Posted on 06/29/2004 7:00:20 PM PDT by churchillbuff
“With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn’t the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago. If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war.”
Those words are William F. Buckley’s, from an article in yesterday’s New York Times marking Buckley’s decision to relinquish control of the National Review, the flagship journal of the conservative movement he founded 50 years ago.
Also out on the newsstands now, in The Atlantic Monthly, is an essay Buckley wrote describing his decision to give up sailing after a lifetime covering the world’s oceans and writing about it.
Mortality is the backdrop of both decisions, as the 78-year-old Buckley explains. In the Atlantic essay he describes his decision to abandon the sea as one of assessing whether “the ratio of pleasure to effort [is] holding its own [in sailing]? Or is effort creeping up, pleasure down? … deciding that the time has come to [give up sailing] and forfeit all that is not lightly done … brings to mind the step yet ahead, which is giving up life itself.”
There is certainly no shortage today of people saying the Iraq venture was wrongheaded. But Bill Buckley is Bill Buckley. And perhaps it is uniquely possible for a man at the summit or the sunset of life — choose your metaphor — to state so crisply and precisely what a clear majority of the American public has already decided (54 percent according to the latest Gallup poll): that the president’s Iraq venture was a mistake.
So with the formal end of the occupation now behind us, let’s take stock of the arguments for war and see whether any of them any longer hold up.
• The threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
To the best of our knowledge, the Hussein regime had no stockpiles of WMD on the eve of the war nor any ongoing programs to create them. An article this week in the Financial Times claims that Iraq really was trying to buy uranium from Niger despite all the evidence to the contrary. But new “evidence” appears merely to be unsubstantiated raw intelligence that was wisely discounted by our intelligence agencies at the time.
Advocates of the war still claim that Saddam had “WMD programs.” But they can do so only by using a comically elastic definition of “program” that never would have passed the laugh test if attempted prior to the war.
• The Iraq-al Qaeda link.
To the best of our knowledge, the Hussein regime had no meaningful — or as the recent Sept. 11 Commission staff report put it, “collaborative” — relationship with al Qaeda. In this case too, there’s still a “debate.” Every couple of months we hear of a new finding that someone who may have had a tie to Saddam may have met with someone connected to al Qaeda.
But as in the case of WMD, it’s really mock debate, more of a word game than a serious, open question, and a rather baroque one at that. Mostly, it’s not an evidentiary search but an exercise in finding out whether a few random meetings can be rhetorically leveraged into a “relationship.” If it can, supposedly, a rationale for war is thus salvaged.
The humanitarian argument for the war remains potent — in as much as Saddam’s regime was ruthlessly repressive. But in itself this never would have been an adequate argument to drive the American people to war — and, not surprisingly, the administration never made much of it before its other rationales fell apart.
The broader aim of stimulating a liberalizing and democratizing trend in the Middle East remains an open question — but largely because it rests on unknowables about the future rather than facts that can be proved or disproved about the past. From the vantage point of today, there seems little doubt that the war was destabilizing in the short run or that it has strengthened the hands of radicals in countries like Iran and, arguably though less clearly, Saudi Arabia. The best one can say about the prospects for democracy in Iraq itself is that there are some hopeful signs, but the overall outlook seems extremely iffy.
Surveying the whole political landscape, it is clear that a large factor in keeping support for the war as high as it is is the deep partisan political divide in the country, which makes opposing the war tantamount to opposing its author, President Bush, a step most Republicans simply aren’t willing to take.
At a certain point, for many, conflicts become self-justifying. We fight our enemies because our enemies are fighting us, quite apart from whether we should have gotten ourselves into the quarrel in the first place.
But picking apart the reasons why we got into Iraq in the first place and comparing what the administration said in 2002 with what we know in 2004, it is increasingly difficult not to conclude, as a majority of the American public and that founding father of modern conservatism have now concluded, that the whole enterprise was a mistake.
Bob Novak is a Catholic.
Novak might be Jewish by birth, but
he is a convert to Catholicism.
Hussein's inability to fund Palestinian suicide bombers has nothing to do with the decline in those attacks (the fact that they continued long after he crawled into his spider hole was proof of that) -- that decline is primarily a function of Israel's barricade along the West Bank and their decision to vacate the Gaza Strip.
Just don't say that around Hillary!
LOL!
Excellent post!
Your screen name must refer to another Churchill other than Winston because you sound more supportive of all the things Winston Churchill was fighting against. You may think you are conservative,but you will have to create a new definition of the word to have that be the case. You sound like a very depressed person because you are so at odds with most of the other conservatives here. LOOK WITHIN!!!
Who says Bill Buckley is always right???
He said major fighting was over. Obviously it wasn't then and isn't today. If you think otherwise, tell it to the families of the five or so US military who are killed each week.
What a fool! Buckley is becoming another Goldwater, turning 'pink' in his old age. The leftist media brainwashed him, as they did most of the world, and he is too foolish to realize it.
Yep, WFB and PJB is all that they gave us in the 80's.
If the Chem agents in Powells speech were all there were, two guys in a cargo van could have moved the whole cache from Baghdad to Damascus in just over 60 days.
Buckley has favored making Israel the 51st state, to take it off the table, as a conceivably realizable spoil for the Arabs. He favored that back in the 1970's, when the merits of the conflict were considerably more closely balanced than now, and it was not fashionable to just say "no" to those who wanted to somehow put the genie back in the bottle.
I didn't ask what he said in that speech. I'm asking about the political ramifications of it -- particularly in light of the fact that the U.S. casualty count after the end of major combat has far exceeded the casualty count while the "war" was going on.
That's OK.
No intellectually honest person can deny the world is better off without Saddam in power. The reason that the United States went to war with Iraq in 2003 was VERY clear. Iraq was a State sponsor of terrorism. Iraq had thumbed its nose at 17 UN resolutions - If there is no consequence for not abiding by a UN resolution (or 17 of them to be exact!!)...what is the purpose of the UN to begin with? (other then to steal money with the food for oil program / scheme ). Also, Iraq was a threat to the Middle-East as a hole - Iraq has been a point of hostility in that region for 15 years.
After Sept 11th...we (the U.S under the leadership of GWB) was no longer willing to wait and hope....that our enemies don't hit us! GWB was going to be proactive - taking our fight to our "known" enemies. Of which Saddam was clearly one.
The fact is people who say since we haven't found any large stockpiles of WMD yet....means Iraq wasn't a threat....are simply childish...or using the logic of a child.....With this type of reasoning....we could have never pre-empted Al Qeade - because we could have searched every inch of every Al Qeade camp within Afghanistan....and we would have never found ONE PASSENGER AIRLINER (let alone and American Airliner)....and these were the weapons used to HIT US - So the fact is, if a Country is a threat...and a sponsor of terrorism.....We cannot simply wait...and hope we aren't hit by them. It is a new era and pre-emption is needed. 9-11 made this very clear. Because of George W. Bush's leadership the world is safer - Pakistan has rounded up their main rouge nuclear scientist....Pakistan is helping on the War on Terror by taking the fight into their tribal lands.
Libya has turned over their WMD program (of which the UN had no idea about!!)...and has also provided Intell on Al Qeade.
North Korea has moved to the negotiating table ...On our terms!...not the terms of their mad-man leader -
None of these events would even be possible had GWB not acted against Saddam - showing we meant what we said. The world has changed for the better because of the war in Iraq. History will prove this.
So again, because of American leadership (GWB) the world is safer - There is no doubt that Iraq will be a beach-head of freedom throughout the Middle-East - and this is what the terrorist fear - this is why they are so desperate - they need to force thier civilians to live in misery in order for them to follow their hijacked religious policies.
But with freedom and self-worth the people of Iraq will run the hijacked Islamic terrorist out of their Country themselves - And then this idea of freedom and self-worth will continue to spread throughout the Middle-East! You nay-sayers just watch!
But first they needed freedom -we provided it, while at the same time making the World safer by removing Saddam.
They now need help in fighting the terrorist within them - This is what our brave U.S. service men and women are doing in Iraq as we speak.
Thank god for the leadership of George W. Bush! - God bless him and our troops.
In his speech to the troops Thursday night Bush will thank the U.S. military for their efforts in Iraq. "Your courage -- your willingness to face danger for your country and for each other -- made this day possible," according to excerpts of the Bush speech released in advance. "The transition from dictatorship to democracy will take time but it is worth every effort. Our coalition will stay until our work is done."
That mission was accomplished:
Saddam's regime was overthrown.
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