Posted on 09/14/2002 9:57:51 AM PDT by Mr. Mulliner
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THE CASE AGAINST IRAQ
"What more do we need to know?" That was the heart of President Bush's message at the Afghan Embassy as he prepared to address the UN General Assembly on the question of Iraq. "I'm going to the United Nations to give this speech for a reason: because I believe this is an international problem, and that we must work together to deal with the problem," said Mr. Bush. The president reasserted his contention that Saddam Hussein has "ignored the United Nations for all these years, has refused to conform to resolution after resolution after resolution, who has weapons of mass destruction. My job as the American president is to do everything we can to protect the American people from future attack." Indeed, the shift to a preemptive doctrine of military intervention could very well be the greatest single aspect of Mr. Bush's legacy as president.
On the subject of preemptive attack, it is notable that President Bush's most ardent Leftist detractors (Hillary Clinton, Tom Daschle, the Leftmedia et al.) are the same crowd who, last year, condemned Mr. Bush for not taking preemptive action after the New York Times published an erroneous accusation that he had prior knowledge of the 9-11 attacks.
In his address to the UN, President Bush's indictment against Saddam Hussein accused the dictator of undertaking a "decade of deception and defiance" against the UN's own series of resolutions prohibiting the development of weapons of mass destruction.
"The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations, and a threat to peace. ...All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. ...Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant? ...Iraq has answered a decade of UN demands with a decade of defiance."
Mr. Bush accurately assessed the dangers: "To assume this regime's good faith is to bet the lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this is a risk we must not take."
And the president concluded with a challenge and a promise: "With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September the 11th would be a prelude to far greater horrors. ...We cannot stand by and do nothing while dangers gather. We must stand up for our security, and for the permanent rights and the hopes of mankind. By heritage and by choice, the United States of America will make that stand. And, delegates to the United Nations, you have the power to make that stand, as well."
President Bush received substantial applause upon completion of his speech to the UN. And after sharing classified information on Iraq's WMD capabilities with Western leaders last weekend, the tone of their rhetorical objections has softened substantially. Of course t EU-nik detractors remain, such as German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who declared, "Nothing has changed in my opinion -- Germany will not take part in any military intervention in Iraq under my leadership." But, as The Federalist has noted before, such comments must be taken in the context of the degree to which nations like Germany are exposed to terrorist acts. You may recall, Mohammed Atta cooked up the whole 9-11 attack from a terrorist cell based in Germany.
Setting aside questions about the president's existing constitutional authority to unilaterally attack Iraq, which The Federalist has previously explicated, one dominant Leftlogic argument is that the Cold War doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) will deter any rogue nation from attacking the U.S. with nuclear weapons. U.S. nuclear capacity was a sufficient deterrent to contain the Soviet Union, so why should ground forces be committed to disarm Saddam?
Indeed, perhaps even Saddam Hussein is not mad enough to use WMDs against the U.S. or one of its allies. But the Left is still bogged down in symmetric warfare doctrines -- battles between the standing armies of nation states, the sort of doctrine LBJ subscribed to in Vietnam. But our war with Jihadistan is asymmetric -- al-Qa'ida terrorists supplied with WMDs by a state sponsor like Iraq, who then act as surrogates and detonate a nuclear weapon in a U.S. urban center or release weaponized smallpox into an airport hub ventilation system, sending those contaminated to all points and beyond.
Iraq was a player in al-Qa'ida's strike against our nation on 9-11 and is now harboring Islamic terrorists. The certainty of Iraqi state-sponsored terrorists acquiring and using weapons of mass destruction against the United States justifies -- necessitates -- military action to remove Saddam and dismantle Iraq's WMD program completely.
So, "What more do we need to know?" Will the American people have to suffer another terrorist attack -- perhaps far more catastrophic than that of one year ago -- in order to regain our unified voice on behalf of national defense and homeland security?
In 1941, FDR addressed a joint session of Congress, asking for a declaration of war against the empire of Japan: "No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in righteous might will win through to absolute victory" -- on the day after the "date which will live in infamy." Anything short of "absolute victory" in the war we prosecute with Jihadistan today will cost the lives of countless additional Americans on our own soil.
Friend of The Federalist, Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, concludes: "Containment is impossible in an age of international travel, multiethnic societies and weapons of mass destruction. By waiting for our enemy to strike, we risk losing a city -- or worse. To ensure that every American can live in safety, health, prosperity and freedom, our national security policy must be to preempt and defeat our enemies. That is the lesson of Sept. 11."
And a final note on Iraq... For the squeamish, Left and Right, who are stressed over the notion of a preemptive strike against Iraq, our friend Thomas Sowell reminds: "There has already been a preemptive strike against Iraq -- two decades ago. The Israelis bombed a nuclear facility that Saddam Hussein was building at that time -- much to the consternation and condemnation of so-called world opinion. But many an American soldier may have come back alive from the Gulf war of 1991 because of that Israeli strike. When we are talking about weapons of mass destruction, we are talking about the possibility of waking up some morning and finding half of Chicago in ruins or millions of Americans across the country dying in agony from some biological agent."
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