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.
Not to defend Jeb Bush, but it’s pretty obvious he was too quick to defend his brothers decision and missed the full question...
I think we have all done that at times....
Still not going to vote for him...
Is that directed at Jeb, or the author of this piece?
Did anyone really believe he’d have stated anything to the contrary?
Really?
It wouldn’t have been a mixed bag, if Bush had ignored the liberals and really taken out all the people that needed to be and then gone into Iran and destroyed the leadership there.
The problem isn’t that Pres. Bush went into Iraq, but that he allowed his hands to be tied there with ridiculous rules of engagement and then didn’t go into Iran to get rid of the current gov’t there. (which btw would have been relatively easy at that time ....not so easy anymore)
I sometimes feel like a lone wolf saying these things to people.
First of all, W didn’t have the benefit of hindsight. Given what was “known” at the time, it would have been irresponsible to allow Saddam to stay in power.
But, as this author points out... even now, the decision looks to have been justified. The biggest mistake made was by Obama in completely removing our forces.
Of course he would have, because Jeb is owned by the same foreign powers as George.
I agree with him. Saddam had to be removed.
Yes. But that could have been done in Gulf War I. We can thank that worthless POS fake Republican Secretary Colin Powell for that. He saw the utter crippling defeat of Saddam’s forces in Kuwait and Southern Irag and the rapid drive to Baghdad coming and he became the true coward liberal that he is and always will be and convinced Bush to give it up.
Further, because of 9/11 it was easy to stretch the reason to invade and topple Saddam, but frankly he could have been assassinated, too. IMO, we didn’t need to spend more than a trillion dollars, and worse, lose over 3000 American soldiers’ lives to do it.
I’m must not into this piece-meal approach any more. If it is a real problem, I say nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Not one word about the regional destabilization that unleashed radical islam to destroy Christian communities existing since apostolic times. Not one word.
But when have neocons ever given a thought to such things? Demented with dreams of secular messianism, America has been wreaking havoc worldwide like an out-of-control giant’s child for over a century now.
No we should not have gone into Iraq just to get rid of one bad guy. They have an endless supply of them. We’d be there for eternity.
This is stupid. We should ONLY go to war based on OUR national defense, period ... not to help some Muslims kill other Muslims.
I don’t care for Obama but it’s not fair to blame him for the Middle East erupting into sectarian religious civil wars. These have been going on for over 1000 years ... way before Obama, Bush or the USA for that matter.
These religious civil wars between Muslims have ZERO to do with us.
this
then of course, there’s the democrat party that joined the enemy in doing everything possible to ensure our mission in Iraq failed
if only Jeb had a spine to say so
Bush
“then of course, there’s the democrat party that joined the enemy in doing everything possible to ensure our mission in Iraq failed”
Exactly.
For whatever reason, Jeb wasn’t prepared for the question....he should have been.
I sure hope someone else rises to the top. I don’t want to vote for Jeb.
After killing Saddaam, what was the mission?
It seems to me it was to make Muslim people not be like Muslim people.
That’s a pretty dumb mission.
Why?
If Saddam was such a bad guy why didn’t someone else from the region remove him? Why was this our job?
Saddam may have been an evil tyrant but he was THEIR evil tyrant. And he kept the sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia in check. Sure he did it brutally, but what concern is that of ours or at least ours alone? Where were the other Muslim leadership if they really wanted him out?
I would have liked for him to say he would have went in the first time and actually finished the job.
I should have been understood that if we removed Saddam, it would require a commitment of at least twenty years to stay in Iraq afterward.
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