Bill Buckley, you and I know the war was a mistake

“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.

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.

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.

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...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.

And:

• 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.

The two indicators that Mr. Marshall uses to show the invasion of Iraq to be a “mistake” are more likely indicators of his ignorance of basic facts or his willingness to mislead the public in order to further his agenda, whatever that may be.

First, the “stockpile” requirement and the link between Hussein and al-Qaeda as justifications for war was a creation of the hysterical Bush-haters and the political left (Democrat Party, mainstream news media, etc.). A simple reading of facts would have prevented Marshall from using these arguments to prove a mistake or lack of justification. Given this, I am surprised that he did not accuse the president of lying about Iraq being an imminent threat, another lie created by the left.

Despite what the left would like us to believe, the war was not predicated solely on WMD, much less Iraq’s possession of actual WMD agents. The war resolution, in which Congress gave authority to the president to use force in order to remove Hussein from power, stated that such authorization was being granted because Iraq had the “capacity to possess” WMD. Anyone who addresses the justification of the war without citing this seminal document is either amateurish or willfully ignorant. Furthermore, there were many other reasons cited by George Bush for the war, but one would actually have to pay attention to facts and not illogical rhetoric in order to know what they were.

In his September 12, 2002 address to the United Nations General Assembly, President Bush stated:

“In 1991, Security Council Resolution 688 demanded that the Iraqi regime cease at once the repression of its own people, including the systematic repression of minorities -- which the Council said, threatened international peace and security in the region. This demand goes ignored.

“In 1991, the U.N. Security Council, through Resolutions 686 and 687, demanded that Iraq return all prisoners from Kuwait and other lands. Iraq's regime agreed. It broke its promise. Last year the Secretary General's high-level coordinator for this issue reported that Kuwait, Saudi, Indian, Syrian, Lebanese, Iranian, Egyptian, Bahraini, and Omani nationals remain unaccounted for -- more than 600 people. One American pilot is among them.
“In 1991, the U.N. Security Council, through Resolution 687, demanded that Iraq renounce all involvement with terrorism, and permit no terrorist organizations to operate in Iraq. Iraq's regime agreed. It broke this promise. In violation of Security Council Resolution 1373, Iraq continues to shelter and support terrorist organizations that direct violence against Iran, Israel, and Western governments. Iraqi dissidents abroad are targeted for murder. In 1993, Iraq attempted to assassinate the Emir of Kuwait and a former American President.
“In 1991, the Iraqi regime agreed to destroy and stop developing all weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles, and to prove to the world it has done so by complying with rigorous inspections. Iraq has broken every aspect of this fundamental pledge.
“From 1991 to 1995, the Iraqi regime said it had no biological weapons. After a senior official in its weapons program defected and exposed this lie, the regime admitted to producing tens of thousands of liters of anthrax and other deadly biological agents for use with Scud warheads, aerial bombs, and aircraft spray tanks. U.N. inspectors believe Iraq has produced two to four times the amount of biological agents it declared, and has failed to account for more than three metric tons of material that could be used to produce biological weapons. Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.
“United Nations' inspections also revealed that Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents, and that the regime is rebuilding and expanding facilities capable of producing chemical weapons.
“And in 1995, after four years of deception, Iraq finally admitted it had a crash nuclear weapons program prior to the Gulf War. We know now, were it not for that war, the regime in Iraq would likely have possessed a nuclear weapon no later than 1993.
“Iraq also possesses a force of Scud-type missiles with ranges beyond the 150 kilometers permitted by the U.N. Work at testing and production facilities shows that Iraq is building more long-range missiles that it can inflict mass death throughout the region.
“We know that Saddam Hussein pursued weapons of mass murder even when inspectors were in his country. Are we to assume that he stopped when they left? The history, the logic, and the facts lead to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger…But Saddam Hussein has defied all these efforts [sanctions, oil-for-food program, Coalition air strikes] and continues to develop weapons of mass destruction. The first time we may be completely certain he has a -- nuclear weapons is when, God forbids, he uses one. We owe it to all our citizens to do everything in our power to prevent that day from coming.”

Notice the use of the word ‘gathering’ in the last paragraph. A ‘gathering’ danger is not an imminent danger, but rather one that is forming, much like the proverbial ‘gathering storm.’ Also, the reason I highlighted certain passages above is to show that possession of actual WMD agents was not the sole purpose for the administration’s efforts to remove Hussein. His regime was in violation of nearly every major tenet of the 1991 cease-fire accords, and as Charles Krauthammer pointed out astutely in his article “Calling Iraq’s Bluff” [January 30, 2004]: ”Until Bush got serious, threatened war and massed troops in Kuwait, the U.N. was headed toward loosening and ultimately lifting sanctions, which would have given Hussein carte blanche to regroup and rebuild his WMDs.”

A month later, on October 7, 2002 in Cincinnati, Bush stated:

“The threat comes from Iraq. It arises directly from the Iraqi regime's own actions -- its history of aggression, and its drive toward an arsenal of terror. Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons, and to stop all support for terrorist groups. The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations.

No informed observer can rationally state that the president was not correct on each point. As the 1991 cease fire agreements clearly stated, Hussein was responsible for proving the destruction of all WMD that he admitted to having (and that is an important point); the Sarin gas shells found recently (more than a dozen so far, by the count of the Iraq Survey Group) may pre-date the Gulf War, but that fact is irrelevant because they were supposed to have been destroyed. Some on this forum have pointed out that the technology used in the artillery shells would indicate that they were made after the Gulf War, maybe as late as 1996 or later; and no responsible authority figure can safely assume that those twelve shells simply escaped the notice of Iraqi officials and just happened to be found later.

But the fact remains: The Bush administration is under no obligation to prove the existence of WMD; Hussein admitted to possessing them, and most other nations involved with the Iraq dispute know that he possessed them. The Congress authorized war on the basis of Iraq’s “capacity to possess” them, not their actual existence. In his October 2003 Statement On The Interim Progress Report On The Activities Of The Iraq Survey Group, former chairman David Kay stated the following:

“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.”
“A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for continuing CBW [Chemical and Biological Weapons] research.”
“A prison laboratory complex, possibly used in human testing of BW [Biological Weapons] 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 UAV’s [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles] 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.”
“With regard to Iraq’s nuclear program, the testimony we have obtained from Iraqi scientists and senior government officials should clear up any doubts about whether Saddam still wanted to obtain nuclear weapons. They have told ISG [Iraq Survey Group] that Saddam [Hussein] remained firmly committed to acquiring nuclear weapons.”
“In addition to the discovery of extensive concealment efforts, we have been faced with a systematic sanitization of documentary and computer evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of WMD work.”

Yet, Mr. Marshall claims that the Bush administration can only justify the war after the fact “by using a comically elastic definition of 'program' that never would have passed the laugh test if attempted prior to the war.” What kind of fool can seriously pass off research and development programs concerned with ricin, aflatoxin, Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, and Brucella as harmless hobbies? Couple these biological agents with the delivery systems noted in the above-cited report, and Hussein has the makings of a formidable offensive capability, or at least a protective shield behind which he can threaten the United States and blackmail neighboring countries.

President Bush took the prudent and cautious approach by invading before the threat became imminent. Taking a Clintonian/U.N. approach of neglect would have exposed the entire world to the threats and desires of a madman.

As for Hussein’s support of terrorists, again that cannot be disputed. Surely, no informed journalist can be ignorant of his policy of giving as much as $35,000 to the families of Islamic homicide bombers in Israel. No informed journalist can be ignorant of his attempt in assassinating former president George H.W. Bush during a visit to Kuwait. No informed journalist can be ignorant of meetings between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials in the 1990s, affecting a working relationship as documented by captured documents in Baghdad. No informed journalist can be ignorant of the terrorist training camp known as Salman Pak, complete with a airliner fuselage used for hijacking training, run by an international terrorist known so far only as “the Ghost.” No informed journalist can be ignorant of the Wall Street Journal op-ed last month naming former Fedayeen Saddam lieutenant-colonel as a likely participant in the December 2000 planning conference held by al-Qaeda in Kuala Lampur, as they finalized plans for the 9/11 attacks. No informed journalist can be ignorant of the fact that various members of the 9/11 Commission have stated that there are indications of an Iraq/al-Qaeda relationship, not necessarily with the conducting of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, but in other capacities.

But of course, once again, Mr. Marshall is conducting a false argument due to the fact that the Bush administration did not cite any connection between the two entities as a justification for invading Iraq. He simply used Hussein’s history of supporting terrorists and developing WMD, his violations of numerous U.N. resolutions, and the fact that a war on terrorism must, by definition, include all terrorists and not just one organization.

Henry Lee II
"Leftists are crazed and violent people,
with the blood of millions on their hands.”

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.