Posted on 07/09/2014 6:07:52 PM PDT by Daniel Clark
Beck To Differ: No, Glenn, liberals were never right on Iraq
by Daniel Clark
Since Glenn Beck’s June 17th broadcast, liberals have seized on his “admission” that they were right about Iraq. It’s not really an admission, though, if it’s something that he wants to believe anyway.
Beck supported the Iraq War when he was a conservative, which he hasn’t been for quite some time. The new Glenn Beck has contracted Bush Derangement Syndrome, says we should’ve listened to Ron Paul, indulges in paranoid drone fantasies, says our response to terrorism should be to turn inward and love each other, and charges that The Star-Spangled Banner is warmongering propaganda.
As he alienates his conservative listeners, Beck seeks to forge a political realignment by reaching out to the Left. The new dichotomy he presents has “progressives from both parties” on one side, opposed by libertarians, and however many pro-Constitution liberals he imagines exist. Coming from that point of view, for him to “admit” that liberals were right about Iraq is kind of like Pat Buchanan “admitting” that George W. Bush is an Israeli puppet.
Beck credits liberals for saying that “we couldn’t force freedom on people,” but the premise of that criticism is wrong, in that it equates freedom with oppression. It was the terrorists who used force to deter Iraqi citizens from the polls. The Iraqis risked their lives to defy those threats on their own, and not because Americans were applying a superior force to compel them to vote.
Whether or not the Iraqis embrace freedom doesn’t answer the question of whether we should have invaded in the first place. Our objective was to remove Saddam Hussein. The idea of establishing Iraq as a bulwark of republicanism came afterward. For liberals to be right about the war, they must also have been right about Saddam and his regime, but were they?
Liberals said that al-Qaeda would never associate with Saddam, but now we know that Saddam’s Iraqi Intelligence Service met repeatedly with al-Qaeda. We know that he funded organizations closely related to al-Qaeda, that his embassy in Manila collaborated with Filipino al-Qaeda affiliate Abu Sayyaf, and that he once offered sanctuary to Osama bin Laden.
They doubted such an alliance because they said Saddam was a secularist, and therefore an enemy to radical Islam. You know, Saddam, who declared the 1991 Gulf War to be a “Holy War,” and proved he was alive by broadcasting video of himself bowing on his prayer rug – Saddam, who added the words “Allahu Akbar” to the Iraqi flag in his handwriting, and claimed to have printed a copy of the Quran in his own blood – Saddam, who planned a wave of terror attacks he codenamed “Blessed July,” in which small groups of elite, Iraqi-trained terrorists would be deployed to Kurdistan, Iran and London, that last group being instructed to direct “martyrdom operations” throughout Europe. That Saddam.
They said Bush went to war so he could steal Iraq’s oil. They portrayed Saddam’s military as practically invincible. They accused Bush of planning to bring back the draft. They offended our allies by repeatedly insisting that we had none. They said we should have let containment work, even as Saddam was undermining sanctions through the UN’s Oil for Food program.
They said it was an illegal, undeclared war, when in reality, the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq – which was informally known as the Iraq War Resolution – had passed with much fanfare. They accused Bush of a “rush to war,” even after he gave Saddam 14 months’ warning, allowed him countless opportunities to cooperate with the weapons inspectors, and offered to let him go into exile rather than be forcibly deposed.
Liberals scream “Bush lied,” just because we’ve found fewer of Saddam’s chemical weapons than we’d expected to. They, on the other hand, have been completely and dramatically wrong about everything, for the predictable reason that they assumed the worst about our side, while being charitable in their assumptions about the enemy.
The media rhetorically ask whether the invasion was worth it, all the while concealing just what “it” is. As they’ve pretended to debate the merits of the war in recent months, they’ve made remarkably little mention of Saddam Hussein. That’s not accidental. If people were reminded about all of Saddam’s provocations, the necessity of his removal would be as obvious now as it was then. How fortunate it is for the liberals, then, that they’ve been relieved of any expectation that they face the truth about Iraq, now that Glenn Beck has “admitted” they were right.
-- Daniel Clark is a writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of a web publication called The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press, where he also publishes a seasonal sports digest as The College Football Czar.
nice article...
yes the liberals were right but for all the wrong reasons.
Being against all wars doesnt make you right.
Bush(and I then concurred) made a mistake going into Iraq.
There’s a one word answer to this: “Kurdistan”
Anyone needing elaboration: instead of being gassed by the tens of thousands, the Kurds are saving the remnant of Iraqi Christians and successfully repelling the caliphate.
To hell with traitor Beck.
Why does anyone waste time listening to this assclown?
I’m still waiting for that big announcement that will change everything.
Is Beck back on the sauce?
You know that the US policy from mid ‘90s was to remove saddam, right?
GW didn’t wake up one day pull an invasion out of his ass...and say let’s go.
your a funny guy, fuhget about it!
Good article. Thanks, Daniel.
I fault GHW Bush for listening to Colon Powell and not “Stormin’” Norman, who wanted to continue the fighting to take out Saddam. Bush 41 gave up and permitted Saddam to continue his reign of terror.
Clinton did nothing to hinder Saddam, as he built up his military and stores of WMDs, while killing Kurds and dissenters.
Bush 43 inherited the Iraq problem after 9/11/01. Instead of quick strikes, he allowed a couple of years for Saddam to move the WMDs into Syria and hide them elsewhere in Iraq where the clowns from the UN couldn’t find them.
I have to lay some blame on both of the Bushes and Clinton for the situation in Iraq, but the present condition there is fully on the back of OBAMA and his worthless advisors!!
It's tough to pay attention to a visionary that thinks 1+1+1=2.
Glenn Beck describes himself as a libertarian.
So why would he try to court Collectivists?
What’s the difference? Libertarians and leftists ally all the time, on drugs, liberation from sexual morality, open borders....
Brave New World.
Libertarians don't try to co-opt the rest of society into financing and regulating their "Brave New World."
lol
That is why they call every traditional conservative who doesn’t agree with them “fascist nanny stater NAZI’s” but they love joining arms with Democrats to open the border and dole out free pot to the poor in Berkeley, and celebrate gay marriage.
Speaking of Collectivists....
“Bush(and I then concurred) made a mistake going into Iraq.”
Umm, no he didn’t. Consider that the messy images of Syria/Iraq you’re contorted over as well as the entire media representation of the Iraq war has been brought to you by Sunni ‘journalists’ mostly from Baghdad. I don’t think it’s reasonable to derive opinion from 35% of a nation’s population who are the dispossessed supporters of a brutal dictator.
I’m not saying you’re a tool or have been pwned just that I experienced life amongst the 65% of the Iraqi population that did not support Saddam but did support the war, the US and our presence there. They’re still there and they still support us as do many Sunni tribes. Due to the insurgent Sunni media and the liberal MSM you will never hear this. You might as well wait for a CNN expose on Alger Hiss being a communist agent.
We will have a role in the future. We’re the only ones they all trust -even the terrorists. We’ve mediated the infighting before and reached equitable agreements and we’ll likely do it again -with no help or thanks from liberals and fools.
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