Was the War Worth It?

(3 of 5)

BERNARD-HENRI LEVY No. Because it was the wrong target: Iran and Pakistan are infinitely more threatening. Because it was the wrong approach: the neoconservatives, who put no stock in government policy at home and thus can't do so abroad, produced no plans for democratic nation building. And, above all, because this war, which aimed to reduce the number and strength of terrorists, has instead increased them. What was needed was to break the infernal cycle of the "clash of civilizations," à la Sam Huntington and Osama bin Laden. Instead, the war breathed new life into it. In short, rarely have the famous words of Blaise Pascal rung more true: "He who would act the angel becomes the beast." What begins as a noble moral intention to bring down a tyrant becomes a political disaster and a gigantic step backward in the long, necessary war against fascislamism. A field of ruins!

> French philosopher Lévy is author of the recently published American Vertigo

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER Is the cause of freeing a people and pushing for progressive political and economic change in the most dangerous region in the world worth fighting and dying for? Undoubtedly. But has this war--with its disdain for allies and institutions, its willful blindness to any scenario other than easy victory and immediate democracy, and its planners' irresponsibility so deep as to be immoral in failing to protect the heritage, infrastructure and lives of a people who never asked for war--been worth it? Squandering lives and vast sums of money through a combination of arrogance and negligence can never be worth it. And if the Administration had been willing to make a full and honest assessment of the true costs and the uncertainty of the benefits before invading Iraq, I doubt that a majority of the American people would have supported the war.

> Slaughter is the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University

LAWRENCE B. WILKERSON I'm principally a strategist, and from that perspective the war has been a disaster. First, the foremost winner has been Iran: it rid itself of its greatest threat, Saddam and his military, without firing a shot; won the Dec. 15 Iraq elections; owns the south, particularly Basra; and has felt the freedom to elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, in turn, has felt the freedom to reclaim leadership of radical Islam, leadership Osama bin Laden claimed on 9/11. Second, the foremost loser--after Iraq itself--has been Israel, whose leaders must now fear more than ever the new strategic maneuver room afforded Iran by the U.S.'s ineptitude. Third, the general war against global terrorists has been affected greatly by the failure in Iraq. Recruiting among Muslim ranks has been aided significantly, while America has squandered the upper hand in the world of ideas, which is the real battlefield of this conflict.

> U.S. Army Colonel Wilkerson, now retired, was chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell