Have you ever made a universal and eternal fool of yourself? The Internet offers wonderful opportunities to immortalize intellectual folly. My recent chastening experience as a pro-war blogger has made me realize that I am not cut out to offer strategic advice to statesmen. The worrying thing is that this advice applies equally to the current folk who hold those positions.

Before I join the orgy of recriminations at the Bush administration for leading us into the Iraqi flytrap, I must first engage in a bit of self-flagellation. I have been well and truly conned, by my dumb self and devious others, about the second Gulf War’s economy of means and attainability of ends. The war was built on a series of falsehoods, propagated by neocon-artists and swallowed by Suckers R Us.

The best lies are laced with a tincture of truth, so I must concede that the war did generate some bright spots. Hussein & Sons were run out of power—almost. It appears that Saddam is still pulling the strings somewhere around the Sunni Triangle. The cities of Basra and Baghdad are enjoying municipal democracy—sort of. The U.S. is not happy with the tendency of Iraqis to elect fundamentalist clerics and is instead handpicking administrators. Iraqi oil fields are being developed for Iraqi civic benefit—but not quite yet. A Washington Post headline gloomily proclaimed, “Iraq Is Ill-Equipped to Exploit Huge Oil Reserves.”

Figuring out a well-intentioned plan is one thing. Making it work is another, and judged by this standard, the invasion and occupation of Iraq can now be considered a failure. Witness Jack Straw, Britain’s foreign secretary whose pull-no-punches report to Tony Blair concluded: we are at risk of strategic failure in Iraq.

This late-breaking wisdom is a good sign, but I fear the Owl of Minerva has already had its wings clipped.

It is now clear that, far from promoting U.S. strategic objectives, the Bush administration has actually gone backwards on stated war aims.

There was no Islamist problem in Iraq before, but there is one now. Rather than deterring fundamentalist terrorism, occupying another Holy Land has effectively launched a U.S.-sponsored recruiting drive for Islamic terrorists. Elements of the terrorist organization Ansar al-Islam have moved into Baghdad, Islamic jihadists were infiltrating Iraq from Syria, and some of these folks were probably behind the various car bombings that have enlivened urban Iraq over the past few months.

There were no WMD found in Iraq, but WMD proliferation continues apace at the other end of the evil axis. Pyongyang’s state-run newspaper pointed out the obvious truth, “The Iraqi war proved that disarmament leads to a war.” America’s postwar woes have strengthened North Korea’s bargaining position to the extent that we now have to enlist our old adversary, the People’s Republic of China, in an attempt to keep the Axis of Evil from spinning off a wheel.

The postwar period has also failed to create a new “dynamic of peace” in the Middle East, although it has added some exciting new forms of civil instability. Palestinians have not been impressed with U.S.-backed regime changes. The attempt to banish Arafat, their long-time leader, has made them quite cross. They have started their suicide bombings again, and the chief navigator for the road map to peace has quit in disgust.

The U.S. also a made a few … process errors in its preamble to the war. It’s hard to fight international terrorism when one treats allies with contempt by launching a pre-emptive war, which sets a bad military precedent; lying about WMD, which destroys public trust in a democracy; sidestepping the UN Security Council, which mocks international law; and trashing Old European allies, which disables security alliances. All these things may turn around, or somehow magically fix themselves, although I doubt it.

What cannot be denied about this war is its astronomical cost. I should have known better. I have practiced as an economist, and economists like Professors William Nordhaus and John Quiggin raised the cost alarm before the war. Their mid-range estimate was that the Iraq military and civil enterprise would cost about $100 billion, with a likely duration of five years. But I cheerfully ignored their dire warnings about the recklessness of buying into a dilapidated piece of political real estate with eyes wide shut.

The penny dropped when the bills started to flow in. Iraq has turned from a renovator’s dream into a money pit. The New York Times reports that the total costs of the war, occupation, and reconstruction are likely to be nearly $500 billion. This “news” gave me a bad case of sticker-shock and awe, at both the magnitude of the war’s expense and my folly for supporting it. The author, Donald Hepburn, an adviser to the Middle East Policy Council, takes a certain amount of sadistic relish in itemizing the costly entries. First there was the cost of the war, “the cost of preparation, aid to noncombatant allies, and the invasion itself amounted to $45 billion.” Then there is the occupation, “Assuming a five-year occupation, that’s some $300 billion.” Then finally, there is the cost of reconstruction, “the total bill is likely to be at least $200 billion over a decade.” A few hundred billion here, a few hundred billion there, and soon we are talking real money.

I can’t say I was not warned. My blog-gurus on both the Left and the Right opposed the war and doubted the sums and schemes of the neocon planners. In the future I will be more cautious before attempting to teach them how to suck intellectual eggs.

I would also like to issue a series of formal apologies to all those adversely affected by my ignorant and arrogant blogs, nagging comments, and unsolicited e-mails. They include my social-democratic alter ego, for ignoring his repeated warnings never to trust crypto- Trotskyists; sundry bloggers, for my excruciatingly long-winded and torturous comments; my few remaining political friends, who have tolerated my behavior with saintly patience; the Internet, for wasting valuable cyberspace. Finally, I owe an apology to the Iraqi people for any inconvenience caused by my urging on of the recent hail of precision-guided, high-explosive ordnance targeted at their land.

There remains the mystery: why did I do it? If I am any guide, I would say that the War Party acted from a mixture of motives and reasons. First, hazy personal psychology: my vindictiveness was directed at a convenient scapegoat for 9/11 and assorted unmoved Leftists. Second, lazy professional pathology: a failure to exercise due diligence in the accounting for likely costs. Third, crazy political ideology: the utopian hope that wholesale violence in the Middle East would somehow make Arabic people want to copy our way of life and allow the United States triumphantly to make the world over.

Whatever the cause, it remains the case that this writer has considerable empathy with another punch-drunk pugilist who asked for a fight and got what he deserved:

I have squandered my resistance,

For a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises.

All lies and jest.

Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. 
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Jack Strocchi is a former warblogger who contributes to http://catallaxyfiles. blogspot.com.