Ahmed Chalabi, 1944-2015

November 3, 2015 6:36 AM

Ahmed Chalabi, one of the key architects of the Iraq War, has died.

Chalabi, a mathematician and failed banker, led the Iraqi National Congress, a U.S.-funded party that first tried to bring together opposition to Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party in Iraq, but then mostly agitated in the U.S. to overthrow Hussein militarily. Chalabi parlayed his influence with the Bush administration into the presidency of the Iraqi Governing Council, and later served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Oil from May 2005 to May 2006. Chalabi was even considered a potential candidate for Prime Minister last year despite the INC having only one seat in Parliament.

posted by Etrigan (58 comments total)

Rarely can you directly say one man caused a definable level of misery and death and chaos. This is one such man.
posted by nevercalm at 6:38 AM on November 3, 2015 [36 favorites]

It would be easy for this American to say nasty things about Chalabi, but really, there's no need. Whatever wrongs or rights he did in connection to the Iraq War are done with. The main fault, as always, lies with the leaders of America at that time, aka the Bush administration for their reckless foolhardniess in allowing their fellow citizens and soldiers to be drawn in into a war that cost thousands of lives, bankrupted America and ceded the moral high ground.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:41 AM on November 3, 2015 [26 favorites]

The Bush administration would have invaded anyway, without the likes of Blair and Chalabi helping to flesh out the justification, but fuck those guys anyway.
posted by Artw at 6:43 AM on November 3, 2015 [6 favorites]

‘A page of history has turned’: Ahmad Chalabi, Iraqi nationalist and friend of Iran
posted by Artw at 6:50 AM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

(I have a suspicion that's all of the nicest things anyone is going to say about his passing. His old neocon buds are undoubtedly going to be pretty tight lipped.)
posted by Artw at 6:53 AM on November 3, 2015

NPR had a decent piece on him this morning (currently audio-only, transcript to come later today), noting that he was unrepentant on statements regarding WMDs, and that the ousting of Hussein was a great good on its own. The woman who spoke on Chalabi also noted that his heavy support of anti-Baathist policies (that backfired in Iraq) were largely seen as part of the backlash by the Shia majority against the Sunni minority who had held power under Hussein.

Not a lot of tears.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:17 AM on November 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

The main fault, as always, lies with the leaders of America at that time, aka the Bush administration

It could be argued that you're lower down the human chain of wretchedness if you choose to be an obvious CIA asset, traitor and quisling, rather than a neocon warmonger.
posted by colie at 7:20 AM on November 3, 2015

and ceded the moral high ground

At best before the Iraq War the USA had a moral molehill.
posted by Talez at 7:40 AM on November 3, 2015 [4 favorites]

Chalabi makes me think of a couple of lines in the musical Evita:

For distance lends enchantment, and that is why
All exiles are distinguished, more important, they're not dead

Chalabi was a con man and would-be Quisling whose special talent was wooing the media, which was a big help when it came to selling a disastrous, murderous war. It's very clear in these obituaries that the charm had some lasting power to it. The closest thing to a saving grace is that he never actually came to power.

The whole "a page in history has turned" shit is false. The world is better off without Ahmed Chalabi.
posted by graymouser at 7:53 AM on November 3, 2015 [9 favorites]

The whole "a page in history has turned" shit is false. The world is better off without Ahmed Chalabi.

I suspect the Smyth/Mallat view of him is a bit of a minority one.
posted by Artw at 8:03 AM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm sure the line is already forming to piss on his grave.

But, yeah,even without him Bush would have gone to war anyway. Still, fuck him.
posted by sotonohito at 8:27 AM on November 3, 2015 [4 favorites]

It could be argued that you're lower down the human chain of wretchedness if you choose to be an obvious CIA asset, traitor and quisling, rather than a neocon warmonger.

More likely it's just a question of opportunity, not quantity of wretched.

The world is better off without Ahmed Chalabi.

I'm not sure the world is any different. These people whose awful is in the past when they die strike me as an interesting case. They've stunk up the room but now they're just an old husk reminding you of the stench. A dried-up old turd that makes you wrinkle your nose when you happen to see it again but not actively causing unpleasantness except as a reminder. It's certainly no sad occasion when they disappear forever, but at least they're not still out there sucking like Kissinger.
posted by phearlez at 8:49 AM on November 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

Weird conspiracy-theory-fodder fact: Chalabi was a child prodigy and enrolled at MIT at age 16, and got a PhD in math from Chicago at age 25. While studying in the US he worked closely with many of the people who would go on to start the field of modern cryptography, like Whitfield Diffie and Peter Landrock. It's not hard to imagine that some of the other cryptographers he worked with became very influential within the US intelligence community and helped give his opinions vastly outsized weight leading up to the Iraq war (although there's little direct evidence for that).
posted by miyabo at 8:52 AM on November 3, 2015 [4 favorites]

Boring the-way-the-world-actually-operates fact: You can work intensively on math with someone and completely disagree with and oppose their political views and opinions.
posted by benito.strauss at 8:56 AM on November 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

I suspect lying about Iraq having WMDs when US media and politicians desperately wanted to hear Iraq had WMDs had more to do with his influence than anything else - A lucky conman finding the perfect mark.
posted by Artw at 9:00 AM on November 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

..... × 10⁵
posted by swift at 9:01 AM on November 3, 2015 [6 favorites]

At the very least he was a really, really, really smart con man.
posted by miyabo at 9:01 AM on November 3, 2015

I suspect lying about Iraq having WMDs when US media and politicians desperately wanted to hear Iraq had WMDs had more to do with his influence than anything else - A lucky conman finding the perfect mark.
Artw

Exactly. He didn't trick the Bush administration into war, he was in a convenient spot to be able to tell them what they wanted to hear.

At the very least he was a really, really, really smart con man.
miyabo

I wouldn't call him a con man, because as above he didn't con anyone. He was a useful tool for people looking for justifications for actions they were already going to take. "Opportunist" might be a better term. He saw which way the winds were blowing and used that to his advantage.
posted by Sangermaine at 9:06 AM on November 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

The world is better off without Ahmed Chalabi.

I'm not sure the world is any different.

Have to agree with phearlez. It's not like the guy was working to gin up another war in Peru or something. We avoided none of his evil by having him die now. He'd done all his damage. The world would have been better off without him in 1999. We just didn't know it then. When do you ever?

Well, except with Donald Trump. But its not like his brown shirts really need specifically him to channel their monstrous urges. If someone from the future suddenly pops up to kill Trump, they'll just find someone else to lead them.
posted by Naberius at 9:21 AM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

pssh...Grima Wormtongue. Sauron Cheney lives.
posted by j_curiouser at 9:25 AM on November 3, 2015

Good riddance.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:25 AM on November 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

Chalabi may not be first in line when the Gates of Hell come open, but I'm pretty sure he'll be ushered in by a demon at each elbow.

I agree, sadly, that we are not better off for his death--too late, the misery he had an active part in creating is in place, can't fix it now.
posted by mule98J at 9:51 AM on November 3, 2015

.
posted by FallowKing at 10:04 AM on November 3, 2015

What's the opposite of a "."? Just nothing?

Tens of thousands of broken lives and a ruined country are his memorial - it's a shame his heart didn't give out 20 years ago.
posted by ryanshepard at 10:08 AM on November 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

He was the Butler Of Misery opening the door to letting us trammel their country.
posted by rhizome at 10:18 AM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

It would have happened with or without him. He was an opportunist who got the most he could in return for being the Bush administration's excuse for war, not a master manipulator.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:47 AM on November 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

What's the opposite of a "."? Just nothing?

How about...

!

or, maybe...

*
aka "asshole"
posted by Thorzdad at 11:05 AM on November 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

The main fault, as always, lies with the leaders of America at that time

The USA is a democratic state where a lot of people are living very comfortable lives built on the brutal subjugation of an entire world.
posted by uffda at 12:18 PM on November 3, 2015

What's the opposite of a "."? Just nothing?

Passing on without comment or remembrance, i would think. We should celebrate the good, but extinguish the legacy of the liars and cheats, in my view.
posted by bonehead at 12:52 PM on November 3, 2015

What's the opposite of a "."? Just nothing?

There may come a day I will dance on your grave
If unable to dance, I will crawl across it
Unable to dance, I'll still crawl.

posted by mikelieman at 1:11 PM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

As a friend observed on the death of Margaret Thatcher, unless they actually build his grave in the shape of a urinal, they may find they have a serious drainage problem.
posted by Hogshead at 1:44 PM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Too bad he couldn't have died at the wheel with Henry Kissinger in the passenger seat.
posted by tommasz at 1:47 PM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

If not for the man named Ahmad Chalabi, the United States probably would not have invaded Iraq in 2003.
posted by rhizome at 2:23 PM on November 3, 2015

The buzzfeed link is utter BS, there is plenty documentation that the Bush administration was looking for excuses to invade Iraq before 9/11.

Chalabi was a crook, and I can't mourn him. He contributed to the lies and deceits which led to our current situation. But it is interesting to learn more about him as a person.
posted by mumimor at 4:07 PM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

“Chalabi was scamming the U.S. because the U.S. wanted to be scammed.”
posted by rhizome at 4:23 PM on November 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

🙏
posted by clavdivs at 4:37 PM on November 3, 2015

Wake me up when the rancid oil in Dick Cheney's heart finally congeals into a solid mass.
posted by double block and bleed at 5:17 PM on November 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wake me up when the rancid oil in Dick Cheney's heart finally congeals into a solid mass.

They solved that problem on the new model heart implant.
posted by T.D. Strange at 6:53 PM on November 3, 2015

Mathematician and failed banker? That should have been a warning sign right there.
posted by PHINC at 9:45 PM on November 3, 2015

The US doesn't really "do" warning signs.
posted by rhizome at 1:06 AM on November 4, 2015

Ian Masters, who almost certainly has the best public affairs show on radio (it's really too bad he's shackled to woo-filled Pacifica) had a terrific interview today with Robert Baer about Chalabi.
posted by persona au gratin at 1:30 AM on November 4, 2015

Good riddance Chalabi. He'll spend eternity convincing hell to invade earth.
posted by benzenedream at 3:36 AM on November 4, 2015

FAIR: Some use Chalabi's death to lay blame for Iraq War at his feet

The most lofty of all these revisionist readings comes from veteran journalist Aram Roston of BuzzFeed, author of The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi, who begins his obituary with an exceedingly dubious counterfactual:

Ahmad Chalabi, the Man Who Gave Us ISIS

If not for the man named Ahmad Chalabi, the United States probably would not have invaded Iraq in 2003. If not for the Iraq War, as a senior CIA official flatly told BuzzFeed News earlier this year, there would be no ISIS.

So not only is Chalabi responsible for the crime of the Iraq War, but also, albeit indirectly and on the word of an anonymous CIA official, for ISIS? A generous reading here is that because Roston wrote a book on Chalabi, he has an incentive to overplay his significance, but this claim is an extraordinary one. The assumption that the Bush administration—populated by PNAC alums who had been calling for the removal of Saddam since 1998—would not have been able to find some other pretext or marshal the political will without Chalabi is dubious to say the least.

posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:39 AM on November 4, 2015

So not only is Chalabi responsible for the crime of the Iraq War, but also, albeit indirectly and on the word of an anonymous CIA official, for ISIS?

If you lay any blame for the Iraq War on an individual, that person also gets a portion of the blame for ISIS. The latter doesn't exist without the former.

(but Paul Bremer gets more of the blame for ISIS than anyone else)
posted by Etrigan at 9:50 AM on November 4, 2015 [2 favorites]

At a certain point I just throw them into a bucket of "they all suck."

Iraq is such a folly of princes.
posted by rhizome at 10:49 AM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you lay any blame for the Iraq War on an individual, that person also gets a portion of the blame for ISIS. The latter doesn't exist without the former.

Yeah. Blaming the Iraq War, and therefore ISIS, solely on Chalabi is dumb.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 10:53 AM on November 4, 2015

There's no universe in which he doesn't get some blame for ISIS. Cheney, Rumsfeld et al all get more.

Oh, and poor stupid Bush, who was there I guess.
posted by Artw at 10:59 AM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think there's a difference between someone saying that, if not for Chalabi, the Iraq War wouldn't have happened and "blaming the Iraq War... solely on Chalabi."

(Personally, I lean more toward "it probably would have happened without Chalabi in particular, but there would have been some Iraqi exile putting a face on it to gain power in the post-Hussein Iraq.")
posted by Etrigan at 11:02 AM on November 4, 2015

Not that the difference between Chalabi and a Curveball would have been insignificant, Chalabi got a lot of press about his role and fortunes. If he hadn't been around to be the butler who let us into the house, it might have been some surly teenager, or a gangster who only threw the keys to the kingdom out their window at us while they drove past the Pentagon.
posted by rhizome at 11:07 AM on November 4, 2015

I think there's a difference between someone saying that, if not for Chalabi, the Iraq War wouldn't have happened and "blaming the Iraq War... solely on Chalabi."

(Personally, I lean more toward "it probably would have happened without Chalabi in particular, but there would have been some Iraqi exile putting a face on it to gain power in the post-Hussein Iraq.")

So we agree that "If not for the man named Ahmad Chalabi, the United States probably would not have invaded Iraq in 2003" is an inflated claim, as the article says.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:08 AM on November 4, 2015

So we agree that "If not for the man named Ahmad Chalabi, the United States probably would not have invaded Iraq in 2003" is an inflated claim, as the article says.

Yes, I think that goes a bit too far. But the rest of the part you quoted is still arguable.

And the fact that Chalabi wasn't the only person who could possibly have served the role he did doesn't mean that he doesn't get some portion of the blame. It's easy to argue that some other Republican administration would have invaded Iraq as well; that doesn't mean that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld don't get blamed for it either.
posted by Etrigan at 11:15 AM on November 4, 2015

Plenty of room in imaginary infernal afterlife for all!
posted by Artw at 11:20 AM on November 4, 2015

Yes, I think that goes a bit too far. But the rest of the part you quoted is still arguable.

And the fact that Chalabi wasn't the only person who could possibly have served the role he did doesn't mean that he doesn't get some portion of the blame. It's easy to argue that some other Republican administration would have invaded Iraq as well; that doesn't mean that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld don't get blamed for it either.

In retrospect, I chose my pull quote poorly. The article as a whole doesn't try to excuse Chalabi from his due share of guilt for the invasion of Iraq, but only points out that some outlets lay too much of the blame for it on him. This is clear if you read it. I would have quoted the beginning, which calls him a discredited huckster, but it all runs together in a way that made it difficult to excerpt.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:24 AM on November 4, 2015

These kinds of counterfactuals make it pretty impossible to come to a conclusion about "probably yes" and "probably no." Who knows how much an effect he had on the PR push for the war? Who knows what other butlers Wolfowitz had waiting in the wings?
posted by rhizome at 11:26 AM on November 4, 2015

I don't think anyone wants to let him off the hook for his culpability. The offensive thing is talking about it as if he was the tree we drove into, and if there'd been just that wee little swerve at the right time it'd all be cool. The morons powers that be were determined enough on the course that it was going to happen even if he'd never existed.
posted by phearlez at 11:56 AM on November 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

Goodbye, My Friend: How Beautiful Ahmed Chalabi Saved the World

Ahmed Chalabi, the George Washington of Iraq, died yesterday at the age of 71. Chalabi was beloved by millions around the world, owing in part to his cut-up sense of humor. Who can forget that classic prank when he stole $4 million from the Bank of Jordan? Later in life, this dynamo math genius discovered his patriotism, when in 2002 he heroically sold American intelligence sources on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, to justify an invasion. While Ahmed incurred criticism from people who have never spent a second in the real world, history shows that he told a necessary, beautiful lie for a necessary, beautiful war.

Yes, unlike a certain Ahmed we all know, Chalabi made the world a better place by saying there were WMDs where there were actually useless clock parts.

posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:38 PM on November 4, 2015 [5 favorites]

Martin Smith of Frontline did a few really great interviews with Chalabi. This is his reminiscence of the man:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/iraq-war-on-terror/america-iraq-and-the-legacy-of-ahmad-chalabi/
posted by ignorantguru at 3:42 PM on November 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

realized that this was the same man I had met in 1998 and 2003 — someone so confident that he had right answers for any question. But if he ever had regrets about his role in the invasion, and the years of violence it unleashed, he never voiced them to me.

Before leaving I asked him if he thought ISIS posed a serious threat to Iraq. They were holding about one third of the country, including the second largest city in Iraq, Mosul. He denied there was a threat. Around that time a giant explosion shook the entire room, rattling the doors and windows. He hardly flinched, and with a wave of his hand, dismissed the bomb as if a fly had landed on his arm.

There's no denying he was perfect for his role.
posted by Artw at 3:46 PM on November 8, 2015 [1 favorite]