Posted on 05/18/2003 9:25:12 AM PDT by kaylar
THE sound of chickens coming home to roost fills the air, as the government seeks to counter accusations that the failure thus far to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq negates the legitimacy of the war it has just fought there.
Despite the fact that many of those making the loudest noises in this regard would not have supported war on any grounds short of Saddam Hussein setting off a nuke in central London, and could probably have been sidelined by a government still basking in the warm glow of victory, senior ministers went on the propaganda offensive last week, only to emerge from several media encounters looking both patronising and ill-briefed.
On Thursday’s Today programme, John Reid insulted the nation’s intelligence by citing the precedent of the missing millions from the Great Train Robbery. The money was never found, but the crime still happened, he pointed out, and Ronnie Biggs was still guilty as hell. Reid also stressed the difficulty of finding anything, be it a dictator on the run or a chemical weapons dump, in a country the size of France. Look at Northern Ireland, he suggested, where IRA weapons caches had eluded detection for nigh on 30 years. They hadn’t, actually - as was quickly pointed out in the press coverage which followed Reid’s lazy, arrogant performance.
Such clutching at straws reflects the difficulty the government now finds itself in, having alleged the existence in Iraq of chemical and biological weapons, primed for action within 45 minutes according to the Prime Minister himself, as a key plank in its case for war. As invasion approached, Tony Blair recognised the fragility of the WMD case and put more emphasis on the moral arguments against Saddam (his penchant for genocide by poison gas, beheading women, ripping out tongues - that sort of thing).
The coming conflict would be a war of liberation, and not merely a police operation to punish a rogue state in breach of its disarmament obligations. But in hanging so much of its credibility on the alarming threat posed by Saddam’s chemical, biological and perhaps even nuclear weapons, the government left a hostage to fortune behind when it went boldly to war.
Now, weapons of mass destruction may yet be found in Iraq. No one doubts that they were a feature of Saddam’s rule, as was their use against Iranian troops, Kurdish rebels and Iraqi civilians at various times. And it wouldn’t be that difficult to hide a few thousand litres of this or that, even some delivery systems, in a country which is, as they keep telling us, as big as France (although we’re now also being told it’s as big as California, which sounds even more daunting).
But if in the end no weapons are found, does it undermine the case for war?
Only if you believe the official line that their existence was the main reason why war happened. A few weeks before the conflict began, I argued in this space that neither the elimination of weapons of mass destruction nor the defence of human rights, while worthwhile aims, were sufficiently urgent in themselves to explain Operation Iraqi Freedom. By continuing to insist that they were, Blair and his ministers had left a gaping hole at the heart of the pro-war argument, and the millions who marched against it were filling that vacuum with some very reasonable objections.
If WMDs were all it was about, why on earth not give the inspectors more time before plunging the Middle East, and maybe the world, into chaos? We weren’t proposing to invade North Korea, after all, which had a much more developed WMD capability than Iraq, and an even more bonkers regime threatening to use them.
WMDs, of course, were never what it was about, not really. Saddam’s crimes, and his reluctance to meet the terms of his surrender in 1991, provided ample justification for war, but hardly explained its timing, and the willingness of Bush and Blair to ride roughshod over the opposition of allies such as France and Russia.
To make sense of that, you had to start from the horror of September 11. After this era-defining event, the removal of Saddam had become a pressing strategic necessity in the wider war on Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, which yesterday claimed dozens more innocent lives in Casablanca. Tolerated for 12 years after the end of the first Gulf conflict, with only sanctions and the occasional bombing mission to remind him that he was still an international pariah, Saddam’s removal had become expedient, as well as legitimate.
In a post-September 11 environment, the West needs to lessen its dependence on Saudi oil, and on the corrupt and deeply unpopular Saudi rulers. If post-Saddam Iraq could act as a beacon for human rights and democratic government in the Middle East, so much the better. But that would be a bonus next to the main prize - the establishment of a strategic bridgehead in the fight against al-Qaeda.
The importance of that bridgehead is already evident. Last week’s bombs in Riyadh signal a major escalation of al-Qaeda’s war, not only against America and Britain, but against the House of Saud itself. The country which gave birth to Osama bin Laden and 15 of the September 11 hi-jackers, and which remains a key source of financial and political support for Islamic terrorism throughout the world, is now the target of that terrorism.
Saudi Arabia, with its super-rich elite and its increasingly agitated ‘Arab street’ demanding a greater share of the oil spoils, could well fall to a Taliban-style regime in the future, at which point the value of a pro-Western Iraq (or an Iraq, at least, which is less anti-West than Saddam’s) will become all too clear.
Having failed to outline this strategic logic from the start, however, the mysterious case of the missing weapons continues to present a problem for the government. Jack Straw sought to draw a line under the issue by suggesting in a BBC interview that the discovery of WMDs was "not crucially important" next to the authority given by Resolution 1441 for intervention. Blair has pointed to the discovery of the graves of thousands of Saddam’s victims as proof that this was indeed a just war. And there are myriad other reasons why, despite the anarchy and chaos of the immediate post-conflict period, the Iraqi people are much better off now than they were before the fall of Saddam’s regime.
But events in Riyadh and Casablanca bring the bigger picture into renewed focus. Al-Qaeda is a real threat, even if Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction weren’t. The sooner our government makes explicit the connection between what has happened in Iraq and what might happen down the road in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere, the better.
No kidding! Fortunately there were very influential people within the Bush administration whe felt this way as well.
Molly Ivins wrote a column recently where she was dumbfounded that no one seems to be upset that no WMDs have been found. "Aren't you angry that the President lied to you!" She bellowed.
The President never lied to me about WMDs. As far as I am concerned, it was more of a wink and a nod.
Is the authors uggesting that we shouldn't believe "the official line"? Are we routinely to assume that when our leaders speak to us they mean something other than they say? Justification for lying is a very tricky business, especially for those who make claims to the moral high ground.
Then why Iraq instead of Saudi Arabia? By the way, I hate when some answer that question with something along the lines of "We'll get to that".
When A makes an accusation of B it is incumbent upon A to prove the accusation, not for B to prove the negative. Once we stop using that basic premise we're all doomed.
I suspect there's a lot going on behind the scenes that we won't know about for decades.
Because Iraq had a sizable military including formidable armor. Saudi does not. Iraq's military (the largest in the Middle East) needed to be neutralized as a regional threat.
We can't influence the region when some tin-pot dictator is commanding thousands of tanks and artillary pieces and hundreds of thousands of troops.
And yes, we will deal with Saudi Arabia in due time.
1.Take out Saddam,
2.Shut down our military bases in Saudi Arabia,
3.Install a US military base in Iraq to replace the Saudi bases,
4.Use the Iraqi site as the launching point against other terrorist-sponsoring states, including Saudi Arabia (which is still officially a US ally, for that matter).
If that was GWB's plan, it seems to be working , so far...And getting away from the quote unquote 'Holy sites' of Mecca and Medina (and who only knows what other sites they consider sacred) without appearing to give in to Bin Laden's terrorism is a good thing in and of itself . After all, our military was in Saudi Arabia officially to protect that country from Saddam ; Saddam's gone, ergo...
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