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.
No - what we don't believe in is lies. Provable lies that you keep spreading.
Last month you kept repeating that no one in Congress of the administration had kids in Iraq or Afghanistan.
You were given a list of names - repeatedly.
Now you are saying that we were told it was a cakewalk.
When Rumsfeld denied to Tim Russert that he said that or anyone in the administration said that, no one in the press could find ONE SINGLE administration official who said it would be easy or a cakewalk. Not one.
Yet you keep repeating the same lies.
I guess you and michael moore are really angry that saddam can't provide $25,000 to every homicide bombers family for killing innocent Israeli's anymore.
JMO, it must really suck to be you.
No but conservatives who keep repeating DNC spin and lies are not conservatives. YOu keep repeating their lies and expecting us to believe them!!!
Iraq wasn't behind 9/11? Hah. YOu haven't heard the new president of Iraq say he thinks he was? You haven't heard the documents that have been found that show he probably was? You didn't know this was a war on terrorism and Iraq supported Al Qaeda for years?
Even the Clinton adminsitration got an indictment in federal court against OBL which cited SPECIFICALLY OBL's connections to Iraq. Back in 1998.
Not supporting the war is one thing. But repeatedly lying is another and you have been spouting DNC lies for months now.
Still my fears for catastrophes before the war have so far been much, much less for the invasion itself, and about what I expected for the aftermath.
What I didn't expect, and will forever do now, is something my husband warned me about right after 9/11.
He thought it'd take the Dems only a month or two to get their footing and start attacking America and backing our enemies again. Actually it only took a couple weeks.
From now on I know the enemy at home is even more craven than I thought. And that most people haven't a clue what it means to SUPPORT the troops, rather than backstabbing their sacrifices.
With Bill Clinton I learned that "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and you wouldn't believe how many people that is!", but this latest lesson is even more heart-breaking.
Don't just talk. Be really useful.
Thank you, dennis.
For those who have not seen this list, these are lists of articles which mention that Iraq supported AQ and worked with them for years.
Many people believe that Iraq was behind 9/11, and with good reason.
Recently, the 9/11 Commission Chairmen said that recent information they have received leads them to believe that as well.
A high ranking member of Saddam's Fedayeen military was at AT LEAST ONE pre-planning 9/11 meeting.
Less than two months before 9/11/01, the state-controlled Iraqi newspaper “Al-Nasiriya” carried a column headlined, “American, an Obsession called Osama Bin Ladin.” (July 21, 2001)
In the piece, Baath Party writer Naeem Abd Muhalhal predicted that bin Laden would attack the US “with the seriousness of the Bedouin of the desert about the way he will try to bomb the Pentagon after he destroys the White House.”
The same state-approved column also insisted that bin Laden “will strike America on the arm that is already hurting,” and that the US “will curse the memory of Frank Sinatra every time he hears his songs” – an apparent reference to the Sinatra classic, “New York, New York”.
Links between Saddam and OBL:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1127451/posts
It's as though they had to wait for the national anthem to finish before they could bend down to pick up more rocks to throw.
Iraq and 9/11 linked? 9/11 Commission says yes.
Read it and weep.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1163310/posts
What was the date of Hillary storming onto the Senate floor waving the NY Times, "BUSH KNEW!"??
Another very good example of the fact that while old age may not arrive accompanied by wisdom-Stupidity is partial to no age group.
Buckley has always appeared to be a pompous ass RINO to me.
Interesting how some folks who insist we had to spend young Americans' blood to liberate Iraq don't believe in freedom of speech at home
Tell your wife to duct tape your big fat mouth for the duration of this war. You negativism is unmanly and disgusting. It's supremely disrespectful of our troops in harm's way.
You think we should never should have invaded Iraq. Fine!
Now your job is to sit down and shut up while others do the hard work of winning this war. And while others support them, those who are involved in this tough job
If you are really a conservative then shut up for the war's duration and stop spreading demoralization and defeatism. You are way too self indulgent. Show some self discipline and be quiet.
It's one thing for a conservative to oppose the war. It's another for someone like the person we are discussing to spread lies, which he does continuously.
I'm going to track his posts for a while and make sure the lurkers know the TRUTH vs. his DNC spin.
c: Totally WRONG!!!! From Dec. 7 1941 on, there was NEVER a poll that showed Americans thought our involvement in WWII was a mistake. Never.
And from Dec. 7, 1941 on, there was NEVER a press campaign to destabilize the U.S. government, and cause us to lose the war.
P.S. Was there really ever a poll on the war, back then? Ever? Please provide links.
Bill Who?
We invaded some north African countries during WWII that had not attacked us and they did not have WMD programs but, the enemy was there.
I seem to recall our troops fighting a good sized battle with terrorist in a camp in northeastern Iraq just last year. I believe that it is safe to say that the enemy was and is still in Iraq.
Because if people who dissent are quiet, the fools who got us in this mess can keep us -- and our troops - - in it longer than is needed for a decent orderly extrication.
IMO, the war was a good thing. One less despot, one less country to worry about with regard to WMD/terrorism (hopefully), and we have another pied-a-terre on the left side of Iran, the real threat (and just to the right of Wahabbi land). Nice work!
If we hadn't moved on Iraq, we would be in a much more vulnerable position than we are now, because the Arab and/or Muslim world would view us as appeasing weaklings, a paper tiger.
Now, if the Iraqis are smart, they will realize that they have just been set up to become one of the richest nations of the world, a la S. Korea, Japan, Germany, etc.
Would you like to contribute toward a care package going to our troops in Afghanistan?
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