Was Iraq About WMD; Or Was
It About The Risks And "The Message"?
War is not the answer, the protesters say? It depends on the question. What if the question had been: "How can we protect the American people given the violent world in which we live, where diplomacy and appeasement have failed to prevent attacks on Americans abroad and on America itself?"
War was the answer because we were already in a de facto state of war. Weapons of mass destruction, oil, and freedom for the Iraqi people weren't the major reasons for taking out Iraq, although they played a part. America had two major reasons for going into Iraq.
First was The Message: In a previous column, I wrote: "On September 6, 1970, Islamic terrorists hijacked Swissair, TWA, and Pan Am airliners and blew them up. The next day, they attacked a British airliner and destroyed it. That date, September 6, 1970, marked an Islamist declaration of war against Western nations. Sadly, we've been either too oblivious or too much in denial to realize that we've been in a state of war since then."
Bill Clinton seemed oblivious to the ongoing state of war. He assumed that launching a few cruise missiles at some desert tents and an aspirin factory would persuade Islamists to call off their jihad against America. His miscalculations led to the slaughter on September 11, 2001.
President Bush understands that we've been in a state of war that will continue until we annihilate or neutralize all Islamists, an unlikely possibility, at least in the short term. He can, however, neutralize those terrorists who are the most dangerous because they are the best financed. He can't stop renegade attacks by independent terrorist cells, but he can stop the terrorist groups that other nations support.
That's why we needed The Message: "This is to remind you that America has taken out one nation, Afghanistan, because it was complicit in the attacks that killed 3,000 innocent Americans. We took out another nation, Iraq, because there was a risk that it was a threat to America. If you continue to support those who kill Americans, you will be next."
The second reason for removing Iraq as a threat was the risks, specifically the risks of doing nothing in the face of the ongoing war. Successful entrepreneurs, military strategists, and others who deal with an uncertain future analyze risks and rewards to make the best decision given the options. The entrepreneur isn't sure whether his new business will fail within a year, but he has analyzed the risks and potential rewards, and calculated that the rewards of going forward outweigh the risks. Tommy Franks was never a hundred percent sure that our casualties would be as low as they were. He analyzed the risks and potential for victory and decided on the best strategy. He had no way of knowing whether the Republican Guard would launch a massive chemical attack or suck our fast-moving troops into a trap outside Baghdad, but he had to take risks to win.
Since the smoke cleared on 9/11, President Bush has faced the most challenging decisions of any presidency in recent times. His first decision: What actions should he take to minimize Islamist attacks on America? That's when the risk of doing nothing became obvious.
Suppose your neighbor is a known criminal who has had family members and friends murdered. Now he's threatening your family. Would you feel safe if a police detective told you, "There's only a small risk that he's crazy enough to have someone in your family killed like he did his"? Wouldn't you take some action?
President Bush faced the risk that Saddam either directly or through an Islamist terror group would attack America again. How much of a risk should we be willing to accept before we take action? Should Bush have done nothing if the CIA told him there was a small risk that Saddam-a known criminal who has killed family members, friends, and underlings, and slaughtered his own people-would be crazy enough to load cargos of high explosives and chemical weapons on ships and explode them in U. S. harbors, killing tens of thousands and destroying the U. S. economy? Saddam had the ships and the weapons.
President Bush had to assess the risks of invading and not invading Iraq. The Pentagon may have told him that combat deaths could be high, perhaps as many as a thousand. "If I do nothing," Bush could have replied, "there is a risk that we could lose tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans in the next attacks. I can't take that risk."
He can't reveal that he invaded Iraq to send a message to other hostile governments (Iran, Syria, North Korea, and others) to call back their terrorist gangs, and block any others that might have a link back to them, or risk being the next target. He's hamstrung with international diplomacy constraints. Revealing the real message behind Operation Iraqi Freedom would dilute its effectiveness and provide ammunition to the leftist media and American-haters worldwide.
Democrats have been grasping for an issue to undermine our president, and they think they've found one in sixteen words in his State of the Union speech. He stated that British intelligence had learned that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium in Africa. It was a true statement, but was the intelligence a hundred percent accurate? No, just as business and war carries risks and uncertainties, so does intelligence, but the Democrats and their leftist friends in the media are using the issue to undermine our efforts in Iraq. It's more important to them that Hillary or another leftist gets elected than that we prevail in Iraq.
Americans must understand at least this: We can't wimp out in Iraq and withdraw before we've clearly sent The Message. Otherwise, the Islamist war on America will never end.
To comment on this article or express your opinion directly to the author, you are invited to e-mail Allan at acstover@comcast.net .
RECENT COLUMNS: Archives are shown, going back nine months, from the date of this article. To see articles older than that, consult the archive listings accompanying earlier articles.
07/15/03: Will All Perversions Soon Become "Normal"?
07/08/03: The World Knows America Is Different, But Do They Know Why?
07/01/03: Will International Agreements Lead To America's Self-Destructing?