Posted on 05/07/2003 7:15:56 PM PDT by FairOpinion
After each war, historians sift through the record to discern its real causes. Invariably, they divide into two camps: the court historians who defend the war leaders and the revisionists who prosecute them before the bar of history.
After World War II, the evidence that FDR had steered us into war, while asserting he was doing his best to avert war, was so massive even his court historians admit he lied. Wrote Thomas A. Bailey in FDR's defense, "He was like the physician who must tell the patient lies for his own good."
Roosevelt had cut off Japan's oil, sent the Flying Tigers to China and sought to tempt Japan into attacking a line of picket ships. He had lied about German subs torpedoing U.S. destroyers and Nazi plans to conquer South America and replace the Christian cross with the swastika. This mattered in 1950. For, with Stalin triumphant in Europe and China, it appeared – in Churchill's phrase – that we "had killed the wrong pig."
But today, with the immense focus on the Holocaust, the question is no longer, "Did FDR lie?" But, "Why did we not declare war sooner?"
Vietnam was, in Reagan's phrase, "a noble cause." But because it was a lost cause, it is now said and believed we only went to war because LBJ had misled us about the Tonkin Gulf incident.
The war in Iraq is being portrayed by the president's men as a just and necessary war that removed a mortal peril. But if our victory turns to ashes in our mouths, and we discover that we have inherited our own West Bank in Mesopotamia, the White House will have to explain again why we went there.
In his speech from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln, President Bush told the nation, "With those attacks (of 9-11), the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got" – i.e., the invasion of Iraq was payback for the killers of Sept. 11.
But is this the truth? For this war on Iraq was not sold to the nation as retribution for 9-11. Indeed, the ties between Iraqi intelligence and the al-Qaida killers turned out to be bogus War Party propaganda.
We were told, rather, that Saddam had gas and germ weapons and was working on nuclear weapons. And once he had them, he would use them on us, or give them to Osama. "Do you want to wait for a nuclear 9-11?" Americans were asked.
Trusting the president, believing that he had information we did not, a majority of Americans approved of pre-emptive war. But where, now, are the thousands of artillery warheads and terror weapons the president and secretary of state told us Saddam had?
We have scoured Iraq for a month. No Scuds have been found. No chemical or biological weapons. No laboratories or production lines. No evidence that Iraq was building nukes or seeking fissile material.
"Every statement I make today is backed up by ... solid sources," Colin Powell told the United Nations. But since then, his case has crumbled. Were he a district attorney, Colin Powell would be under investigation today for prosecutorial incompetence or possible fraud. One British document he relied on turned out to be a 10-year-old term paper by a graduate student. The documents from Niger proving Iraq was seeking "yellowcake" for nuclear bombs turned out to be forgeries – and crude ones at that.
Who forged them? Why have we not been told? Does the secretary who put his integrity on the line not want to know?
If our occupation of Iraq turns sour and U.S. troops are being shot in the back, a year from now, Americans are going to demand to know. And President Bush could face the charge thrown up in the face of FDR by Clare Boothe Luce, that he "lied us into war."
Both the president and Powell are honorable men. If they misled us, surely it is because they themselves were misled. It is impossible to believe either man would deliberately state as fact what he knew to be false. But the president must find these weapons – or find the men who told him, with such certitude, that Iraq had them.
For there is something strange here. If Saddam had these weapons, why did he not surrender them to save himself? If he did not give them up because he intended to use them on us, why did he not use them on us? And if they were destroyed before the war, why did he not simply show us where, and thereby save himself, his family and his regime?
Last fall, Congress abdicated, surrendered its war-making power to a president who demanded that Congress yield it up. If Congress wishes to redeem itself, it should unearth the truth about why we went to war. Was the official explanation the truth, or was it political cover for an American imperial war?
Speaking of TRUTH, that's some right there, RC.
You're OK in my book, Thomas.
Some of us harbor NO skepticism. There's no foundation for that. The Manhattan Project was not housed in a campus style office-laboratory center that opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a facility tour attended by local media and dignitaries.
There are hundreds of miles of underground bunker mazes, thousands of schools, hospitals, urban storefronts, mosques, motor vehicles and private residences that were at the full command of Huessein. All could house the materials, tools and end-product of WMD manufacture.
Iraqi citizens know when the Killing Crew took over a local structure and unusual activity was occuring. They were hip to a buzz when a Russian, Libyan or Chinese contingent showed up in An Najaf or Tikrit. It'll come out, just as these 55 playing-card celebrities are being ratted out day by day, by Iraqis who know everything happening on their street. It'll come into focus.
Skepticism because we haven't found a warehouse or lab yet? It's unwarranted.
Welcome to the James Shatner school of overacting.
About the only thing I can think of is GHWB may have had something to do with his getting the boot from the Reagan White House.
I know that he got into a spat with Peggy Noonan and some of the other young speech writers just before getting banned to a windowless and staffless basement office.
Maybe he's perpetually angry because he couldn't rise above speechwriter and so is now taking it out on the party that didn't elevate him.
His TV show isn't doing very well and the network has cut back on it (they also hired Peggy Noonan...last place that happened pat wasn't around much longer). His magazine is taking off like???? Well, kind of like his last campaign, plunging and gaining speed. His last book wasn't much more then a rehash of his previous books with some of his editorials thrown in...YAWN (not difficult to get from the library, never on a waiting list).
It really would be interesting to know why he's such a bitter, whinny old man.
"I wanna know where the hell they are. Somebody's lying. KHAAAAANNNN!"
Down the memory hole, Mr. Buchanan, with OBL and Mullah Omar.
Hey, did you catch Everybody Loves Raymond last night?
Did you actually read it, bud?
Or did the B-word trigger the usual Pavlovian reaction?
Pat and his followers can't or won't accept the new paradigm. It's our adventurism and pro-Israeli foreign policy, and it's those immigrants and lowball wage foreigners. Fear, loathing and isolation doesn't get the job done in 2003. We compete for our lives and livelihoods in our innovative, expert and relentless American way. That's a working assumption going forward, not an option.
Those who want to pursue indefensible options of diplomatic and military isolationism and economic protectionism are already politically and ideologically extinct. No matter how loud they bray.
The real Buchanan was revealed by the sole act of seeking the Reform nomination. At that time the Reform party plank was mum about the social issues he appeared to care most about, with the possible exception of immigration. But abortion and homosexuality were not even on Reform's radar. And I don't believe he believed he could amend that situation; combining non-ideological independents with his pitch fork brigade, in a suitable amount of time .
By default then, he consented to support the very things he screamed the loudest against in '92, when he garnered that 37%. Pat turned out to be a Fraud, pure and simple.
I can't comment on Harry Browne because I don't really know that much about him, except to say that he inspires no confidence in me. And for the most part I think the Libertarians are in large part like Marx, in that they hold to an ideology of governance that refuses to take human nature into account, thereby becoming eviscerated either practically, or upon serious consideration of it.
That was enough for me, 150 of our heros died and tens of $billions were spent America to force terms of surrender on that regime in the first Desert Storm campaign. They flaunted their probation, fired at our pilots, plotted an assassination of our President, financed terrorism and trafficked in brutality and murder.
Saddam needed to go down in honor of those who were killed, wounded and poisoned in that first conflict. That was enough for me, sending a message of power and retribution to the "Arab Street". Don't eff with us, we're now factory direct to YOU, and we're going to do it on our American terms. Your European and U.N. protectors are null and void.
But, let's use common sense regarding the WMD thing: When Saddam included a female in his little Executive roundtable, it wasn't to demonstrate his commitment to equal status and opportunity for women in enlightened Iraq. She was "Madame Germ". I don't think Saddam had her there to provide ongoing updates on her progress in DISMANTLING biological weapon platforms and agents in an open and environmentally sensitive way.
Folks who desperately want Bush to fail are recalibrating the measuring sticks to satisfy that obsession. They're indistinguishable from the attack dogs at DU, and equally fangless.
Actually, I don't see him that way. He's a pretty engaging, jocular guy.
He knows what his role is, to provide the voice of Conservative disaffection with the GOP party and George W. Bush in particular. He does it in honesty, but he knows he's a tool. He's not going to get platform opportunities to argue fairly about abortion, the welfare fraud and outrage undrepinning the illegal immigration crisis, gay and lesbian infiltration of public education, cultural disease and social pathology of entitlement-enslaved urban African American society. The issues chosen to address those critical challenges will serve to paint Buchanan as a heartless Conservative hitman.
So, he's the icon of conservative disillusionment within the GOP, and he's the ogre of the intolerant, fascist right. Bill Press just works the Democrat Party line like a champ.
Buchanan accepts this tradeoff and exploitation with his "just making a buck" good natured demeanor. Novak, McLaughlin, Huffington, O'Reilly ... they're just playing their part, selling their value as outsiders from the cult.
Unfortunately, he often takes himself far too seriously (ie. the bust of himself just inside the front door of his home) and the faithful can't tell the difference between populist rhetoric and real personal conviction (ie. buy American, but I'll drive a German car).
Some segments haven't even been named yet.
Never? Such a strong term...the UN had 5 month after Res. 1441 and the left wanted to give them another month. They should at least give Bush the same consideration. FWIW, they DID find banned weapons BEFORE the war, do you remember the Al Samoud II missiles they crushed? And what about the chemical warheads that Saddam failed to account for? Even Blix stated that they produced no "clear evidence" of the destruction of biological and chemical agents.
The Reform Party was a resource rich springboard for a meaningful Third Party statement. Perot's sucess garnered the FEC funds necessary to build a nationwide grassroots organization and develop a distinctive message.
It was going to belong to the Buchanan cultural Conservatives and Populists or belong to the Jesse Ventura cultural libertarians and free traders. There was no alliance or accomodation in the cards.
There's no unified third party message that is discernably unique from either the GOP or the Democrat Party. The GOP and Democrat platforms are markedly and clearly different from one another. Venturas group would have floundered, as Buchanan's campaign floundered.
I'm glad we don't have to fling another $8 million of our public money down that sinkhole in 2004. The Pubbies and Democrats offer profoundly different philosophies and the "THEY'RE BOTH THE SAME" Reform and Green crowd garnered 6 million of 105 million votes cast in 2000. It's a statement on the sentiment of the American public that Al Gore needed to stumble to the right in order to sell his nonsense, such that 6 million nutjob lefties voted for Ralph Nader in a pyhrric immolation. Only 600,000 Conservatives felt that the GOP had moved leftward so unacceptably that a vote for Buchanan was warranted.
The Republicans ARE the Conservative option of Individual Right and Prosperity. One percent of the non Democrat or Green voters in the election disagreed with that.
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