Posted on 02/09/2004 11:11:43 AM PST by cogitator
President Bush, his credibility in the balance, is appointing a commission to investigate the failures of prewar intelligence on Iraq.
His opponents, sensing an opportunity, are saying it's nothing but a trick. Since there's no way the commission would report its findings -- certainly not anything negative -- before the presidential election, the commission only buys the president time to ride out the crisis.
The skeptics are probably right. But even they miss what may be the most important point raised by the Iraq War. We are arguing now about what the president knew, and when he knew it. What might be more helpful in the long term is a discussion of what he did, and why he did it.
It's a point Robert L. Oorthuys of Shohomish, Wash., wants to make.
"A protracted examination of the CIA is purely a red herring," he told me. "There is no indication that a few more accuracy points on the part of the CIA would have prevented this mistake. The real issue has to do with the standards and justifications we allow our leaders to use when making the decision to let loose our troops on foreign shores."
In other words, we mustn't get so involved with replaying the video to see how much Janet Jackson exposed, and how deliberately, that we miss the fact that the Super Bowl was being played.
The Super Bowl, in the Iraq War case, is the matter of when, how and under what circumstances America will make war.
This is what Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., was saying a year ago -- to such deafening silence:
"This coming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world," Byrd was saying before our warplanes struck Iraq with the obvious intention of killing its president.
"The doctrine of pre-emption -- the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future -- is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self-defense."
Byrd, dean of the Senate Democrats, saw the danger before the war. Oorthuys, who describes himself as "a 53-year-old lightly employed software consultant," worries that we will be distracted from it now -- in part by the very commission that is supposed to clear things up.
"We need to clearly understand and agree on how the U.S. makes the decision to go to war," he says. "We face similar circumstances in Syria, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea and other places. With Iraq, we have made an enormous mistake that has cost thousands of lives and huge amounts of money, while drawing into question our very motivations and values.
"So we need to examine how this administration came to the conclusion that war was finally and absolutely required. And we need to know what parts were played by members of the administration and Congress."
Americans, for all our imagined sophistication, can be incredibly naive and manipulable. Let an earnest-looking political leader tell us that what he proposes is in the interest of good old American values, and we might be led into repealing the Bill of Rights, requiring prayer in our public schools, denying civil rights to "heathens and infidels" -- or making war on "evil" countries that are no particular menace to us. Someone needs to remind us of the things we used to learn in junior high civics classes.
That doesn't make the president's commission a bad idea -- though it's hard to see how it could bring much clarity. Already, we have the secretary of state saying he might have recommended differently about going to war if he knew what he now knows; we have the head of the CIA acknowledging "some intelligence shortcomings" and predicting that the agency will be revealed as neither completely wrong nor completely right.
And it won't matter any more than if, some weeks hence, it is determined definitively that Janet Jackson was wearing a pastie. It's still just a distraction.
But we also have a former Treasury secretary saying the administration was determined to have this war long before 9/11 provided a pretext, and some pretty good evidence that some in the administration wanted the war as a first step in rearranging the geopolitics of the Middle East.
We need to know whether our government was hijacked, or nearly so, by a small cabal of ideologues. That could be the whole ball game.
I know this is a hot-button topic right now, but I think that makes it worth of discussion.
Hussain was in breach of the cease fire agreement by not providing documentation on the destruction of his last known WMD, was sandbagging inspectors, and had attacked US aircraft over 300 times. The end of a cease fire means a return to fire.
Had the POTUS done anything other than attack Iraq, he would have been derilict in his duty.
Intelligence data is just another tool in any president's arsenal. We should want the best intelligence because it helps us wage war more effectively. The decision to wage war, however, is a matter of policy. After 9/11, President Bush decided, rightly in my view, that US policy would be to take the war to our enemies before they could launch more such attacks on us. Afghanistan and Iraq were at the top of the target list, so they got hit one-two. The issue now is whether to continue the war to victory. The Democrats, predictably, want to throw in the towel. President Bush doesn't. It's that simple.
I would agree that the intelligence "failure" isn't the main issue here. It certainly isn't a strictly U.S. "failure," (that word in quotes because everyone is now proceeding under the equally unproven assumption that because we didn't encounter these weapons in the field, they never existed). Of course, (1) at one point they did because he used them, and (2) nearly every intelligence agency in the world was similarly "fooled." Saddam himself went to considerable lengths to cultivate the notion that they were still around, including issuing atropine and chemical suits to his Republican Guard units. It may well all have been a sham, if a thoroughly illogical one, but if it was, it was a good one.
Much of this re-examination will cover old ground. If intelligence indications about such weapons are considered insufficient for response, then what will be sufficient? Must we really wait for their use?
This is the same argument Nelville Chamberlin made in the 1930's about Hitler--just give him Checkoslovaka and he no longer represents a threat to anyone.
Part of the argument today results from Bush's failure to define the enemy. The enemy is a disorganized assembly of Mohammadan religious groups; and related ethnic and geographical political interests that are offended by the success and prosperity generated by the free enterprise limited government constitutional political system.
The offense results from the threat posed by the modern information age--like the socialists in Russia, it is no longer possible to conceal the fact that our Christian, constitutional political free enterprise economic system provides a much better life for our citizens than their system does. Sooner or later, the people wake up and throw their rulers out.
Saddam was a clear contributor to the disorganized assembly that is determined to destroy us. At one point, he had, was paying individual scientists to develop, was seeking technical assistance in the development of, weapons of mass destruction; chemical, biological, and nuclear. He contributed money; paid suicide bombers; and provided other resources to the attacking forces. None of this is at issue.
There is room for argument about the quantum of other resources--in his closed society, records don't exist to prove this. The Check's are pretty clear that there was a connection between Saddam's forces and the 911 attackers--but again, this is covert action and the record may be a little fuzzy.
But no doubt Saddam was allied with the enemy. And taking him out has made a major impact on the enemy assets. The enemy alliance has lost Libya (at least for the moment). Iraq is no longer a base for the enemy; no longer provides financial support for the enemy; and there is at least hope that a democratic or at least representative government will turn out to be an ally instead of an enemy. Revenue realized in Iraq from sale of oil to the West will no longer be used to support the war on America.
Fuzzy liberals like Rasberry don't make the connection but they didn't make the connection with Hitler in the 1930's either.
We may have a number of differences with the administration about how the attack was conduced; how the troops were supplied; how long we need to be there; and what the end product ought to look like. We may also differ on the issue of what we should do with the remaining problems like North Korea; Iran; Syria; and even Saudia Arabia. But there should be no argument about the propriety of the action in Iraq--it was a success; and it was in American interests.
And if the Liberals pursue the Russert line from Sunday morning as the basis for the campaign, Bush will win as he did against Russert. The American people know that administration policy was the right thing to have done.
Bush would do better if he could be a little clearer on the nature of the threat--from a domestic political perspective, he would like the Islamics to vote for him (which they won't) so he fails to identify them as the foundation for the use of force against America. Sooner or later, some American leader will stand up and define the threat in a way Americans can understand. But Raspberry misses the target.
I agree with the policy too. The devil is in the details. To phrase the question, at what point is full-scale war the option that you have to use to address the potentiality of such attacks?
Elaborating: there's a range of potential threats. To write it quickly:
A. Thinking about attacking us, but not capable of it;
B. Thinking about attacking us, and capable of it with a lot of effort and help;
C. Thinking about attacking us, capable of it and in the process of creating the means to do so;
D. Thinking about attacking us, capable of it and planning to use the existing weapons in their possession to do so.
I think, unless the foe clearly and obviously backs off when at level C, that level C justifies pre-emptive war. It seems to me that based on what we know now, Iraq and Saddam were at Level B, but pre-war intelligence indicated level C. So the attack was justified on pre-war intelligence but not on post-war intelligence. And that presents the problem for this doctrine.
If intelligence indications about such weapons are considered insufficient for response, then what will be sufficient? Must we really wait for their use?
The answer to the 2nd question is "absolutely not". The answer to the first question has to be about the quality of intelligence data.
Look at Libya. Apparently they had a much more extensive program than we knew about, perhaps more advanced than Iraq. Might have even justified a war to take out Khadaffi. But we didn't have good enough intelligence data to indicate that we should even consider a war against Libya.
Put me down for strong agreement on that point. Unfortunately I'm reminded of the game "Whack-a-mole". They keep popping up no matter how hard and how fast you whack. The only way to stop playing (in this case) is to turn off the game.
Now we need a definitive way to deal with Saudi Arabia. But if Al-Qaeda keeps attacking there, Saudi Arabia may have to deal with it themselves -- which would be a great outcome.
Even if the enemy could be better defined in the public mind, we need better ways to attack them. Strangling the money supply is one of the best ways (I particularly like what you said about Iraqi oil in this post).
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