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Notes -
John Psmith reviewed "Leap of Faith," about the institutional failures or collective "non-decision" leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The review begins:
By his description, everybody involved wanted to invade Iraq, but the dynamic that resulted in an invasion seemed to be that of the Abilene Paradox. He links it to CW issues, with discussion of "moralism" in American foreign policy and due to it being a major issue about which American government went against the overwhelming preference of the populace, and Trump being an outlier critic of the war being a big part of his early appeal. A handful of thoughts:
Coincidentally, I just listened to a long interview with an early American casualty in the "First Battle of Fallujah" - it's worth a listen
It's hard to square the Powell Doctrine with the description of Powell, which raises a lot of questions
I'm skeptical of the accuracy and/or probative value of the psychoanalyses of the people involved, more generally, and it's unclear if it's Psmith's own interpretation or him relaying that of the original author
One point raised is that the perceived easy success in Afghanistan was a major factor, which makes me wonder if military campaigns should be deliberately made to seem more difficult than they are
I don't remember any defenses of the war to contrast against Trump
While one can debate the merits of NATO Expansion, which Psmith criticizes at the end, I don't remember anyone advocating it on moralistic grounds (or the basis of specific alleged strategic threats) or think it's a good parallel, in general (you could say that it's an issue with a disconnect between government policy and the preferences of populace, but the disconnect would be in the general vein of the proverbial man on the street not following that area of foreign policy)
Iraq didn't stay a popular war for very long, but was it a genuinely unpopular invasion at the time? My impression is that when everyone thought the Iraqis would take to democracy easily once their evil tyrant(and that is what Saddam was) was replaced it was a generally-approved of war domestically, and it only became super unpopular when it became clear that the Iraqis would prefer armed nuts to democracy.
That discussion of Bush also reminds me a lot of Trump. He's clearly leading on vibes, not ideology or policy briefs. They're different vibes but they're vibes nonetheless.
The war was always unpopular with the left, though at the time even anti-war activists would do a lot of throat clearing about how evil Saddam was. It was very popular with the right, who mostly, as you say, thought removing Saddam would turn Iraqis into democracy-lovers. (Remember all those photos of Iraqis proudly showing off their purple fingers?)
To this very day my boomer Dad recalls those photos of Iraqi women casting votes. That was powerful enough to him to support the war.
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The war was always unpopular with the anti-establishment left, who have always been more visible than they deserve given their actual level of public support. It was also unpopular with the anti-establishment right, although I don't know how many people noticed given that the anti-establishment right didn't have a megaphone at the time.
The pro-establishment left mostly supported the war, although my read at the time was I was not the only person with pro-establishment left sympathies who only did so because I trusted Blair to tell the truth about WMD etc. in a way that I didn't trust the Bush administration. Pro-establishment left elites like Senate Democrats or NYT access journalists had access to the same stovepiped intelligence that the Bush administration did, and almost entirely supported the war. That Obama was a notable exception is why he was a strong Presidential candidate in 2008.
The war was net-unpopular by the 2004 election (which is surprisingly close given the good economy) at which point it had become clear that the WMD were at best a small legacy stockpile that had never been a real threat to anything except an invading army and that the administration had got itself into a quagmire by failing to plan for the aftermath of victory. It didn't become shockingly unpopular until about 2006 when it became clear that the US had failed to find anyone capable of governing Iraq except Iranian proxies or Salafi jihadis.
The American Conservative is the big one that I remember, and their opposition to the Iraq War is how I remember finding them. But they were certainly a tiny percentage of the right. There was also libertarian opposition at Reason and Raimondo's antiwar dot com, but again pretty small audiences in the grand scheme of things.
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I do remember all those photos; I remember lots of democrats awful proud of Iraqi elections even if they didn't like Bush. The war was well-defended on 'liberal' grounds and maybe I'm just confusing liberal and leftist here but I recall plenty of definitely-not-Bush voters awfully supportive of the war.
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