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.
I do think he ought to be prevented from using that screenname. It's an abomination to the memory of a great man.
Those who booed Michael Moore were in the balcony section reserved for those who were either not up for an award or were not connected with the industry.
Conservative judicial nominations. Pro-life actions (partial birth ban, etc), invasion of Afghanistan. Tax cuts - - tax cuts -- tax cuts !!! Some (though not enough) cuts in environmental regulations.
Some people just go barmy in their dotage. Goldwater was one, sadly. Buckley appears to be another.
And do you support the war in Afghanistan?
Do you support the war on terror and where should we go next or should we just wait to be attacked again?
Northern Ireland?
Besides, we need to keep a certain amount of ...diversity, yes I said it, diversity of opinion to keep us all on our toes. Kool yer jets, dude!
Good grief! Not again.
I swear, I think this one just isn't getting enough attention at home!
LOL! You crack me up.
You beat me to it... he needs some "lovin!!!!!!"
Admit it, you and Alberta's Child are both trolls. Come clean, you'll feel better.
Why? Do their holy books tell them to cut off our heads, too? Please be specific. :)
So... it's now over 100 posts since I've exposed your lies.
#1. You claimed that the administration said it would be a cakewalk in Iraq. You've been asked to provide a link to ONE administration official saying that and you can't. The book Misunderestimated mentions this matter and said the press can't do it either but it doesn't stop them from their lies.
#2. You said the administration told us we'd be greeted as liberators and we weren't. It only took a few posters to show pictures and tell you what a lie that is. MANY Iraqi citizens, most Iraqi citizens, did and do greet us as liberators. Are there terrorists in Iraq? Sure. Saddam supported AQ and other terrorists for over a decade. Even Clinton said so. Those are the people causing trouble now.
#3. You have lied for over a month that no Congressmen have kids in the Middle East and no administration officials either. That has been proven to be a lie by you on many, many threads last month.
#4. You keep saying there are no WMD and yet won't respond to the fact that the UN WMD inspector said last week that he's finding Iraq's WMD all across the globe. You prefer to believe Tom Clancy instead. I can barely type for the laughter on that one.
#5. YOu won't respond whether you believe Iraq even ever had WMD.
#6. YOu won't respond to the fact that every intelligence agency on the planet said he had them.
#7. You say there were no links between 9/11 and Iraq and yet when given links from the 9/11 Commission and quotes from the new President of Iraq which says THERE WERE links to 9/11 and Iraq, you are just silent.
It's one thing, as I've said to oppose the war. It's another to spread the DNC lies. Which is exactly what you do. On nearly every thread you visit.
Perhaps it's a suicide OPUS!
Trolls or DNC plants.
You put a dagger to Winston Churchill's name every time you post.
Now I know you're a creep. Your rhetoric sounds an awful lot like Koppel. Is that you, Ted?
I swear, I think this one just isn't getting enough attention at home!
Yes, I concur and that household's mailbox(chamberlainbuff) probably has the name Buchanan.
I HATE diversity.
Did they even do polls then, or are they the bane of our modern world?
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