Posted on 06/11/2003 5:35:41 PM PDT by Rennes Templar
Edited on 04/29/2004 2:02:40 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- Tom Friedman of The New York Times is an absolutely terrific columnist. He has won a roomful of prizes -- including a couple of Pulitzers.
And he has earned all of them, along with the uncommon respect of his colleagues for being a reporter first and then a columnist. This week, Friedman wrote a column that made me so angry I now write to rebut it.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
I wonder why he specified "enlisted ranks"? I'm guessing that one or more legislators (Republican) had a son or daughter serving as officers.
Of course, to the Mark Shields of the world, officers don't count. I mean, it's not like they're actually out there leading the troops or anything...
Now we hear all the excuses but that doesn't excuse going to war on false pretenses. A fellow Texan, Lyndon Johnson, tried this in the Tonkin incident and it cost him his second term. Bush is also copying Johnson by having guns and butter at the same time. In fact he is outspending Clinton even on domestic spending.
You can protest any criticism of Bush but your protestations only makes the situation worse. Bush destroyed the trust that he accummulated with this one misstep. We have about 200 graves filled so far in this fiasco and the toll continues.
If they don't get a handle on the Iraq situation, the results will multiply. I voted for Bush but I have been sorely disappointed in his actions. He is surely not a fiscal conservative and his foreign policy has followed the same interventionism of Clinton.
In fact, his campaign was to be more humble in foreign policy and less interested in foreign adventures. His actions have been exactly opposite so this is not the first time he has mislead the public. Sorry, but the only way Bush is going to survive is to come clean and apologetic for the propaganda.
Quote please. I've read a lot of Bush' speeches, and I don't ever recall him making that point. There were always reservations and explanations that made clear that the threat was not immediate. At least, that is what I recall. So, a quote and source would be greatly appreciated.
You know as well as I that Bush promised us that if we didn't attack Iraq, he was capable of launching an attack on us. Now the story is that we have to have more time. It's a long time to November,2004. He has to regain his credibility or he couldn't win dog catcher.
Precisely. In fact, the point was that the threat was NOT immediate. We had to keep it from getting there.
There is a lot of rewriting of history here.
Now, I wonder . . . will this statement be borne out if I go to your profile page and do a Find in Forum? Should I even bother to check?
I think we're going to hear a lot about "immediate" or "imminent" threat and WMD. I think the post-conflict debate about the war is important. I also believe it is an unavoidable aspect of the human conscience - to judge our actions (for most of us anyway). If we were "fooled into war by our own government," we as Americans will not be satisfied to leave it at that.
As I understood the debate leading up to the war, much of the disagreement did focus on the issues being raised now.
1. Did Saddam's regime pose a threat, direct or indirect, to the US and/or her allies? What was the scope of the threat?
2. If yes, was that threat immediate (interchangeable with imminent for our purpose?) so as to justify a pre-emptive attack by the US, either unilaterally or with limited international support (because realpolitik would have authorized any action not opposed by UN veto holders)?
I think Wolfowitz accurately described the multiple concerns in the administration leading to war with Iraq. He stated those concerns in his Vanity Fair interview as, "One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two."
I think even the critics of this administration recognize there was public debate about these multiple concerns (which included administration members/advisors) when they note the numerous, conflicting, failed reasons for attacking Iraq. Bookman listed them in his infamous September 2002 "empire" column, "It is not about weapons of mass destruction, or terrorism, or Saddam, or U.N. resolutions." I even remember reading commentary about how Bush needed a "bumper sticker" reason for the war and comparisons to similar arguments made by the Clinton administration.
Mixed in with this debate was the policy position expressed previously in the PNAC paper by many in, and advising, this administration. This was further buttressed by the similarities in the policy expressed in the NSS. This is where much of the material in the debate on pre-emptive, unilateral action by the US came from - and how it contrasted with other interpretations of international law.
But I don't think the administration ever put forward the immediate threat of Iraqi WMD to the US as a cause for war. The direct threat, yes. Which brought up comparisons with North Korea and the USSR. Those countries posed a direct threat (perhaps an even more imminent threat others argued) but we chose to contained them, or were demanding multilateral diplomatic solutions.
I offer the poll below as further argument that the administration did not try to convince the public that Iraqi WMD posed an immediate threat to the US. I could be wrong, and the administration did try and failed. But I don't think so, because I can't find where they made the "immediate" WMD threat argument.
| CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll. Latest: March 14-15, 2003. N=1,007 adults nationwide. MoE ± 3 (total sample). | ||||||
|
"Which comes closest to your view: Iraq poses an immediate threat to the United States, Iraq poses a long-term threat to the U.S., but not an immediate threat, or Iraq does not pose a threat to the United States at all?" Options were rotated. Form A (N=488, MoE ± 5) |
||||||
| Immed- iate Threat |
Long- term Threat |
Not a Threat At All |
No Opinion |
|||
| % | % | % | % | |||
| 3/14-15/03 | 36 | 54 | 10 | - | ||
| 2/7-9/03 | 36 | 56 | 6 | 2 | ||
| 1/31 - 2/2/03 | 29 | 61 | 7 | 3 | ||
|
. |
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I think all this is important, because I don't think the issue of pre-emption, with it's precedence in history and attempts to restrain it in international law, became a part of the American collective consciousness. I think if we are really on the road to US dominated global empire, it is pre-emption that must be accepted. Unilateralism must merely be understood.
Personally, I think the US did face a threat from the Middle East of escalating, state sponsored, organized international terrorism. I think proliferation and terrorist's willingness to use deadlier weapons was part of that threat. I think ending our unresolved conflict with Iraq became necessary after 9/11. I think Saddam's actions leading up to the conflict justified our attack and, in a very Machiavellian way, strengthened our position (post-conflict) against other powers aspiring for multilateral or multipolar order in the world; and therefore more concerned with demonstrations of unquestionable US strength.
Exactly when was I lied to?
In 1991, when we were exposed to chemical weapons at Khamisiyah and elsewhere?
In 1995, when Kamel defected providing proof of Iraq's deception and continued efforts in it's WMD programs?
In 1998, 2001 and 2002, when the world's intelligence agencies (including the CIA, Canadians and BND) and UNMOVIC were claiming Iraq was pursuing WMD?
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