Posted on 06/29/2004 7:00:20 PM PDT by churchillbuff
“With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn’t the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago. If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war.”
Those words are William F. Buckley’s, from an article in yesterday’s New York Times marking Buckley’s decision to relinquish control of the National Review, the flagship journal of the conservative movement he founded 50 years ago.
Also out on the newsstands now, in The Atlantic Monthly, is an essay Buckley wrote describing his decision to give up sailing after a lifetime covering the world’s oceans and writing about it.
Mortality is the backdrop of both decisions, as the 78-year-old Buckley explains. In the Atlantic essay he describes his decision to abandon the sea as one of assessing whether “the ratio of pleasure to effort [is] holding its own [in sailing]? Or is effort creeping up, pleasure down? … deciding that the time has come to [give up sailing] and forfeit all that is not lightly done … brings to mind the step yet ahead, which is giving up life itself.”
There is certainly no shortage today of people saying the Iraq venture was wrongheaded. But Bill Buckley is Bill Buckley. And perhaps it is uniquely possible for a man at the summit or the sunset of life — choose your metaphor — to state so crisply and precisely what a clear majority of the American public has already decided (54 percent according to the latest Gallup poll): that the president’s Iraq venture was a mistake.
So with the formal end of the occupation now behind us, let’s take stock of the arguments for war and see whether any of them any longer hold up.
• The threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
To the best of our knowledge, the Hussein regime had no stockpiles of WMD on the eve of the war nor any ongoing programs to create them. An article this week in the Financial Times claims that Iraq really was trying to buy uranium from Niger despite all the evidence to the contrary. But new “evidence” appears merely to be unsubstantiated raw intelligence that was wisely discounted by our intelligence agencies at the time.
Advocates of the war still claim that Saddam had “WMD programs.” But they can do so only by using a comically elastic definition of “program” that never would have passed the laugh test if attempted prior to the war.
• The Iraq-al Qaeda link.
To the best of our knowledge, the Hussein regime had no meaningful — or as the recent Sept. 11 Commission staff report put it, “collaborative” — relationship with al Qaeda. In this case too, there’s still a “debate.” Every couple of months we hear of a new finding that someone who may have had a tie to Saddam may have met with someone connected to al Qaeda.
But as in the case of WMD, it’s really mock debate, more of a word game than a serious, open question, and a rather baroque one at that. Mostly, it’s not an evidentiary search but an exercise in finding out whether a few random meetings can be rhetorically leveraged into a “relationship.” If it can, supposedly, a rationale for war is thus salvaged.
The humanitarian argument for the war remains potent — in as much as Saddam’s regime was ruthlessly repressive. But in itself this never would have been an adequate argument to drive the American people to war — and, not surprisingly, the administration never made much of it before its other rationales fell apart.
The broader aim of stimulating a liberalizing and democratizing trend in the Middle East remains an open question — but largely because it rests on unknowables about the future rather than facts that can be proved or disproved about the past. From the vantage point of today, there seems little doubt that the war was destabilizing in the short run or that it has strengthened the hands of radicals in countries like Iran and, arguably though less clearly, Saudi Arabia. The best one can say about the prospects for democracy in Iraq itself is that there are some hopeful signs, but the overall outlook seems extremely iffy.
Surveying the whole political landscape, it is clear that a large factor in keeping support for the war as high as it is is the deep partisan political divide in the country, which makes opposing the war tantamount to opposing its author, President Bush, a step most Republicans simply aren’t willing to take.
At a certain point, for many, conflicts become self-justifying. We fight our enemies because our enemies are fighting us, quite apart from whether we should have gotten ourselves into the quarrel in the first place.
But picking apart the reasons why we got into Iraq in the first place and comparing what the administration said in 2002 with what we know in 2004, it is increasingly difficult not to conclude, as a majority of the American public and that founding father of modern conservatism have now concluded, that the whole enterprise was a mistake.
Interesting point. It shows how ignorant those folks are who lump Hussein with "Islamofascists." He was/is evil, no question, but the Isamic fundies didn't consider him one their own, but a secularist. In fact, his ruthless rule kept down the militant Islamics who are making trouble in Iraq now.
Respectfully, you must not have been reading the papers, nor listening even to several of the retired Generals, nor even been aware of the plans. One of the things that was a mess early on was that NO ONE thought it would only take three weeks, and so the follow-on support wasn't prepped to begin for another six weeks after Baghdad fell.
Arrogant, too, I see.
Nah, AC. If every intelligence agency in the world said Hussein had WMDs, it was worth going in even to find out he didn't.
And, the industrial shredders are shut down, Hussein is not funding the Palie suicide bombers, and, ain't it interesting, the suicide bombing seems to have evaporated.
BS
Bush let's in illegals,...
No they come across our borders of their own volition, knowing full well what they are doing.
Bushbots: We have always been a Nation of immigrants. They do the jobs Americans won't do,...
More BS
Bush takes away our freedoms with the "patriot" act,...
Name one instance.
It's for our own good! Remember 9/11,..Remember
You must be one of the guys that believes Moore when he says you have about as much chance of being killed by a terrorist as being struck by lightning.
Bushbots are just like the democrats with clinton: they will destroy their conservative values to support him; actually losing what it meant to be a conservative to get him elected.
No, we just do not want to go back to the values of the "clintonites" and are willing to take what we can get, instead of risking the country, on one turn of pitch and toss.
You might try taking your political planks, open up an exporatory committee and take your shot.
So you disagree with the Bush-Wolfowitz rationale that the war was all about enforcing a resolution of the U.N.? And are you willing to sacrifice hundreds more American lives and tens of thousands more lives of innocent Iraqis just to kick a little tail in the Middle East?
WFG is generally right for about this one, for a change. However, even the Bush Administration no longer bases its defense on "WMD Programs". They've flip-flopped to "WMD-related program activities", thereby failing the laugh test yet another time.
LOL, the "BIG LIE". Michael Moore ain't got nothing on you buffy.
My facts are straight. His rationale for those bombing escapades (at least in the case of Sudan) was that they were plotting to develop "weapons of mass destruction" that would be used against the U.S.
If things improve over the next year, with the new Iraqi government proposing the country be divided along religious lines into two or three separate political/religious regions, those who jumped ship in the last 6 months will jump back onboard and claim never to have really abandoned the project. At the beginning of this venture, I thought the country would SURELY have to be divided into probably three sections; eventually the new government will come to the same conclusion. I even harbor the fond notion of the Kurds choosing to live in something called "American Iraq". No.....wait.....
Buckley's never been the same after smoking weed.
To be honest, Buckley always gives me the creeps
Since most of the prediction I made about this war back in early 2003 have proven to be correct, perhaps I am the one who needs to see the optometrist.
Yes. They had toppled the Saddam regime and did it in 3 weeks. If he had made the statement on the carrier deck that all troops would be leaving Iraq immediately then you would have a point. Look up that speech.
Mom, dozens of binary nerve agent shells and mustard shells have turned up. Several have been set to kill Americans as IED's. Are they growing them in orchards?
I don't understand your response.
Therein lies the question to those here who spout 'after the fact' opinions based on lack of WMD: so where DID they go? Or was the UN part of the whole scam?
A cogent answer to that question would be desirable if someone wants me to believe that 'opinion' is worth the slightest damn. If there was no WMD after all, and never was, then the UN is guilty of scamming us all and the inspectors have a lot to answer for. If it was destroyed, then when? Right before the invasion? Then Bush was correct. A long time ago? Then where's the proof? Is it still around? Then where? Who has it?
Alot of unanswered questions that need to be answered before we go off on this 'after the fact' nonsense.
You and I both know that there are only two people in town: the dems and the Repubs. And THEY know it too. So they can scr*w us as much as they want and we can do nothing about it. So just bend over come november and vote for your favorite rino.
You're apparently the BIG IGNORANT if you think Saddam was an Islamic fundamentalist.
GWB, Karl Rove, et al. made a nice campaign commercial, didn't they? For the DNC, that is.
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