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.
To some extent, they already do. You can't go to the bathroom when you're standing on the White House steps, and illegal aliens can't marry citizens for the sole purpose of circumventing immigration laws.
Brilliant!!!!
consider Buckley added to the same shithead list you are presently on! At least your brass laden, pseudo intellectual comrades aren't from the low-life flyovers.... How's it smell over there anyway? Is there any difference between a writer's butt and a brass butt?
If you're voting for Bush, why are you campaigning for Hussein?
That would include my son, and you damn sure don't honor my son with any of your statements. So if you plan to use that phrase again in the future, I request you add the following disclaimer: "Except BykrBayb's son." Thank you.
Bill Buckley is a genius in many ways but his opinion is still an opinion.
Oh quit being overdramatic. Nobody's threatening to throw you into a chipper. It would be nice if you were smart enough and honorable enough to shut up instead of encouraging the enemy with your words. Your right to speak the way you do is safeguarded by the very people whose lives you're endangering by doing so. But don't let that stop you.
Yeah, but folks could reasonably have argued that war with Japan was OK because they'd attacked us (Al Queda-Afghanistan), but there was no reason for us to go into Europe because Hitler had never attacked us (Sadaam Hussein-Iraq). When we declared war on Germany, we didn't even know about the Death Camps (Mass graves).
I sometimes wish Bush would have addressed the UN in the following manner:
"Ladies and Gentlemen. Some muslim assholes killed 3000 of our countrymen on 9/11/2001. The killed thousands and they still vow to kill more.
We sent our troops to Afhanastan and Iraq for simple reasons. To kick the #$$% out of the black turban wearing camelf@@#$s in Afghanastan and that sheep@#$% Osama. I was just kidding about the WMD and the links to Saddam, he just had it coming and he got what he deserved...courtesy of Uncle Sam.
We don't really care if you like it or not. We know that many of you and your governments are a bunch of chlymers. You want to be great, but youre not.
[turn gaze to DeVellipin].
We will not let you stand in our way. You can obstruct, but you will not halt, our might.
To those of you and your countries that encourage and harbor ill will....
[gase turns to Iranian delegation)
...and we know who you are...we want you to know that the mighty Eagle has cast her eye on you and is sharpening her talons. On 9/11/2001, we were the prey. Tomorrow, you become the prey.
We would like to thank our brothers, the British for standing fast with us. We are like brothers and have had our differences, but we are bonded in the bone. I would also like to thank our friends from eastern europe who understand the meaning of freedom because in a lifetime, they have seen the difference between tyranny and freedom. And to the Italians and all our coalition partners for extending themselves in the fight for freedom.
As for the rest of you. History will judge you as the cowards and hypocrites that you are. We dont have a beef with you but don't get in our way.
Thank you.
Precisely. Very good analysis.
No,I doubt that either of them will be at the convention.
You rule.
LOL, CC :)
But he has never been perfect in his pov. He is utterly wrong about this, as he has been on some other occasions.
People should watch the Firing Line debate between Buckley and Ronald Reagan about the Panama Canal. Reagan crushed Buckley flat.
Buckley was put back on his feet by Mark Green several times, and Buckley was strangely inadequate when he was in a round table on religion/rationalism a decade or so back.
Buckley is the most underrated historical person in the 20th century. I love the man.
But he is wrong, sometimes.
Peach, I'm ashamed of you! I didn't realize you felt that way. Good thing churchillbluff pointed this out. And before you even TRY to refute it, we all know churchillbluff would never lie. If he says you don't want us to capture Osama, that's the gospel truth.
/sarcasm
No answer from PETA about this. I guessed I was right. I still think back about when I saw this video for the first time. I got so mad, I wanted to sign up and fight that night!
I googled it, and came with an article by NewsMax. http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2003/10/29/121859.shtml
But that's not when it started. Elsewhere in the article...
If anybody can retreive a copy of it, we'll be very grateful.
My recollection is that the tape of the dogs being gassed was that it was an Al Qaeda tape, recovered in stuff from one of their Afghanistan houses.
He declared war on the US a few days after Pearl Harbor
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