A Reminder
By Callimachus | Related entries in Foreign Policy, The War On Terrorism, United Nations, WarWho wrote this on Oct. 15, 2002?
Democratic Rep. Dick Gephardt, the minority leader, invoked Sept. 11. “If you’re worried about terrorists getting weapons of mass destruction or their components from countries, the first candidate you worry about is Iraq.”
No it isn’t. Start with Pakistan, or some of the former Soviet republics. As a Missourian, Gephardt does a piss-poor job of showing me. He makes no attempt to genuinely connect Iraq and al-Qaida.
The answer is, me, that’s who.
So how come I don’t now spend a lot of time and effort bashing Bush, yowling about WMD and feeding the same vampires who feed off Cindy Sheehan?
Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye reminds some of us that a lot of the rest of us asked a lot of questions about the war before it began, then devoted ourselves to making it work, once the choice had been made.
It’s possible to have opposed the invasion of Iraq and think we should stay the course there. And it’s possible to continue to be in favor of the war in Iraq and be dissatisfied with the president’s performance.
He also puts in an appearance on this interesting thread, where he elaborates:
I was opposed to the invasion of Iraq. But having invaded, removed the government there, and occupied the country we are legally, morally, and strategically obligated to stay until the situation there has been stabilized enough for the Iraqi themselves to take over actually rather than just nominally.
And he’s done an honorable job of it ever since it began.
Personally, I’ve come a little further around than David has since the months of lead-up to the Iraq invasion. I’ve changed my views about a lot of things. Now, looking back, if I’d been the president I’d have gone up to the U.N. on Sept. 12, told them all to follow me down to 23rd and Chambers, shown them the red-hot pile of metal, with people crawling into it in quest of anything that might still be alive, and said, “you have 30 days to tell us what you’re going to do about this, before we go and do something about it on our own.”
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 14th, 2005 and is filed under Foreign Policy, The War On Terrorism, United Nations, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 14th, 2005 at 11:52 pm
This is EXACTLY how I feel and that’s why I keep calling for the US to stay the course in Iraq. It’s more important now than it has ever been.
August 15th, 2005 at 6:48 am
Then you’re right, Justin. I opposed the invasion of Iraq because I thought Colin Powell was right- that we’d oust Saddam only to find ourselves embroiled in a religious civil war where both sides hated us. The only justification that would’ve trumped this was the WMD threat- that’s exactly why that card was played (or overplayed) by the Administration. Once the decision to invade was made, I’ve supported the President- even though I have substantial doubts about the likely outcome- which I believe will be an anti-US theocracy. You don’t have to be a ME expert to read some of this handwriting on the wall.
August 15th, 2005 at 9:17 am
Kreiz,
“The only justification that would’ve trumped this was the WMD threat- that’s exactly why that card was played (or overplayed) by the Administration.”
You may feel that is was ‘overplayed’ but that is all it is, feeling. After 9/11 happened, we started looking at threats in a different light. If all of our intelligence showed that Saddam was rebuilding his WMD program, and was deliberately hiding something from the inspectors…. it would have been the height of lunacy to not take action if you believed that there was a possibility of WMD being given to the terrorists. Instead of the constant partisan battling between the parties, I would be much happier if they put on the face of unity (I mean they all voted for the war in Iraq) and determination instead fo the constant ‘gotcha crap’ that is going on now. I am so disgusted with politicians that I think they are all ‘parasitic pieces of dog crap’!
“Once the decision to invade was made, I’ve supported the President- even though I have substantial doubts about the likely outcome- which I believe will be an anti-US theocracy. You don’t have to be a ME expert to read some of this handwriting on the wall. ”
I don’t agree in the case of Iraq, I don’t think that they are going to be anti-US theocracy. They may become a theocracy, but two of the three groups in Iraq are very thankful that we got rid of Saddam, the only ones that are not very thankful right now are the bathist, and that is because they have lost their ’special place’ in the government. I do think that even that will continue to get better once they see that they will have a say in the new government.
I am concerned about them all working together, but as long as each group (Shias, Bathists, and Kurds) all have a say and can determine policy I believe it can be done. The Shiias are the only ones that really want a theocracy and they can’t do it without the other two groups voting for it.
Callimachus,
The sad part is that the UN wouldn’t have even been able to agree on a course of action in 6 months, let alone in 30 days. That is the problem when you have representatives from all of the different countries…. their best interest is not necessarily our best interests… you can bet that they will be looking out for theirs so we need to look out for ours.
August 15th, 2005 at 11:57 am
I know, Debsay. That’s why I am not exactly in the same place as Dave S. and some of the others. I underwent more change, because I still had some starry-eyed naivete about internationalism, a relic of my unthinking days. That fell away during 2002-03.
The U.N. was set up in 1945 in large part to contain and control international conflicts between nation-states armed to the teeth. That had been the European problem of the previous 150 years. In the world where we find ourselves today, the only world force the U.N. is good at containing and controlling is the U.S., if we let it. The U.N. is too easily used as nothing more than a handicapping device to level the field for the non-state terrorist groups against the U.S., and there are too many nations there, including some we call friends, who are glad to see that happen.
August 15th, 2005 at 12:57 pm
Your attitude surprises me. Even though I opposed the war, and was skeptical about the existence of WMDs, I sort of grudgingly respect those who say “hey, everyone thought they had WMDs. We were all fooled.”
What I don’t get is your whole emotional point about taking the UN members to the rubble of 9-11 and asking them what they were going to do about it. I take your point to be that invading Iraq was a reasonable response to 9-11, and if the UN wasn’t going to punish Iraq, we had to. Are you really the last thinking person in the country who believes there was a link between Iraq and 9-11? If not, why link the two in your post?
August 15th, 2005 at 3:47 pm
Chris,
I believe that he was speaking from the standpoint that I made earlier:
“After 9/11 happened, we started looking at threats in a different light. If all of our intelligence showed that Saddam was rebuilding his WMD program, and was deliberately hiding something from the inspectors…. it would have been the height of lunacy to not take action if you believed that there was a possibility of WMD being given to the terrorists.”
After 9/11 happened, our leaders no longer looked intelligence the ’same’ way… kind of like kids that play in the street – if they see one of their friends get hit by a car, you can bet they will never look at playing in the street the same way again!!! It would be the height of lunacy to continue to play in the street and not pay attention to traffic, especially since you have personally seen the result of that action.
I don’t know what is so hard to understand, there hasn’t been ANYBODY that said that Saddam was directly responsible for 9/11… NOBODY so when you bring that up you are creating a strawman that you can then knock down…
August 16th, 2005 at 2:21 am
Between 9-11 and the invasion of Iraq, I clung to the idea that the UN equalled international moral legitimacy. But during that process I watched the U.N. with much more attention than I had hitherto given it. And that changed my perception. That and post-war revelations like oil-for-food. So the U.N. graph, which may seem eccentric in the original post, is there to represent the fact that I’m not just on-side for the sake of finishing the job in Iraq and supporting the troops, but because of a genuine shift in perceptions.
As for the rest of it, yes, I was one of those whom Saddam had fooled about WMD. I thought he had bio and I thought he was a lot closer to reconstituting a nuclear program.
But I’m also skeptical of people who say they were skeptical of Iraqi WMD before the war. I like to see it in print. I once went back and checked the archives of a lot of the loudest anti-war voices (Kos, Atrios, Juan Cole), and found all the ones I read, at one point or another, saying, “yes, he has WMD.” Ironically, that was one of the chief arguments for NOT attacking Saddam: He’d make us pay too high a price.