Posted on 03/06/2003 9:25:02 AM PST by yonif
By WILLIAM SAFIRE New York Times 3-6-03
NEW ORLEANS
How should free people feel — in our hearts, brains and guts — about launching a pre-emptive strike?
Note that we are not "starting a war" with Iraq. That was begun by Saddam more than a decade ago. We won the first battle, but he has since been secretly violating the terms of surrender. Either we will allow him to become capable of inflicting horrendous casualties in our cities tomorrow — or we must inflict and accept far fewer casualties in his cities today.
That's a Hobson's choice, which is no choice at all. We will now get on with it. We will not whip ourselves into jingoism, or become fascinated by our exercise of ultra-tech superpower or suppress our sadness at the pictures of Iraqi civilians Saddam will thrust into the line of fire as human shields.
But we should by no means feel guilty about doing our duty. War cannot be waged apologetically. Rather than wring our hands, Americans and our allies are required to gird our loins — that is, to fight to win with the conviction that our cause is just. We have ample reason to believe that Saddam's gangster government is an evil to be destroyed before it gains the power to destroy us.
It is futile to try to reason with passionate marchers waving signs proclaiming that America's motives are to conquer the world and expend blood for oil.
Nor should we waste more precious time trying to beg or buy moral approval from France or Russia, their U.N. veto threats largely driven by economic interests in Saddam's continuance in power. Nor should we indulge in placing second thoughts first: How much will it cost? How many will be killed? How long will it take? Will it kill the snake of terror or only poke it? Will everybody thank us afterward? Where's the guarantee of total success? Too cautious to oppose, these questioners delay action by demanding to know what they know is unknowable.
Our task now, as citizens of nations burdened with the dirtiest work of mankind — a pre-emptive attack to finish a suspended war — is to call up the national spirit and determined attitude needed to sustain a great effort. Skepticism is a fine American trait and many find patriotic fervor uncool, but the eve of hostilities is the moment for opening the mind to exhortation.
We are launching this attack, already too long delayed, primarily to defend ourselves. This is a response to reasonable fear. We know Saddam is developing terror weapons and is bound on vengeance; we know he has ties to terror organizations eager to use those weapons for more mass murder; we know he can bamboozle the U.N. inspectors again; we know Americans are terror's prime targets. That's plenty of reason to take him out.
But this reasonable fear should be accompanied by a strong dash of hope. Wilsonian idealists have found a soulmate in President Bush, who surprised us all with his challenging vision — not merely a "vision thing" — for the coming generation.
The defeat of Saddam may just send a clear message to Kim Jong Il and other tyrants that we will respond with more action than ransom to nuclear blackmailers, thereby making the world a safer place. But safety is not all.
The liberation of 23 million Arabs and Kurds now ruled by a bloody-handed dictator, followed by a transition to a confederation (aided by an Arab-American general like John Abizaid, now Gen. Tommy Franks's deputy), may just make it possible for a rudimentary democracy to take root in this major Muslim nation.
Such a birth of freedom in Iraq, a land of oil wealth and a literate population, may just spread to its neighbors and co-religionists. This would counter the cancerous growth of repression and rancor that has roiled the Middle East and impoverished the people of 20 nations.
If Bush's vision of a transformed region fails, it will fail while daring greatly — a nobler course than that weakly advocated, in Teddy Roosevelt's words, by "those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."
This campaign near the Ides of March will make us safer, allaying our fears; it has the potential of making the world freer, justifying our hopes.
Thursday, March 6, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
(Editor's note: Mr. Taranto delivered this speech Tuesday to the Fabiani Society in New York.)
You're all no doubt familiar with President Bush's case for war, which I'll briefly summarize:
Despite the demands of the United Nations, Saddam Hussein has continued to pursue weapons of mass destruction, which he could give to terrorists to use against us.
Iraq under Saddam's Baathist regime is a human-rights nightmare, one of the most brutal and repressive dictatorships in the world.
Saddam supports terrorism--openly and notoriously in the case of groups like Hamas. There is some evidence of connections between Baghdad and al Qaeda, although this is controversial.
And finally, the liberation of Iraq from Saddam would create an opportunity for democracy to gain a foothold in the Middle East, enhancing the prospects for peace, freedom and security in the whole region.
Now, I find all these arguments convincing. I would add one more. In 1991, after we drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait, then-President Bush urged Iraqis to rise up against Saddam Hussein. They did, and America abandoned them. Saddam's forces killed tens of thousands of people and made refugees out of tens of thousands more. I would argue that this betrayal leaves America with a moral obligation to free the Iraqi people.
Just about everyone agrees that America can liberate Iraq from Saddam's rule. So enormous is our military advantage that no one would be surprised if Baghdad fell in a matter of days. Some argue, however, that it isn't a wise thing to do. I'd like to talk about what I see as three myths of the antiwar side.
Myth No. 1: America is "rushing to war."
People were saying this six months ago, when President Bush took his case to the United Nations. Since then, the president has done everything asked of him: He's won congressional authorization for military action; he's persuaded the U.N. Security Council to give Saddam a "final opportunity" to comply with his disarmament and other obligations, and he is even now pursuing yet another Security Council resolution explicitly authorizing force. A six-month diplomatic effort to win support is hardly a "rush" to war.
It's a myth, though, even to say that we're debating whether to go to war with Iraq. The truth is, we are at war with Iraq, and we have been for 12 years. There was no peace treaty ending the Gulf War. There was only a cease-fire, conditional on Iraq's accepting a series of conditions, embodied in, now, 17 U.N. resolutions, covering not just disarmament but also economic sanctions, repatriation of prisoners of war, reparations to Kuwait, and an end to the repression of the Iraqi civilian population.
As President Bush pointed out to the U.N. in September, Saddam has complied with none of these provisions. It should be clear by now that he will not. At most he will make desultory concessions aimed at giving countries like France that oppose action an excuse to stand in the way.
Those who favor maintaining the status quo of inspections and sanctions, aimed at "containing" Saddam, call themselves "antiwar." But in fact they are precisely the opposite. They favor prolonging a war that has already gone on for 12 years, and that has taken an enormous toll on the Iraqi people, who continue to suffer both tyranny and economic isolation.
The status quo is also dangerous to America, which brings me to Myth No. 2: Invading Iraq is a "diversion" from the war on al Qaeda. Well, the notion that the U.S. government is "distracted" from al Qaeda now has a simple, three-word refutation: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
More broadly, though, the idea that finishing the Gulf War detracts from the terror war reminds me of the arguments we used to hear against quality-of-life policing. The objection went something like this: Why would you want cops to waste their time on "minor crimes" like panhandling, or subway fare-beating, or public urination? The police ought to be out catching murderers.
After the Giuliani years here in New York, it'd be hard to find anyone who doesn't acknowledge that public order prevents crime, and that public disorder, by creating an atmosphere of lawlessness and anarchy, encourages serious crime. This principle is no less applicable on the "Arab street" than on the streets of New York.
Terrorism does not occur in a vacuum; it is a product of the tyranny, misrule and fanaticism that prevail in much of the Arab and Muslim worlds. Saddam Hussein's continued defiance of the U.N.'s demands and its failure to do anything about it make a mockery of international law. What lesson can terrorists take from this but that this is a world without authority, a world in which the civilized nations will not act to protect themselves from those who would murder the innocent in the name of jihad?
Furthermore, the need to contain Saddam Hussein distorts American policy toward the entire region. Many critics of Washington's Iraq policy point out that al Qaeda actually has much closer ties to Saudi Arabia than to Iraq. This is undoubtedly true. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi native. Fifteen of the Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudis. Riyadh exports the extremist Wahhabi brand of Islam throughout the world.
Yet Saudi Arabia is our ally. We even station troops on Saudi soil, to protect the Saudi royal family from Saddam Hussein. With Saddam gone, we'll be able to reassess our relationship with the Saudis and with other "friendly" dictatorships. The fewer enemies you have, the more selective you can afford to be about your friends.
But even if liberating Iraq promises to be an antiterror boon in the long run, some argue that there's a huge risk in the short term. This is Myth No. 3: Intervention in Iraq will lead to more terrorism. Note the contradiction between Myth No. 2, which denies that Iraq has anything to do with terrorism, and Myth No. 3, which asserts that it has everything to do with terrorism.
There's actually a bit of plausibility to the fear of retaliatory terrorism--but only a bit. One can imagine al Qaeda timing an attack on America to coincide with the liberation of Iraq, and in fact Osama bin Laden, or a man purporting to be Osama bin Laden, hinted at such a thing in his last audiotape.
But if there are al Qaeda cells waiting to attack America, does anyone really think they'll pack up and go home once they're convinced we're going to leave Saddam alone? Of course not. Al Qaeda cannot be appeased. "Retaliation" for an attack on Iraq would be a pretext, not a provocation, for any al Qaeda attack--and let's remember that there was no particular pretext for the attacks of Sept. 11.
So at most, the threat of retaliatory terrorism might be an argument for delaying action in Iraq in the hope of buying more time to weaken al Qaeda. But this weekend's progress against al Qaeda makes that argument less compelling. Besides, the case for delay is a double-edged sword. If we wait to deal with Iraq until we've finished dealing with al Qaeda, we give Saddam a powerful interest in keeping bin Laden strong. If Iraq and al Qaeda don't already have a tactical alliance, this seems like a excellent way of driving them into each other's arms.
There's another way in which critics say the liberation of Iraq will encourage terrorism: It will inflame the "Arab street," whip up anti-Americanism and expand the number of potential terrorists. This, it seems to me, misunderstands the Arab street entirely. What inflames the Arab street is not American strength but the perception of American irresoluteness. Before the Gulf War, the Arab street protested fervidly in favor of Saddam. After the Gulf War, it was quiet. On Sept. 11, the Arab street whooped with delight at America's suffering. It was quiet after we liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban.
Recently I met an Iraqi-American woman who told me that whenever she travels to places like Egypt and Syria, people respond with great enthusiasm when she tells them she's originally from Iraq. "Oh," they'll say, "you have a wonderful president." They're referring to Saddam, not President Bush.
"Why is he wonderful?" she asks them. Having lived there, of course, she knows better.
The answer? "He's wonderful because he stands up to America."
As long as Saddam is in power, he remains a symbol of defiance against the feckless free world. He personifies the disorder that prevails throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds. This is what breeds terrorism. This is why liberating Iraq is a crucial part of the project America began on Sept. 11, 2001.
Mr. Taranto is editor of OpinionJournal.com.
Counting from April 18, 1991, the 15th day after passage of U.N. Resolution 687, more than 4,330 days have passed since Iraq put itself in material breach of international obligations. It did so by ignoring that resolution's 15-day deadline for listing the locations, amounts and types of all its chemical and biological weapons, all "nuclear weapons-usable" materials, and for disclosing the location of Scud and other ballistic missiles with ranges above 90 miles. So the current "rush" to war has consumed almost half again as many as all the 3,075 days of U.S. engagement in World Wars I and II and the Korean War.
As the world waits to see whether the U.N. will cudgel Iraq with a "second" U.N. resolution, which actually would be the 18th, President Bush weighs when, not whether, he will order an attack on Iraq that Congress authorized by much larger majorities than his father achieved on Jan. 12, 1991, authorizing the Gulf War. And the president's domestic and foreign critics, showing an amazing tolerance for cognitive dissonance, fault him simultaneously for acting as though the United States can be the world's constable - and for allowing Iraq to divert him from the task of solving the North Korean crisis.
Into this welter of foolishness has waded Conrad Black, a British citizen and member of the House of Lords who is a proprietor of many newspapers, including the Telegraph of London and the Sun-Times of Chicago. In a recent London speech to the Centre for Policy Studies, he noted that the United States, far from being the "trigger-happy, hip-shooting country" of European caricature, scarcely responded to the killing of dozens of U.S. servicemen at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and on the USS Cole in Yemen. "And when two of its embassies in Africa were virtually destroyed, President's Clinton's response consisted of rearranging some rocks in Afghanistan and blowing the roof off a Sudanese aspirin factory in the middle of the night."
Yet it is presumably to counter America's insatiable appetite for using its military that the idea has arisen that America should submit to plans to "collegialize" its power. The idea is that any use, even after successive acts of war against America, requires the permission of France, Russia and China, which have not sought U.N. blessings for their respective military interventions to discipline the Ivory Coast, to grind the Chechens into submission and to suffocate Tibet.
NATO's 16 European members have chosen to spend on their defense a combined sum a third less than the United States spends, and have used their spending so fecklessly that it purchases only about 10 percent of U.S. military capability. In an episode of what Black calls "the Ruritanian posturing of the French," President Chirac claimed that the European Rapid Reaction Force would "project European power throughout the world." Black notes that the force, a mere reallocation of forces from NATO, is "almost totally dependent on American airlift capacity, and is essentially a parade ground force to travel about Europe, marching down the main avenues of the capitals on their national days."
So Black is bemused by the moral calculus that produces the conclusion that the United States is morally obligated to use its military might only at the behest of, or with the permission of, nations that do not wish it well.
America has had "the most successful foreign policy of any major country" not just because of its strength but because "it has never had any objective except not to be threatened and when threatened, to remove the threat." And it "does not believe in durable coexistence with a mortal threat."
Black says that three of the greatest strategic errors of modern times -Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, the Soviet refusal of postwar U.S. aid in exchange for liberality in Eastern Europe - involved underestimating the dangers of provoking America. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, one of the authors of the fourth great error, the Sept. 11 attacks, may have belatedly understood that danger when, before dawn last Saturday, he stood in his underwear, facing the drawn guns of the men who told him America would like to ask him some questions.
George F. Will is a syndicated writer in Washington
A no-brainer, probably, but not a Hobson's choice. If the Democraps had the White House, they would still be chasing AlQ in Afghanistan and letting Sadam do whatever he wanted to (just read the 12 Senators' views on 'neglecting' AlQ).
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