Posted on 06/29/2004 7:00:20 PM PDT by churchillbuff
With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasnt 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. Buckleys, from an article in yesterdays New York Times marking Buckleys 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 worlds 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 presidents Iraq venture was a mistake.
So with the formal end of the occupation now behind us, lets 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, theres 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, its really mock debate, more of a word game than a serious, open question, and a rather baroque one at that. Mostly, its 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 Saddams 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 arent 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.
Et tu Torie?
Most are in Syria, some are scattered about in Iraqi ratholes.
The CIA has the pictures of the trucks moving from Iraq to Syria on the eve of the war.
Of course, one might believe that Saddam Hussein really did destroy all those weapons and weapon programs but brought down the wrath of the US of A on his ass just to spite George Bush. One might believe that if one were really reaching. I don't believe it for a minute.
No,he hasn't been.
It's hard to blame Bush for that episode on the aircraft carrier. He was basing his actions on what he was told by the civlian morons in the Pentagon who executed this war in the first place. You know -- the ones who said the U.S. would be welcomed "with open arms" in Iraq, and even speculated that the U.S. could win the war with anywhere from 0 (no joke) to 30,000 troops on the ground?
Hey, Saddam is still alive and over there, why dont you suggest he be reinstalled.
I am ashamed of Buckley on this,he should be ashamed
Bill Buckley is also a Catholic. So now it is time I give up being a Baptist?
Buckley supported the war when it counted. In the real world, leaders have no assurance that their plans--however well-made--will be realized exactly as they wish.
The President does the best he can, prays, and leads. Buckley followed when it counted. Good for him.
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.
That 25,000l of Anthrax? If kept in liquid form, it would all fit in a single 10' by 11' room...the closet if dried.
Then there's the other "no WMDs" argument: That a warehouse full of production materials, across the street from a dual use facility which requires only a couple of minor changes to produce chem agents, with the required components kept in a scientists home, and a military depot with empty specialized warheads to hold the agents doesn't compromise WMDs.
Ditto
That makes all the difference, to me.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
Libya. The scientists running that program were Iraqi. Saddam was busy outsourcing.
Engineers are trained NOT to read between the lines. Engineers are trained NOT to conclude it's an elephant in between if shown a picture of a trunk and a tail.
Buildings fall down if every t isn't crossed and every i dotted in fact finding.
Love ya, Alberta; but when you finally do get all the facts in 5, 10, 20 years, you'll find you missed the boat.
If George W. Bush had known in May 2003 that there was any chance in hell that the events in Iraq of the last 12 months would unfold as they have, do you think he would have even dreamed of that silly "Mission Accomplished" act on the deck of the aircraft carrier?
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Hmmm, Bush is for the war because he's for a U.N. resolution.
That's like saying you disagree with killing people because it's against the law.
You do know that we lost 5 times that number of troops in one day on D-Day don't you? We lost 6 times that many troops taking Iwo Jima in 3 days.
Is that a direct quote from Kerry, or your own variation?
U.S. Launches Program to Fly Illegal Mexicans Home
Reuters via Yahoo ^ | Jun 29, 2004 | Deborah Charles
Posted on 06/29/2004 4:41:36 PM PDT by Max Combined
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (news - web sites) will start flying some illegal Mexican migrants to their hometowns next month as part of a controversial program aimed at reducing illegal immigration.
Homeland Security undersecretary Asa Hutchinson said on Tuesday that the U.S. and Mexican governments had reached an agreement for a pilot program to repatriate illegals found in the Arizona-Sonoran desert region.
War in the Absence of Strategic Clarity "More than merely winning the war in Iraq, we needed to stun the Arab World."
No Way to Run a War "The Democrats are guilty of ideological confusion and the Republicans of disdain for reflection."
Right on.
read tomorrow
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