Prof. Kanan Makiya (NEJS) is a man with an unassuming manner-somewhat paradoxical in someone known for being so strong-willed. This apparent contradiction was as poignant as ever during his March 1 campus talk. He spoke about his project with the Iraq Memory Foundation to document human rights abuses under Iraq's Ba'athist regime. What Makiya did not talk about was his role in helping to plan and promote the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq.In his efforts to overthrow Hussein's government, Makiya participated in the Pentagon's campaign of distortions and was a close ally of alleged criminal and suspected Iranian spy Ahmed Chalabi. Makiya's actions supporting the war in Iraq were improper, and his failure to admit his mistakes may undermine his current efforts to record the abuses of Iraq's past.

While on leave from Brandeis, Makiya has worked to obtain documents and oral histories that demonstrate the brutality of the Ba'athists. As he said in his lecture, his courageous work has focused on understanding the frailty of human beings in the context of Ba'athist cruelty. When the Bush administration began to push for war with Iraq, Makiya saw his chance to help create the Iraq he idealized. After that, he began eagerly to assist the war effort. While Makiya had the best intentions, the others involved in planning and selling the war seemed to have more sinister motives.

Instead of being a major player in the effort to create a humane, democratic Iraq, Makiya allowed himself to be used by a disgusting array of oil men, war profiteers and corrupt, self-aggrandizing exiles. After meeting with war planners, Makiya claimed that U.S. troops would be greeted with "sweets and flowers," a phrase widely repeated by war supporters in the months preceding the invasion.

Makiya forged relationships with many important figures in the Bush administration-mostly people with close ties to oil and defense corporations-that stood to profit from the brutal invasion of Iraq. Furthermore, Makiya was a major supporter of Ahmed Chalabi's exile group, the Iraqi National Congress.

After Makiya concluded his talk and opened the floor for questions, my hand shot up. I asked him why he would trust the U.S. to bring human rights to Iraq, given that many of the people in the Pentagon today under Bush served under Ronald Reagan and had a close alliance with Saddam Hussein as he carried out acts of genocide. If the U.S. invasion was about democracy and human rights, why had the war planners disregarded, if not blatantly supported, genocide in Iraq 20 years earlier?

Makiya's reply demonstrated that he did not feel very confident with his answer. He suggested that he was trying to give the United States a chance to change, as if the former Hussein supporters in the Pentagon felt bad about their roles in genocide and wanted to make amends. He seemed then to back off from that stance by saying that sometimes you have to support "the lesser of two evils." While I believe that Makiya, unlike nearly all of the other people who planned and encouraged the United States' pre-emptive war, sincerely wanted to build an Iraq that had a place for human rights, working with Chalabi and participating in the Pentagon's misinformation campaign was an unethical and unacceptable way to achieve such a noble goal.

Despite Makiya's lofty rhetoric about Iraq's recent elections, things have not improved for the Iraqi people. For Makiya to continue his work of promoting human rights in Iraq, he must first admit that he made a huge mistake.