Posted on 05/07/2004 1:33:38 PM PDT by Eurotwit
THE old Left has adopted "apologist" as its insult du jour. You hear and read constantly: "He's just an apologist for . . ."
Context defines the word as propagandist or lying scoundrel. Mostly it is applied to people who don't see doom for the US and its allies in Iraq.
I have myself been denounced recently as an apologist – for the Pope primarily, Iraq subsidiarily.
Consulting the New Shorter Oxford, I found an apologist is "one who defends another, a belief, etc., by argument". This sounded respectable. Indeed, it brought to mind Sir Lancelot's entrance song in Camelot:
C'est moi! C'est moi!
The angels have chose
To fight their battles below.
Leaving the Pope aside – because, as a philosopher, he has full mastery of apologetics – I turn willingly to argument in defence of the prudence and timeliness of our invasion of Iraq.
Saddam Hussein was either conned by his own into believing he had weapons of mass destruction, or he wished others to think he had them so as to act fearsome, or else he had them. He menaced under all options. When Saddam drove UN weapons inspectors out in 1998, after 12 years of obstruction and deception, they credited him with having 25 missiles filled with bio-weapons, 26,000 litres of anthrax and 1.5 tons of super-toxic VX gas.
If he destroyed them during the four uninspected years, where was the proof the UN demanded? The destruction of records, including computer hard disks, before our troops invaded point to the existence of an active WMD program.
Saddam had, after all, boasted of having almost to hand "the first Arab atomic bomb" – before the Israeli air force blew away his dreams and his French-constructed nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981. Given that North Korea lies under the enormous shadow of China, Iraq's was the world's most dangerous regime in 2003. As President George W. Bush said, action against imminent threat is too late.
Signs of progress in Iraq are encouraging, not least Kofi Annan's presaging Security Council authorisation of a multinational peacekeeping force. Jibes about the Americans seeking bail-out from an organisation they once overrode are disingenuous. The UN needs to seize every opportunity to repair its record on Iraq. Inexcusable torturing of Iraqi prisoners should serve as a reminder of regimes where there are no media exposes, no court martials, no recognition of such conduct as aberrant.
The New York Times accuses the Bush administration of "stubbornly refusing to admit mistakes". But when it stubbornly persists in correcting them, admissions are media playthings. Its reinstatement of some purged Baathist professionals and recruitment from the previously and hastily disbanded Iraqi army are fine signs of flexibility and pragmatism.
Polls show waning approval of Bush's handling the war during the deadly month of April, during which 138 American servicemen were killed. However, the polls also show Bush, resolute on Iraq, winning re-election.
The recent coagulation of guerillas, Sunnis in Fallujah and Shias in Najaf, provided daunting glimpses of America's hi-tech military might. Urban warfare is no longer an even match. The sight of American AC-130 gunships, looking in the flame-lit night skies like vehicles from Star Wars, blasting weapons warehouses in Fallujah with laser-guided bombs and rockets, was awesome. Not to mention ground troops receiving from overhead, on laptop computers, precise co-ordinates of enemy positions.
To the extent that one can take satisfaction from violent death, I was impressed by an AC-130 pilot's account of an engagement: "We saw Iraqis shooting their own guys in the back, to push them forward. So we left those soldiers in front alone and trained our firepower on the really bad guys."
There must certainly have been civilian deaths in the 10-to-1 casualty rate of Iraqis over Americans and their allies in the April showdowns, but with combatants pretending to be civilians, claims about numbers are ephemeral. The mortal risk-taking efforts of the Americans to avoid harming the innocent advertise their confidence of superiority.
The weekend rejoicing by anti-Americans in Fallujah and others about the pull-back of the US marines had an almost comic hollowness to it. The marines had their heel on the enemy's neck. They lifted it for reasons of political strategy and to save Iraqi lives. Half-fighting a war is dangerous and the consequences of giving to selected Iraqi soldiers the responsibility for subduing and disarming the city remain to be seen. But nobody should doubt the capacity of the hovering marines, given free rein, to reimpose the heel.
The redeployment in Fallujah and the patient siege of the holy city of Najaf is evidence that the agile Americans will do whatever it takes to achieve an epochal Iraqi election in January 2005.
Then, to call upon another lyricist: Gentlemen of media-land (and Scone) now abed/ Shall think themselves accursed that they were not here.
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