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.
How many troops did it take to "conquer" Afghanistan? Why does it require an airbase to have more than a couple of hundred soldiers in Afghanistan? Why does it take more than an order of magnitude more just to protect one Airbase? Respectfully, when you understand that you may understand why you were wrong.
No, hundreds of Americans are dead for the same reason that thousands of Iraqis died: The evil that is Hussein. If he had complied with the U.N. resolutions, this whole war would have been unnecessary.
But you're still skirting the issue of the justification for the war. People talk a lot about things, but the official documents are what is important here. Your assignment is to find a congressional war resolution to counter the one that rests in a plane of existence known as "reality," that states quite clearly that we were removing Hussein due to his "capacity to possess" WMD. Are you saying that R&D labs, legions of scientists, delivery systems, etc., don't constitute that capacity? Only a fool would do so.
Besides, there's that little matter of President Bush saying that Hussein must be removed before his threat becomes imminent. So there goes, once again, your contention that we justified the war on the existence of stockpiles. Get over it. Admit you're wrong. The war was not fought over stockpiles; and besides, you can't posit with any sense of certainty that Hussein didn't have them and transferred them to Syria or elsewhere.
You also can't get around the fact that Hussein admitted to having them, couldn't account for their destruction, obstructed U.N. inspectors, and, according to the Iraq Survey Group, had an elaborate denial and deception program in place to hoodwink the inspectors. Gee, sounds like maybe we were on to something there. But no, you must be right: Hussein went through this elaborate ruse to make us think he had WMD in order to...ummm...ummm...oh yeah, in order to get us to invade his country and remove him from power. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense!!!
I have facts and you have Michael Moore-style mud that you fling against the wall of public discourse, hoping something will stick. But, facts are stubborn things, and they keep getting in your way.
Bush gave a very broad range of reasons. Remember the idiot reporters claiming because he gave a host of reasons that he was "changing the reasons"?
I root for the home team!
No you are a traitor and ignoramus for posting all this shit when the USA is fighting a tough war. People like you and Michael Moore make it tougher. You always post anti war garbage. Your views are mainstream in the Democrat party. I'm sick of you and would ban you in a split second if it were up to me.
How do you think one of our boys in Iraq would feel if he came across this thread of yours? You give aid and comfort to the enemy here.
There is a war going on, defeatists like you should have the good manners to keep your mouth shut but you are so juvenile I don't know if this is possible. I doubt you even understand what I'm talking about.
It's puzzling how the left got away with defining the terms of the Iraq engagement in such away that Bush fails in every instance. As you have correctly pointed out, however, their entire argument is based on a set of false premises.
After the GWI, the UN had every right to enforce Iraq's stipulations at any time; 9/11 merely brought the issue to a head. In addition, since the UN failed to carry out its responsibilities, the US/UK and their coalition partners had to undertake the task upon themselves.
It's all very simple, really, and I' be surprised if Bush & Co. don't go on the offensive to remind everyone of the factual basis behind the war.
LIES. LIES. LIES. LIES.
Read the book Misunderestimated.
No one in the Bush administration said it would be a cakewalk and when challenged, no journalist could point to anyone in the administration who said such a thing.
You are believing the leftist media.
We WERE greeted with flowers and hugs in many places. Haven't you seen the pictures, read the accounts, gone on the threads with photographs taken of our soldiers and young children and old ladies hugging them?
You are believing the leftist media.
You are one of the most negative people on Free Republic and encourage others to believe the LIES the leftist media tells us, all without checking it out yourself.
Then when you are given ample evidence of the lies you are believing/spouting, you never apologize but move onto the next bit of lying spin you wish to push.
Last month it was "no one in Congress or the administration has children in the military". WHen you were given names and ample proof that many people in Congress have kids in Iraq and that Ashcroft has a kid in Iraq, you just dropped it (after you were told 10 times!).
QUIT YOUR WHINING!!!!!!!!
You are still ignoring the head of the UN WMD team who last week said that they are finding Iraq' WMD all over the globe!
You seem to prefer your negative spin and lies to the truth when it doesn't fit your mindset.
I think you are a DNC plant.
No: I asked if anyone knew how many in Congress have kids in IRAQ???? (Not in "the military"). As it turns out, d-mn few have kids in Iraq.
Awesome!
I got a parcel from Tunehead, which is a duplicate that he is sending out to the troops (a package of pro-troops picture and the collage, with an encouraging letter).
THANKS!!!
SD
David Kay, the US point man on WMDs, was on the radio last night (www.kgo.com -- gene burns show; it's archived; listen in). He said THERE WERE NO WMDS IN IRAQ. I'm sorry, I'm not making this up. I know that facts are inconvenient when they conflict with what you want to believe, but there you have it.
That's your right. My prayer is that Bush doesn't get voted out of office because so many Americans have come to see that the war was a mistake that has cost 100s of American lives needlessly. (I'm still voting Bush, but in spite of , not because of , his Iraq policy)
David Kay is NOT the final say on WMDs in Iraq.
HE failed to find anything. What's his incentive to say 'they might have been there, even though I couldn't find them?'
He ain't you michael moore monica.
I will always have the deepest gratitude for those who died avenging the 3,000 who died at the hands of your allies, al-queda on 9-11-2001.
You, chamberlainbuff, like michael moore, wish to use those deaths as cheap political pawns and that is disgusting.
I support the war...The evidence was all in favor of
removing Saddam....How many more UN resolutions were to
be ignored before someone (US) did anything. The ones
who were carting off millions from Oil...even UN...don't
want no stinking war....what about the payoffs by Hussein to the suicide bombers families..this guy was promoting
our demise regardless of what anyone says...am glad Bush
has the guts to follow through...looks like lots of the
Freepers lack guts...Bill Buckley is no authority on any
war..am same age...I went to war...I survived..and those
that go to war for their country and die..are all heroes..
any war..the US is in.... Jake
Spoken like someone who was already free.
Congratulations!
With your permission, I would like to introduce several people, including a few journalists, to your thorough and helpful research.
Considering I have a very dear friend who spent 8 months in Iraq, and is now home, safely, I am very proud of the action we took in Iraq. The people who oppose the actions are puppets of the media.
This speculation about whether we should have taken this action or not, while we still have troops in harms way, troops rotating in and out of the region is so out of line. Our young men and women are suffering from what they had to do and see there; the last thing they need is to be told that they shouldn't have been there to begin with.
For the soldiers that opened the doors to a prison that held children, they needed no further justification. For the soldiers discovering mass graves, there is no further justification needed.
The troops in Afghanistan, fighting Al Quiada and taliban, have been avenging 9-11. Iraq wasn't behind 9-11, so the invasion wasn't "avenging" 9-11. I honor all our troops - - - unlike you, I want them deployed only against enemies who constitute an imminent danger to the United States. Iraq wasn't in that category, as more and more people are now acknowledging (WF Buckley's just the latest).
I am of the old-fashioned conservative school that believes the US military should be used only against enemies who constitute an imminent threat to the US. The fact that a country is ruled by a dictator, however evil, does not, in and of itself, provide grounds for sending US troops into harm's way. Otherwise, we'd be invading countries from Zmbabwe to Cuba to North Korea to the Congo. I haven't heard you calling for any of those invasions.
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