As we approach the 20th anniversary of the fateful congressional vote authorizing the invasion of Iraq, many are questioning what would have happened had Congress refused to go along. There was widespread public opposition to going to war at the time. The Catholic Church and every mainline Protestant denomination came out against the war, as did virtually every major labor union and other left-of-center organization that took a stand. The vast majority of the U.S. Middle East scholars opposed an invasion, being aware of the likely disastrous consequences. The vast majority of the world\u2019s nations, including most of the United States\u2019s closest allies, were also in opposition to the war.<\/p>\n
Unlike the near-unanimous vote (save for Rep. Barbara Lee) the previous year authorizing military force in Afghanistan following the 9\/11 attacks, the Iraq war resolution was far more controversial. A sizable majority of Democrats in the House of Representatives voted against the resolution authorizing the invasion, which came to a vote on October 10, 2002. The Republicans then controlled the House, however, and it passed easily.<\/p>\n
This left the determination as to whether the United States would go to war up to the Democratic-controlled Senate the following day. To the astonishment of many, several leading Democratic senators crossed the aisle to support the war authorization, including Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Assistant Majority Leader Harry Reid and Foreign Relations Committee Chair Joe Biden, as well as such prominent senators as John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, John Edwards and Dianne Feinstein.<\/p>\n
All this was well-known at the time. Since then, however, a number of these Democrats, particularly those with presidential ambitions, have lied about their votes \u2014 and much of the mainstream media have allowed them to get away with it.<\/p>\n
The primary excuse they have subsequently put forward has been that the \u201cAuthorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution,\u201d as it was formally known, was not actually an authorization for use of military force against Iraq. Instead, these Democrats claim they did not actually support George W. Bush\u2019s decision to invade in March 2003 but simply wanted to provide the administration with leverage to pressure Iraq to allow a return of UN inspectors, which President Clinton had ordered removed in 1998 prior to a four-day bombing campaign, and Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had, quite predictably, not yet allowed to return.<\/p>\n
Despite wording in the congressional resolution providing Bush with an open-ended authority to invade, John Kerry claimed<\/a> in 2013 that he \u201copposed the president\u2019s decision to go into Iraq.\u201d While running for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton insisted<\/a> that she voted for the resolution simply because \u201cwe needed to put inspectors in, that was the underlying reason why I at least voted to give President Bush the authority,\u201d and that she did not want to \u201cwage a preemptive war.\u201d Similarly, during his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden insisted<\/a> he supported Bush\u2019s war resolution not because he actually wanted to invade Iraq, but because \u201che needed the vote to be able to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam Hussein was engaged in dealing with a nuclear program,\u201d and further claiming that, \u201cImmediately, the moment it started, I came out against the war at that moment.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n In reality, at the time of the vote on the war resolution, the Iraqi government had already agreed in principle to a return of the weapons inspectors and were negotiating with the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission on the details which were formally institutionalized a few weeks later. (Indeed, it would have likely been resolved earlier had the Bush administration not repeatedly postponed the UN Security Council resolution in the hopes of inserting language that would have allowed the United States to unilaterally interpret the level of compliance.) In addition, all three of these senators voted against the substitute amendment<\/a> by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, which would have also granted President Bush authority to use force, but only if Iraq defied subsequent UN demands regarding the inspections process. Instead, they voted for the Republican-sponsored resolution to give President Bush the authority to invade Iraq at the time and circumstances of his own choosing, regardless of whether inspectors returned.<\/p>\n