Freedom's Fidelity

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

More War

I'm tired of writing about the war. I'm especially tired of revisiting the argument after it's been done. We've invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein, what a horrible thing..... I guess the implication is that we should put him back in power, but I'd like to hear John Kerry say that. If that isn't his position then I'd like to hear some ideas on how he can make Iraq better, unless he plans a complete pullout. The "Bush lied people died" line makes a nice rhyme for a protester's construction board, but it has little basis in reality, as I've mentioned before here and here. (This second link is one of my first posts back in June. Here it is 8 months later and still an issue!) What makes it even more curious is that this was never a point of contention before the war. There was an incredible international consensus regarding Saddam's possession of banned weapons. The question was always what to do about it.

I think it's quite possible (even likely) that WMD's could still be found. We all saw the spider hole that Saddam was pulled from, there are quite a few holes out in the desert of Iraq. (Hey, we're still finding Hitler's weapons in Germany). It's all politics. I know this because there was never one public argument about the substance of the intelligence. The implication is that they supported the war because Bush tricked them. But since when did they start listening to Bush? No, the vast majority of those that were against the war believed that Saddam possessed WMD's but opposed action regardless. As far as I was concerned WMD was never the sole reason anyway. For an airplane to crash, it takes what they call a "cascading of events." In other words, lots of things that hardly ever fail individually all fail at the same time. There was a cascading of reasons to remove Hussein, it never hinged solely on WMD, at least as far as I was concerned. Here are some of them:

-- Saddam was in continued material breach of countless UN resolutions.

-- Saddam was the most brutal dictator in the world responsible for the deaths of up to 3 million people.

-- Saddam attempted to assassinate a United States President.

-- Saddam had a demonstrated desire to rule and control the oil rich region by force.

-- Removing Saddam would remove the most prominent obstacle to spreading tolerant and individual rights based societies in the region - the ONLY long-term solution to the war on terror.

-- The Israeli/Palestinian conflict could not be ended as long as one of the major financiers was still in power.

-- Saddam's ambition for weapons could not be stopped in any other way. He gave up billions of dollars in the form of sanctions to keep inspectors out.

-- In this country we don't trust corporations to show concern for consumers without massive safety regulations, why are we trusting Saddam to not pass along weapons or weapons technology to terrorist organizations?

Saddam is often referred to as a survivor, and to some extent that is true. However that doesn't mean he's not a mad man. Remember he started two wars with impossible odds of winning, openly supported terror of a nuclear neighbor, and bet that Bush would follow the lead of France when it came to America's foreign policy. Hardly the acts of a completely rational man.

But there I go again, the reason I started this entry was to point to this link filled post that ties the whole WMD and "Bush lied" silliness together. Go check it out.

(Link via InstaPundit.)

posted by Paul  permalink | |