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.
Oh that's correct, saddam's Iraq was just a peaceful benign entity harming nobody, per chamberlainbuff, michael moore, and the demos.
You all should really should stop smoking whatever it is your smoking, that whacks you out of reality like that, IMO.
Yes, but I did not say that. It is one of the favorite strawmen of the handwringing class, though, so I understand your use of it.
You twist my words. I was replying to your suggestion that we invaded Iraq to "avenge" 9-11. Iraq wasn't behind 9-11. Nobody says they were -- and the fact that Saddam was a dictator and a bad guy doesn't change that. So the invasion didn't "avenge" 9-11.
It's disgusting and traitorous. It's stupid. It's self indulgent. What can't the naysayers just just the heck up and let other Americans get on with this tough job?
This war cannot be undone. Sure it's harder than I thought and than GWBush thought. So what? What happened to American pride where you tough it out and keep punching away? This is just so much trashy looser-ism.
Every Islamic enemy loves to hear Americans saying the war was a mistake. They love such weakness of character.
Sorry, but the idea that our troops should be deployed only in defense of our own interests is not a strawman, it is a basic, historic tenet of American conservatism.
Over 10 Congressmen have kids in Iraq or Afghanistan and Ashcroft too has a son in Iraq. You have consistently ignored that little tidbit until you were hit over the head with it repeatedly and then you dropped it.
I assume you mean "shut the heck up". That's also what Saddam insisted on in his country - - people who disagreed had to "shut the heck up."
Please name them. I want to know.
Well you should know as you are the expert in twisting real world words and facts to justify your whacked out world view ala michael moore.
And EVERY SINGLE intelligence agency on the planet said he had them. We know he had them. He used them. He could have let the UN have unfettered access. He didn't. He continuously blocked them.
As well, you are forgetting Powell's audio tapes we go from Iraq from human intel. Iraqi's saying things like "erase the words nerve agent" from all paperwork. "Block the UN until the building is clear", etc.
Your continuous mention of ONE person, Kay, means nothing. The mention of the UN WMD inspector who says he is finding Iraqi WMD all across the globe evidentally means nothing to you either. YOu cherry pick what information you wish to believe.
And I see you still can't quote anyone in the administration who said it would be a cakewalk. Neither can anyone in the leftist media but that hasn't stopped them either.
And I see you still can't deny that we were greeted as liberators and with flowers and hugs by many Iraqis, but you keep pretending otherwise.
You're a plant.
No misunderstanding here, I don't think.
I figured you were not opposed to the Iraq War. :^D
I figured you would resort to name-calling instead of trying to respond to my point. I've got your number. Arguing with a play-ground sand-kicker isn't my idea of stimulating, so I'll sign off from our "discussion". Have a wonderful holiday weekend.
BS!!!!
You were given their names last month!!! I was on those threads, which I didn't save. You are a DNC plant. A troublemaker. A whiner.
Being called a "whiner" by somebody who posts profanity (even if only with initials "B-") is being called black by the pot!
Yeah, well, when I watch what my friend is going thru now, I personally want to take some military action against those saying we should not have gone in. He can accept the left saying this; he knows what they are about. But for people on the right, the people he associates with, to question what he did, rips his heart out.
And not only do I think we did the absolute right thing (can you imagine the handwringing if Saddam had attacked us, and we hadn't "pre-empted" it, considering all of the whining about 9/11), I think we should have done this a decade ago.
Uh, I didn't call you a name, I gave my opinion of your stance and my opinion is that you have the same whacked out world view as michael moore(i.e saddam's Iraq was a benign entity).
Bump
You are pretending you don't remember those threads where you were given names of Congressmen with kids in the active military and specifically the Middle East.
You are a liar and BS today is hardly considered profanity but I know to your tender sensibilities it may be harsh.
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