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Rationale
I supported our decision to depose Saddam Hussein through military action. But the anti-war protesters were right; there were no weapons of mass destruction, there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9-11, and Iraq presented no clear and present danger to the United States. His economy was being strangled by sanctions, and almost daily air strikes ensured his military could not even build basic defenses. This was naked aggression, a war of conquest at the whim of a single madman, a 21st century Hitler goose-stepping across the world. How could anyone with an IQ greater than a hamster's support such a thing?
I cannot speak for the administration's actual motives. However, being without an "inside track" does not prevent informed speculation, as just about every pundit on the planet proves daily. What follows is, as with theirs, my own opinion and worth about as much.
We never really stopped being "at war" with Saddam Hussein's regime. For more than a decade after the end of general hostilities in 1991 Iraq was the subject of almost daily bombing raids to enforce the northern and southern "no-fly" zones. Attacks on the heartland were periodic but frequent. This was not done for free, nor was it being paid for by any international coalition. The US and UK were spending approximately a billion dollars a year simply to maintain a dangerous status-quo (citation).
The escalating level of violence required to enforce these no-fly zones was resulting in increasingly vocal humanitarian opposition. The very legality of the zones was open to contentious debate (citation). The loss of even a single aircrew would have inevitably brought about tough, perhaps even unanswerable, questions about our involvement and the zones's effectiveness. Having a captive or dead American soldier or two paraded in front of television cameras would have almost certainly triggered an end to the only military involvement actively preventing the Ba'athist regime's undisguised efforts at rearmament.
The vaunted sanctions supposedly strangling the regime into submission were widely accepted as not working (citation), and the outcry at the humanitarian cost was growing increasingly difficult to counter. The international (and indeed domestic) business community, quite rightly seeing Iraq as a titanic works project waiting to happen, was also bringing increased pressure on the various governments involved to end the sanctions. Many prominent countries were simply ignoring them and signing billion-dollar investment deals with the Ba'athist regime, presenting the United States and Britain with a gradual but no less de facto international repeal.
It was only a matter of time before the outcry grew so great and the suffering of the Iraqi people so obvious that future US and UK governments, with no particular attachment to policies of previous administrations, sought some method of quietly ending sanctions altogether. Re-armament would not then simply be expected, but facilitated by international arms dealers competing for a piece of the last big arms market in the world. But this re-armament would only concern Iraq's immediate neighbors. The unprecedented events of September 11th showed in spectacular fashion how to carry war to the west's own cities, their own peoples, in ways that could paralyze them with comparatively minimal expense.
Ideological differences have caused Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden to be anathema each other. However, the Middle East has a long, rich history of demagogues holding their noses and associating themselves with turgidly corrupt secular leaders... as long as the price was right. With its own funding sources pinched if not cut off entirely, it would be difficult indeed to resist the sound of gold shaking on the belt pouch of the man sitting between the Tigris and Euphrates.
Even if bin Laden still snubbed the now freed Hussein regime, it's not particularly difficult to field one's own set of insurgents. Certainly the Palestinians, who remained faithful allies, would've been quite willing and able to provide both training and recruits. The dormant quest for nuclear weapons, either purchased or manufactured, would certainly be renewed. Even at the height of sanctions feelers were being cast about to acquire such weapons and the technologies required to deliver them (citation).
In my own view, it's quite true that Iraq in 2003 posed no real and present danger to the west, the United States in particular. Unfortunately, the efforts required to maintain this situation were on-going, expensive, dangerous, sometimes deadly to innocents, and showed literally no signs of ever ending. A war without end made real. Worse still, powerful political and economic forces were aligning to free Hussein's regime of these restrictions, allowing Iraq to eventually become a very real, indeed inevitable, future danger to our country, and the world.
This is why, in my opinion, Saddam had to go, and sooner rather than later. Not for any present need, not for any pressing requirement, but rather to avert an obvious political, humanitarian, and military disaster that was quite patently going to happen before it actually did so. Certainly if Saddam's reconstruction were to succeed beyond his wildest dreams we would still be able to defeat him. But at what additional cost?
History is littered with wars that could have been stopped, holocausts that could have been interrupted, millions dead in combat who simply did not need to die, had someone acted decisively at an early enough juncture to force real change. In my opinion, that is exactly what has happened here. You can disagree. You can claim my scenarios are unlikely to ever have happened. You may even be right.
But know I sleep better at night because now I'm certain they can never happen at all.
There is one reason even more important that we had to go into Iraq, location. Iraq sits right square in the middle of the three most active international terror sponsors on the planet, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia.
A nuclear armed Israel is being attacked almost daily by members of groups financed and armed by those three states. Sooner or later if the status quo didn't change that would lead to a nuclear war square in the middle of the world's energy supply.
Since Sodamn Insane was dragged from his hole looking like Nick Nolte after a hard night it hasn't been just Lybia changing her tune. Iran is stuck between our troops and airbases in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Is there a corner of that tortured country out of range of our F16s?
Syria is between our troops and bases in Iraq and the Izzies.
Saudi Arabia is stuck between our troops and airbases in Iraq, the Izzies and our Carrier Battle Groups.
Iraq changes everything. I predict that, assuming GWB is reelected, five years from now we won't recognise the Mideast.
"...there were no weapons of mass destruction, there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9-11..."
I think it's a bit premature to state either as absolute fact. It's quite possible, arguably even likely, that both are true. But we don't yet know for sure.
Posted by: df on January 16, 2004 09:26 PMAll of what you say it true.
Only problem is when do we stop?? Where do we go from here?? Should we now attack Syria or Iran or North Korea (All of which pose a MUCH greater threat to the US than Iraq did). Should our foreign policy now be based on the idea that we must "avert an obvious political, humanitarian, and military disaster that was quite patently going to happen before it actually did so."
Should it be based on what threats countries “Might” pose to us sometime in the nebulous future, furthermore base those threats on worst case things that “Might” happen within a country regardless of how likely they may be?? If we do this shouldn’t we now attack France or Germany or even Britain because I am sure we could come up with a way they would be a threat to this country?? If we had attacked Germany in 1932 could we have prevented WWII?? If we had attacked Russia in 1945 would if have prevented the Cold War and Vietnam?? Should we have?? Should we attack China now??
What gives us the right to dictate to other countries that aren't a threat to us what they can and can't do and dictate to them on threat of Invasion?? Dictate thru other means to be sure, but is our policy now going to be if you don't do what we say to do we will Invade your country and replace your government with one that will??
Does Might make Right?? Is that the American way?? With all of your background in ancient history can you tell me how long other countries/systems who went down this path survived??
As you are always telling me our system of government is not perfect nor is it even very efficient. But it does work. Our foreign policy to date is the same way. Waiting to react and going after tin pots only when they are a clear and present danger to us may not be efficient BUT if we don't do it this way then what makes us different than any other Tin Pot (Other than we would be a lot better at it??)
Change on the scale that you’re talking about can’t come from without. Liberty and Freedom can’t be imposed on a people (For its human nature that people will resent what is imposed upon them from the outside) When has such a change actually worked??
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln, 11/19/1863 Speech given to consecrate a burial ground for some of the 53,000 Americans who died there during the American Civil War.
Until such eloquence is available in the Middle East, until these Ideals are embraced and not imposed, until blood is spilled for ideals such as these there can be no change. So what are we doing there??
Posted by: Jeff on January 16, 2004 09:47 PMNo WMDs---
Considering they have 120 weapons sites, several of them 50 square miles in size, to inspect... and those are only the KNOWN weapons dumps....
I'd say that assertion was pretty premature.
It also requires you to believe that every intelligence agency in the free world got it wrong. France, the UK, and even the UN said he had unaccounted-for weapons that violated the peace treaty. Can we call it a safe bet they might have been right?
It also requires you to believe that not only did Saddam stop his programs entirely but that he destroyed the weapons he already had, and even though it cost him billions of dollars and eventually his throne, he didn't tell anyone and hid all proof of their elimination.
One reciept for "WMDs, destruction of," would have saved his butt. But even at the eleventh hour he was jerking everyone around.
It may take years or even decades to find out where it all ended up. But I'm willing to place a wager that they'll turn up---
and that the tinfoil-hat brigades will claim they were "planted by the CIA" or somesuch tripe when they're finally found.
"But it does work. Our foreign policy to date is the same way. Waiting to react and going after tin pots only when they are a clear and present danger to us may not be efficient BUT if we don't do it this way then what makes us different than any other Tin Pot (Other than we would be a lot better at it??)"
you seem to be implying that we are imperialists disguised as a nation under attack. what makes us different? we don't want to control the region, we only wish to neutralize the danger. we don't want to be there, never did, never will, but we HAVE to fight. if you don't like that, too bad. i'd rather the internation community hate me and my country, than to see the metroplex of texas nuked. i have family living there, the only family i speak to these days. one of them is a 2 1/2 year old. he life has only just started, no way in hell am i letting some hippie talk me into going isolationist. didn't work in the past, won't work now.
Posted by: samkit on January 16, 2004 10:24 PMWe don't want to control the region?? Are you that Naive?? Of course we want to control the region. How much of the worlds oil reserve is there?? Why do you think we kicked him out of Kuwait?? You also make my argument for me "we only wish to neutralize the danger" WHAT DANGER?? WHERE WAS THE DIRECT AND IMMEDIATE THREAT TO THE US?? Even Scott says that it didn’t exhist.
You don't want to see the "Metroplex" of Texas Nuked (Are you talking about the DFW area??) North Korea poses a MUCH greater threat to that happening than did Saddam's Iraq.
As far as me being an Isolationist Hippie?? You need to learn a little bit more about me. I own Crazy Firearms like the Desert Eagle .50 drive gas guzzling exhaust spewing crazy muscle cars etc. I firmly believe that we should have turned Afghanistan into a Smoking GLASS wasteland. If we learn that a country poses a DIRECT and IMMEDIAT threat to us then preempt the @#@# out of them. I firmly believe that something has to be done in North Korea, The Middle East, and Asia. I just don't think that going invasion and conquest are the way to do it. That’s not exactly an Isolationist point of view.
Posted by: Jeff on January 16, 2004 10:58 PMI see that we have a Saddam apologist/democrat/Bush hater (pick one). Saddam was a butchering psychotic dictator with a deep seated hatred for the U.S. Platitudes about how we should have "negotiated" with him are patently ridiculous. We've been negotiating with him since 1991 with no result. To think that Saddam would have "behaved" had we left him alone is naive to say the least. Clinton tried a similar tactic with N. Korea with bribes of nuclear technology and we all know how that worked out. As for the imminent threat canard, Bush said that we had to deal with Saddam before he was a imminent threat, not that he was one despite all the "dowdified" comments floated out by the moonbats. According to your logic, we should have waited until he could field nuclear weapons before unseating him. As for the U.S. not being able to impose "liberty and freedom", try taking a look at postwar Germany and Japan before making such a claim. By the way, saying that there aren't any arabs in the Middle East capable of ideals such as those put forth in the Gettysburg Address smacks of racism. You should be more careful when you're "emoting"
Posted by: Elephant Man on January 17, 2004 03:37 AMOne does not pre-empt a clear and present danger. One interdicts it. A pre-emptive attack is made to ensure a threat does not materialize. That is what happened here.
Claiming the Arabs do not posses eloquence on the order of Mr. Lincoln is not intentionally racist (only because I know the author of the comment personally), but rather is of the much milder, benevolent, but no less infuriating "white man's burden" sort. The brown peoples are not capable of governing themselves, you see.
It also is deeply ignorant of the fifteen-hundred-year-old culture of art, science, literature, and learning that is Arabia and Islam. It was these people who preserved our ancient traditions when our own religion was burning "pagan" books to warm barbarian hearths and flaying librarians alive. The culture has most definitely fallen on hard times, much self inflicted but some definitely imposed. But anyone who claims Kamal Attaturk was less of a patriot than Abraham Lincoln is either being obtuse or simply doesn't know who he is.
Also never forget that much of the current mess in the Middle East is in fact the West's fault. Not, how ever, exclusively the US's. It was Clemenceau, Lloyd George and their assistants who created the borders of most of these countries (including Iraq) and their protectorate administrations that tossed people in jail who spoke of liberty. It was our cold war blindness and greed that put and kept kleptocratic monarchies and dictatorships in power because they "weren't communist" and would enforce business contracts signed buy our presidents' campaign contributers. The middle east is a pit in no small part because for nearly a century it suited the great powers for it to be so. We are, in a way, cleaning up our own mess.
As far as "if A, why not B, C, D, ... Y, and Z?" or "if A, then why not 1, 2, 3..?" Straw men, every one. We are not automatons, and foreign policy is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. War is too serious, and we take it too seriously, to be triggered by knee-jerk dogma. The answers to "why not China?" "why not Syria?" "why not North Korea?" are as different and detailed as the countries themselves. "Why not Britain?" "Why not France?" are simply impassioned flourishes to shock one into ignoring a hyper-simplistic argument.
Regardless of the current administration's wishes, the country went to war only reluctantly, and with a great deal of impassioned debate. As is quite patently clear, large numbers of our citizens are working right now to ensure this administration is not allowed to continue on its "imperialistic" ways. Maybe they're right.
But in this case, for these reasons, I think they are wrong. I'm disappointed they feel they must resort to "nuke Britain!" arguments in an attempt to prove the contrary.
Posted by: Scott on January 17, 2004 07:01 AMIf you believe that freedom, democracy, and prosperity are nothing more than American mind control, then yes, we Americans do want to control the world. It must be utterly horrifying to see all those third world people (even the free ones in the gulags!) begging to be mind-controlled like that.
Posted by: Tatterdemalian on January 17, 2004 11:21 AMIMHO there can be no change in the middle east UNTIL a majority of the people embrace the idea that All Men are created equal (And are willing to die for that Idea like our forefathers have done and our peers continue to do) that a government should be Of the People, By the people, and FOR the people (Not just the Chosen few, Not just men but women to) is an ideal that must be striven for. Please tell me that I am wrong about these qualities existing in the quantities necessary to bring about a change in the region. Please give me proof. My Proof is already there in the way women are treated. It’s there in the way peoples of different religions are persecuted. And until these ideas are embraced and the majority of people are willing to die for them then nothing changes and we will have spent our blood and treasure in vain. Does that make me a racist??
I believe in Freedom, democracy, and prosperity for the world. I also believe that these things can't be imposed on a culture against their will (At least not without great bloodshed and over a LONG period of time) people point out Germany and Japan.... Take a close look at both and you will find that we weren't exactly 100% successful there and we have been working on/with them for over half a century.
I don't believe that we should impose OUR values or OUR culture on other peoples simply because we have the military might to do so. Doing this, however noble our reasons may be, makes us no different than any other conqueror. I wish it was as simple as "American Mind Control” Unfortunately it's not. Does that make me a Liberal?? Does that make me an Isolationist Hippie?? Or does that mean I simply embrace the Ideals that make this country so great??
You talk about us bringing Freedom and Democracy to Iraq, us bringing the American Dream. Let's take a look at a worst case scenario (Like Scott did with Saddam and like the administration is Loath to do). A general election is held, the Majority votes for a revolutionary Theocracy (Akin to what they have in Iran) that is STRONGLY anti American and WILL become a breeding ground for the kind of attacks we are trying to prevent. Do we then say "The majority has spoken, you want us gone?? No Problem Cya later!" or do we go against the will of the majority. Take away their Freedom to choose and go against one of the main democratic principles because we have no choice.
Want an even better scenario?? Want to know why we can't let that happen (even if the majority wants it??) Because it would totally destabilize the region. The Kurds would never stand for it and go to war to create their own state. The Turks (Members of NATO no less) would invade northern Iraq because they can't have a Kurdish nation on their boarders. Iran would come into it because they would support the Shiite majority and then what do we do?? Support our Allies in NATO?? Support the people who were counting on us to not let this form of government take control?? Stay out of it entirely while war wages over a great deal of the world’s oil supply?? WHAT??
We are now in Iraq. We can’t just leave the situation that we have created. We MUST support whatever plan the administration comes up with to bring peace and stability to Iraq. We MUST do this whatever the cost is to Americans. And I resent the Hell out of the administration who got us into this mess WHEN WE COULD HAVE AVOIDED IT and who LIED to me to try to get me to believe otherwise. I resent the Hell out of the people who blithely assumed that we would be met with open arms and all ride off into the sunset together, NEVER planning for the worst case scenario. And I resent the people who then call me Un-American, who just assume that I am some kind of Liberal Bush hater racist who has no idea what they are talking about. They are the ones who are hurting the American dream/ideal. Not I.
Posted by: Jeff on January 17, 2004 03:54 PMFortunately, most Americans aren't stupid enough to demand a 100% success rate out of anybody... just that they try to improve.
What exactly is it that makes Germany and Japan so unsuccessful, in your view, anyhow? That Germany disagrees with us on some issues? That Japanese society isn't a perfect carbon copy of America? Think well before you answer, and consider the possibility that, while someone may be seeking absolute control over other nations, it may not be the Bush administration...
Posted by: Tatterdemalian on January 18, 2004 06:55 AM