score another for the ideologues. Yet Marshall quite properly devotes much of his article to showing how predictions of an easy stroll into Baghdad ate predominantly made by logic-chopping civilians who avoided military service. Why, then, are we so sure that that the ideologues were right at the time and Powell was...