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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.
Whoops - sorry - freudian multiple post
Take two therapy's...and call us in the morning.
redrock
Possibly. If so, he succeeded. LOL
I do know that this President would not intentionally harm this country. So either he genuinely believes the proposal he put forth would solve the problem, or it was as you suggest--a means to activate a response to confront the problem.
I do appreciate the update on the matter.
I agree with you. Buckley and Will are wrong. My point is that now that it is fashionable to oppose the war, suddenly they've changed their minds. It appears to me that Buckley is angling for a favorable obituary from the NY Times. My second point, is that like Will, if Buckley is still around and a remade Middle-East changes the entire dynamic of the world's security position, he will fly back in to claim that... no, he had it right in the first place, the war was a good thing.
A lot of so-called conservative thinkers have come down with Kerry-syndrome: I supported the war before I opposed it. Buckley is just the latest to have found courage through hindsight. Foolishly, they've decided to Monday morning quarterback a game that is still being played, and will be for years to come.
And yes,it was directed at you...you said it,now answer my questions.
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Consider also that Buckley is doing us a favor. He is giving us a reverse kind of cover. I do not want this election to hinge on whether enough convincing smoking guns re WMDs and al Qaeda connections are "proven" so that huge majorities see the Iraq war as justified from the beginning. The President made an assessment. We want our President to be aggressive in his protection of US interests. Even if there were no WMDs here or terrorists there, our guy has moral clarity and takes down bad guys who for all appearances are big threats. Just let the events on the ground - springing from the President's actions - speak for themselves. A free Iraq (and Iran, and ...) will make us safer, indirectly if not directly.
So is China. The biggest terrorist supplier in the world. And we just snuggle up to the great red menace. The Chinese commies OWN Washington, both sides of the aisle.
Noooo...they're such BIG pills - please no! :-)
Buckley swayed by fashion? That reeks of the same mindset that justifies and excuses everything Bush does domestically as strategery.
Baloney.
You'r welcome and thanks for another good post. :-)
No. I will never believe that. "Say, it ain't so, Joe."
We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN. Let me just give you a few examples of these concealment efforts, some of which I will elaborate on later:
A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW research.
A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW agents, that Iraqi officials working to prepare for UN inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the UN.
Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce biological weapons.
New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN.
Documents and equipment, hidden in scientists' homes, that would have been useful in resuming uranium enrichment by centrifuge and electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS).
A line of UAVs not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 km, 350 km beyond the permissible limit.
Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited SCUD variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the UN.
Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1000 km - well beyond the 150 km range limit imposed by the UN. Missiles of a 1000 km range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets through out the Middle East, including Ankara, Cairo, and Abu Dhabi.
Clandestine attempts between late-1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300 km range ballistic missiles --probably the No Dong -- 300 km range anti-ship cruise missiles, and other prohibited military equipment.
So what's wrong with saying that in restrospect we shouldn't have gone to Iraq? "In retrospect" is a phrase every baseball manager worth his salt will use after a losing game. That's how he gets to be a manager in the first place. And that's how Bill Buckley and George Will get overpaid for publishing their thoughts instead of having to pay for the privilege to express them as we do here, thoughtlessly bragging that "I supported the war then and I support it now", as if to prove Mark Helprin's sage observation that "the Republicans (are guilty) of disdain for reflection."
I'm sorry you've felt slighted by other FReepers. That's unfortunate, and I hope it doesn't reflect the attitudes of most people. I hope you continue to share your opinions.
Hussein and friends were mass murderers. The graves are all over the place.
Buckley is wrong, Will is wrong, the other bowtie guy is wrong and the Vatican should look deeply into their souls and ask Jesus what he would do about mass murdering scum.
I responded to post 79 by Merdoug, here it is...
You're talking to the wall. The Bsuhbots see nothing but perfection.
Bush let's in illegals,...
Bushbots: We have always been a Nation of immigrants. They do the jobs Americans won't do,...
Bush takes away our freedoms with the "patriot" act,...
Bushbots: It's for our own good! Remember 9/11,..Remember 9/11,...Remember 9/11,...Remember 9/11,...
Bush allows corporations to move overseas and still sell to America with no penalities,...
Bushbots: Strong super-companies are GOOD for America. There's PLENTY of jobs out there,...TONS of jobs,..REALLY,...
Bush takes us into a war with a country which was NO THREAT to us,...
Bushbots: It was for the (Iraqi)CHILDREN,...WMD? What WMD? We never said no such thing,..
Bushbots are just like the democrats with clinton: they will destroy their conservative values to support him; actually losing what it meant to be a conservative to get him elected.
Thankfully, more and more people are finally starting to see the truth about this "compassionate" conservative.
79 posted on 06/29/2004 7:31:07 PM PDT by Merdoug
My reply in 179 took each point to task...
1) Bushbots: We have always been a Nation of immigrants. They do the jobs Americans won't do...
For the first time since Bush was elected President, the amnesty proposal forced an evalution if I could vote for G.W. This wasn't about money. It wasn't about campaign finance, an issue that WILL arise again. The Supreme Court no more ended that fight than they did with the verdict on abortion. Amnesty directly affects national security.
Then the Libs started attacking his national guard service. Then came the Madrid attacks. Indecision ended. I'm voting for G.W. and will not be holding my nose by doing so.
I disagree with the President on his amnesty proposal but have since understood his side. G.W.'s conclusion is the political will is not there to have a mass deportation. He knows Fox has no intention of putting illegal immigration to an end. Mexicans flood to our country because their own economy is in shambles. His solution is not unlike his approach to the the middle east.
He believes that by implementing this proposal we can firm up our knowledge of whom resides in this country at the same time allow easier flow of funds into the Mexican economy. With the improvement of their eceonomy, the less need to invade ours. As he believes freedom is the key to conquering terrorism, he believes this strategy is the key to end illegal immigration.
Like I said, I disagree with him that this is the means to solve the problem but can understand his argument.
2) Bushbots: It's for our own good! Remember 9/11,..Remember 9/11,...Remember 9/11,...Remember 9/11,...
Yes, remember broken bodies and innocent blood shed.
I suppose he could round up everyone into concentration camps instead?
Fact remains that the Patriot Act allows for a check to balance those powers.
3) Bushbots: Strong super-companies are GOOD for America. There's PLENTY of jobs out there,...TONS of jobs,..REALLY,...
And if there aren't, make your own. Fail to understand why it is traitorous for companies to remain competitive in a global market.
4) Bushbots: It was for the (Iraqi)CHILDREN,...WMD? What WMD? We never said no such thing,..
Numerous reasons were stated to necessitate this action. Among them the possibility of WMD's, humanitarian, domino effect of freedom and violation of UN agreement.
WMD's did and likely still DO exist, btw. You'd be better served worrying about what happened to them then believing the propoganda they never existed when they keep accidentally popping up in Iraq.
5) Bushbots are just like the democrats with clinton: they will destroy their conservative values to support him; actually losing what it meant to be a conservative to get him elected.
Uhh...No. Democrats said black was white, good was evil, sex wasn't sex. Conservatives stand up, tell you what they disagree with, tell you if they believe you are wrong, but don't throw a hissy fit because the President doesn't agree 100% of the time.
I'm with Reagan - he beat the communists without invading the Soviet Union
Tell it to the Lebanese and Grenada...
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