Was Saddam’s ouster a good thing? Not according to the Council on Foreign Relations’ Les Gelb, who writes:

Frankly, if anyone lost Iraq to Iran, it was the neocons. It was they who pressed to crush Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and when they did, they destroyed the only regional counterweight to Iran. Take a bow, neocons.

A few thoughts:

• Against the backdrop of the Arab Spring protests, it is quite disappointing that Gelb, like so many liberals and progressives, seems to still believe that American national security would be better served by relying on the preservation of Saddam’s rule. While Richard Haass, the current president of the Council on Foreign Relations, has called the Iraq war a “war of choice,” the reality is that the status quo was falling apart, leaving Bush with one of two choices: Unseat Saddam or let sanctions collapse and let Saddam reconstitute his programs.
• The very fact that Gelb is making the argument that Iraq is now lost to the Iranians acknowledges that Obama’s decision to withdraw completely is a very bad decision.
• Bush did sign the Strategic Framework Agreement, and it was a mistake for him to have the 2011 timeline in it. I suspect he did this as a matter of personal honor to give his successor a blank slate with which to start. This does not exculpate Bush, however.  Nevertheless, Obama’s team must have recognized once they came into office what it would be to create a vacuum; hence, they began negotiations on a formal Status of Forces Agreement.
• Obama and his team have no concept of how Iraqis negotiate. Time and time again, extreme positions are enunciated and deadlines pass. It is only then the serious negotiations begin.
• It is silly for Gelb and some of his fellow travelers to blame neoconservatives for filling the vacuum in Iraq. After all, from the very beginning, various conservatives and neoconservatives have been warning about the dangers Iran posed and would pose to Iraq. And yet, Gelb, the politicians he supported, and many working beneath him at CFR, did everything to naively embrace the Iranian position and bash Bush for his distrust of Tehran. It’s hard to bash Bush and his “neocon” supporters for “The Axis of Evil” and simultaneously accuse them of being too soft on Tehran.

The most depressing thing about Gelb’s article is it represents a slow motion train wreck, with no one willing to apply the brakes. Here’s something both neoconservatives and liberal realists should agree on: Create or enable a vacuum and bad forces will fill it. The policy prescription? Do not enable the vacuum.  The wrong policy to take? A 100 percent effort to write the first draft of history when there’s still time to rectify the mistake that even Gelb acknowledges.