Case ClosedThe president’s closing argument.Excerpt:
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he president stood before 500 civic leaders in Cincinnati's historic Union Terminal like an attorney addressing the jury at the end of a difficult trial. The preliminaries had taken place long ago. The facts? Still in dispute, some say, but they frequently are in cases of this nature. He made the opening statement before the United Nations on September 12, only blocks from the site of one of the attacks that had helped bring the case to trial. A month of debate followed, at times rancorous, other times staid, but rarely reaching the tone set at the beginning. Now, the closing argument, to frame the deliberations before the vote. The president spoke deliberately, in a conversational, almost subdued tone, which underscored the seriousness of the moment. His attitude was relaxed, but earnest. He did not play for laughs, did not exaggerate, or employ devices for their own sake. He laid out the argument with Euclidean precision, proceeding from postulate to conclusion, tracing the history of the threat, its development, its current urgency, and the means necessary to deal with it.
His speech was an extended ratiocination, a series of questions and detailed answers ordered to reflect the reasoning process by which he and his advisors had arrived at their policy. Why is Iraq a unique threat? How urgent is this danger? How is this threat related to the war on terror? Why must we act now? How have prior actions failed to produce results? What can we do differently? What will be the outcome? In his answers, there was nothing new, as critics said; surely nothing new to regular readers of NRO. However, in its exactitude, its completeness, its wholeness, the president's 3,300-word speech encapsulated a complex situation decades in the making. For those who had argued that the president has not yet made his case, this address was the definitive response.
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Probability of statistics.
I'm still hopeful that all this saber rattling (no pun intended) will result in Iraq changing its own regime. Not very hopeful, but hopeful. 6
Any simple "regime change" in Iraq would be no better, and in some ways, it would be worse. No new regime could be certain it had all of the WMDs or the scientists with the know-how to produce them completely under wraps.
If you contend that then nor could United States ensure that all WMD and scientists with know how were completely under wraps. Heck, I'll contend that on the basis that man is not infallible.
All of that would fall into the hands of the highest Islamist bidder. The threat would remain, and in some ways, would worsen.
Internal Iraqi "regime change" is a phantom solution.
I sought a possible solution. I posted similar eight to ten days ago on a couple of threads: Internal assassination or swift removal awaiting jury trial of Saddam Hussein and any replacement that follows his or a similar threat to United States and Iraq's neighboring countries would meet the same fate. Any honest Iraqi president would allow unconditional inspection as proof of his honorable intent to a regime change. In fact, he would probably seek to enlist United States in his efforts toward a regime change.
Interestingly, a few days after the initial posts a similar scenario was put out by the Bush Administration. I have no doubt that they had long been aware of the scenario. Just as I and many others have been. Still, I find the timing interesting.
On the one hand, achieving the goal of valid regime change internally would be several magnitude more arduous than going to war to change the regime. On the other hand, if the Iraqi people became convinced that internal regime change is the will of the Iraqi people it could be a comparative cake walk.
I'll tell you something, if that possibility/goal does come to pass a major paradigm shift in people's thinking will follow. That would have positive ramifications far beyond what war could achieve.
I won't argue that honest men do or do not exist. For I think I have made that case clear already. That said, what are the odds that the internal regime change solution put forth above will occur?
At the very least, acknowledge objective reality. That is, there is a possibility that a valid regime change could happen without war. And if still interested, go on to learn and identify how it could happen without war. There is no doubt in my mind that President Bush has sought that while assessing the odds and possibility of going to war as an alternative. He certainly isn't jumping the gun to go to war. I trust his judgment.
BTW, I think James S. Robbins' article heading this thread is spot on.