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.
goodreasonstovoteforkerry
LOL! No doubt you've read every thread ever posted. Sorry I am just too tired to read through almost 400 posts.
Forget that I asked if you could be specific. Jus ferrrrget it.
It sure is...or utter stupidity. LOL
Besides Grenada, which countries are those, I just don't recall.
Maybe the paleocons are like the America Firsters who didn't see the sense of siding with a Soviet despot who killed 30 million people against a German despot who killed 12 million.
Maybe because the Soviet only wanted to kill his own people, while the German was rolling through Europe killing everyone else's citizens...that and the fact that the German was bombing England and declaring war on us...
Comon AC, you are evidently very bright...bad analogy.
Just wanted to bump this...
Was it Connie Francis who sang "Who's Sorry Now?"? How about "Who's Wobbly Now?"
Because of our history,I shied away from paraphrasing what was said,or copying it word for for,precisely because that would have given you the opening to tell me that I had typed it wrong,or some other such thing.All I want to do is keep the thread on topic. :-)
What is the utility of this revelation--especially coming the day after the transfger of sovereignty. It strikes me as his desire to be talked about pleasantly by the NYT and Liberal elite on his way out the door.
Too much coffee tonight honey? No need to get sore.
25 years ago, were there any predominately Catholic countries that were not ruled by dictators? How many of the South and Central American dictatorships are still around - aside from the recent rise of one in Venezuela?
Sometimes you wonder if the likes of Will and Clancy et al are merely paper pusher types,not real do'ers in that particular realm of which they write. They seem to be trying to be on the inside and outside simultaneously,and thereby they twist themselves into contortions of unbelievable dimensions to make themselves look smarter than us peons.,
25 years ago, were there any predominately Catholic countries that were not ruled by dictators (Aside from Italy)? How many of the South and Central American dictatorships are still around - aside from the recent rise of one in Venezuela?
LOL
I'm posting this because those freepers who call me some kind of traitor for opposing the invasion of Iraq are now going to have to add Buckley (along with Tom Clancy and a number of military brass) to the list.
This gives the other poster the right to call him names and attack him?
Have a wonderful evening nopardons....Hehehe....
What about the link between Saddam and Al-Qaida? The new head of the Iraqi government acknowledges a tie. I think the President did the right thing in going to war despite the missteps that are bound to happen.
You've been having some really glorious weather,the last couple of days,I hear.
I'm no longer in Chicago,but my daughter and s-i-l are.
"Gen. Zinni"
Zinni is an incompetent failure whose claim to fame is getting Israelis killed every time he showed up to promote the phony road map.
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