Posted on 05/13/2015 6:41:55 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Jeb Bush is taking extreme fire for answering, in response to a question that set the predicate of “knowing what he knows now,” that yes,he would still have gone into Iraq in 2003, as his brother did when president.
(Now he says he did not hear the “knowing what I know now” part of the question.)
Far be it from me to defend Governor Bush, of whom I have a not-very-high opinion that continues to sink, but on the merits, the case must still be made that the original eviction of Saddam was in many respects a good call. (Okay, readers and commenters, cue up your outrage. Go ahead.) Granted, the two terms of Barack Obama have made Iraq into a mess. But allow me, for argument’s sake, to rephrase the question: Knowing what we know now about what happened before Obama took office on January 20, 2009, would you have gone into Iraq? The answer then, from my end, would have been an unambiguous yes. First, we did rid the world of Saddam. That is no small thing. He was a menace.
We forget now just how much of one he was, but he was a menace indeed. He could have done great damage had he stayed in power.
Second, he still did have traces of weapons of mass murder (WMM — a better term than WMD). And he had maintained the capability to rapidly rebuild his stocks. The sanctions regime, undermined by a massive oil-for-food scandal, was eroding. Europe was, as is its wont, being Europe, meaning feckless and corrupt. Saddam was about to outlast its will.
Furthermore, there is some reason to believe he had even more WMMs, and that he spirited them to Syria, as Israeli intelligence suggested at the time. If that is so, then the whole WMM subject takes on a different light, one that makes the military eviction of Saddam look far better.
Third, the Iraqi people welcomed representative government with enthusiasm and courage. Their first and second post-Saddam elections — the voting process, not the results — were inspirational. And they catalyzed a series of similar movements elsewhere — the Orange Revolution, the Rose Revolution, the Cedar Revolution, etc. — which provided hope to millions. Granted, the Bush administration’s mishandling of the military situation and the reconstruction — until it finally tried the surge in 2007 – threw away most of the benefits. But then the troop surge worked, and Iraq stabilized, and it became for a while a useful ally in the region.
Fourth, and most importantly, Saddam’s ouster had a bank-shot effect of scaring Libya’s dangerous Qaddafi straight, at least temporarily. He turned over vast stores of weapons. He stopped in its tracks a nuke program that was far closer to fruition than we had realized. For five or six years he provided incredibly useful intelligence against worldwide terrorist networks, and against the nuke network of A. Q. Khan.
Fifth, while this is only a satellite effect of our involvement in Iraq, it actually served as a net-plus politically for George W. Bush in his re-election effort against John Kerry — a net-plus without which Bush probably would not have won. This is from memory, but I think the “for-or-against” Iraq poll questions in that campaign were about a net wash, but the “who do you trust to be strong in defending American interests” question still favored Bush significantly enough to have made the difference — along with high turnout in anti–gay-marriage initiatives — between winning and losing. And if anybody thinks that subsequent Bush performance made that a pyrrhic victory, I have two names for them: Roberts and (especially) Alito.
As frustrating as the Supreme Court is, imagine how badly off the country would be if Justices Rehnquist and O’Connor had been replaced by justices Laurence Tribe and Hillary Rodham Clinton. And imagine how much more badly bungled so much other domestic policy would have been under Kerry. Ugh. Meanwhile, the War on Terror for the second Bush term certainly was a lot more successful at protecting American lives and interests than it would have been under Kerry. Of course, we can play the “what if” game forever. But conservatives should stop acting as if the major foreign-policy/defense initiative that most of us supported at the time was an utter failure. In fact, it was a mixed bag — but some of the items in the bag that were good were very good indeed.
We have to concede that the contrast of these situations could not be more stark:
Not good: Saddam and no nukes or WMDs (not true-sent to Syria, another Baathist regime, along with what exists in Iraq now and was suppressed by Rove(?))
Good: Iran and nuclear ambitions, potentially already having nuclear weapons they developed or got from N Korea
Root out and destroy the WMD every intelligence service in the world said was there
to build a western trained military where officers were trained to be under civilian control and respect civilians (a rarity in the world much less arab world
to rebuild the economy to provide for daily comforts for the common people (water, sewers, electricity, phone service, health system, schools) and allow for development of capitalism to give hope to a rising middle class and reduce the hopelessness and poverty used by the imams to radicalize the young
the noble idea was to get rid of a hellhole of tyrannical hopelessness that was only going to breed generations of envy hate and resentment of the west - root causes of terrorism that led to 911
and oh yeah, keep a 2 front strategic battle going to keep them fighting our military over there, not coming after our civilians here- like they are now
yeah, that Bush, what a fool to come up with such a plan.
The alternative solution you would propose to end terrorism roots?
Keep troops abroad for generations?
Stay home and try to stop them at our borders (where we are now, but we are not guarding borders, we are trying to guard every US domestic military base, school, aircraft, railway station, mall etc etc etc- because now they are here inside America, not on a battleground in Iraq and Afghanistan)
Kill everyone?
How DO you end the cycle of arab/muslim hatred and attacks against western civilization?
nobody talks about it, but taking out Saddam required that his 2 sons also be taken out.
regardless, something had to give with Saddam eventually. He was making a mockery of “Food for Oil”, “No Fly Zones” etc...
So the plan was to make non-Western people western, with western values and institutions.
Brilliant. I can see how that can work /s
yeah, imagine how dumb it would have been to try that with Japan in 1945
So you would have our military run around the world making everyone mini-Americans?
First of all, how much is that going to cost? Secondly, why the hell is it our business to make everyone on the planet just like us (whether they want to be or not)?
oh no, I’m sure our military would prefer to cower here at home on our bases in our communities waiting for terrorists to storm the gates, attack our community schools, malls, churches, synagogues, urban streets, tunnels, bridges, power grid, airports and airliners and other American targets on our soil. Then we can teach them a lesson!
Taking the fight to the enemy to battlefields of our choosing the time and place is just too expensive, after all. Lets just hunker down here, shine our boots, and wait
And thanks for reminding us it really is stupid to think that people of other cultures want the mini-American values of liberty mercy and freedom from fear of being tortured and murdered en masse while the free world watches and waits in line hoping to not be next.
BTW, you didn’t come up with an alternative to what Bush attempted.
C’mon genius, put on your thinking cap and give us a better strategy
There was no "good" course of action available, not even inaction. Action leads to the presumption that he could have foreseen the actions of his successors. Inaction leads to the sort of "why didn't we stop Hitler before" questions that are equally futile. Given what he knew when he knew it he made the decision he did. That is all that has any basis of fact behind it.
Wait, fighting terrorists is the same thing as making everyone into mini-Americans?
We are 319 million out of 7 Billion people on the planet. We can lead by example but we cannot go re-make everyone else’s culture. It’s just not feasible on any level imaginable, even if it were something that should be done, which of course it is not.
We had better think long and hard about those numbers. We can be strong and protect ourselves against long odds (like Israel does) but that doesn’t mean we can go around the globe changing everyone’s culture and values by force.
“and oh yeah, keep a 2 front strategic battle going to keep them fighting our military over there, not coming after our civilians here- like they are now”
To me this was and is the first and most important reason for the war.
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