Posted on 01/20/2004 10:37:05 AM PST by NorCoGOP
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- When the news broke last month that Saddam Hussein had been captured -- disheveled and disoriented, hiding in a dark hole in the ground -- it was hard to overstate the magnitude of the shockwaves that reverberated around the world. World leaders and regular citizens across the globe felt an exhilarating sense of satisfaction knowing that this ruthless dictator would finally answer for his heinous crimes. It didn't take long for pundits here in the states to begin theorizing about the political fallout from this long-awaited event either. The most elementary political calculus tempts us to chalk up Saddam's capture as a big political victory for the Bush administration -- right on the eve of the Democratic primaries no less, and just less than a year before the election.
But thinking of Hussein's capture in this way doesn't just lack sense. It also trivializes our national security and casts an ominous prospect of just how much harm another four years of Republican-led foreign policy could do to our country.
On the most simplistic level (which is how most Americans think of politics), one could imagine that capturing Saddam is a significant victory in the "war on terror." But like most issues, the real matter is a little more complicated. If we think back to last year, when the sitting president was eagerly selling the war to a reluctant American public (one wishes it worked the other way around), our primary justification for invading Iraq was that it posed an imminent threat to our country in the form of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's ties to terrorist organizations. The anti-war coalition has been all but been proven right in refuting these two counts -- we now know, as Washington insiders did then, that Iraq did not in fact possess an active nuclear weapons program and destroyed nearly all of their chemical and biological weapons over twelve years ago. In fact, according to the United Nations, International Atomic Energy Agency or the nonpartisan and widely respected Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Iraq never possessed those weapons in the amounts Colin Powell, Paul Wolfowitz and other hawks claimed. Neither the Iraqi government nor Saddam Hussein had any ties whatsoever to Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda or the Sept. 11 attacks, and even the current administration didn't bother to submit a single shred of evidence that suggested otherwise. In fact, the only thing that Hussein and bin Laden (who railed against the Iraqi government almost as vehemently as he did against the United States) appear have had in common were that they were both Arab and Muslim. One hopes this isn't all that it takes to convince the American public that they were in league.
Meanwhile, after a much longer and larger scale search, Osama bin Laden -- the man most directly responsible for a long terrorist campaign against our country -- remains at large. The United States has completely lost the international goodwill and sympathy that Sept. 11 evoked by defying international criticism and the United Nations, invading Iraq unilaterally on pretenses that were flimsy then and demonstrably false now, and causing a cavernous and long-lasting rift between the United States and most of our deeply trusted allies. Though domestic issues are vitally important -- like the passage of the callous Bush tax cut plans for the very rich, unconstitutional infringements on a woman's reproductive rights, galling favors to the very corporations most of the Bush administration has close ties to and the loss of 3.1 million jobs, the most of any single administration in 60 years -- this administration's two-faced disregard for our national security is hard to ignore. Even while the Republican party veils itself in terms of being almost obsessively security-conscious, we see studies that indicate that "Homeland Security" is being under-funded, under-manned and required to rely upon supplies from many of those corporations to which the Bush administration is close.
The increasingly anxious anti-Howard Dean cabal went apoplectic when he dared to caution Americans that Hussein's capture "does not make America any safer." With some basic analysis, it's clear he's right. Hussein was just one of dozens of bloodthirsty and tyrannical dictators with no regard for democracy or human life that America had no problem dealing with just a few years ago and with whom we still do today. While his departure is truly uplifting for its humanitarian implications, to say that America is made materially "safer" because our efforts against terrorism are being skewed towards cravenly political ends is simplistic and dangerous. America must decide whether it prefers slogans and politics or concrete policies in our fight against terrorism -- and decide so soon.
How about we extend our thinking a bit further and recall a few Democrat quotes on Iraq weapons of mass destruction, hmmmmm?
Hussein's capture made us a lot safer than the election of a Howie Dean to the presidency would.
It seems like the Iowa "anti Dean cabal" Democrats agree. Howie's "we won by being third" speech, sleeves rolled up and all, seemed demonstrably more "apoplectic" than anything any Republican "cabal" have done. Just listen to his hysterical screech at the end of the litany of states he plans to conquer.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.