Sen. Obama from the debate Tuesday night.
I don’t understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, while Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are setting up base camps and safe havens to train terrorists to attack us.
The United States did not attack Iraq because of 9/11. Or not exclusively. This little tidbit is a reminder that Sen. Obama’s worldview is much different from that of George W. Bush or John McCain.
The reason why the Bush administration – with overwhelming Congressional support – decided to attack Iraq was because Iraq under Saddam had failed to come clean about its WMD program in accord with UN resolutions. Since the United States was uncertain, the government felt – especially in the wake of 9/11 – that it couldn’t take and find out that there Saddam had a WMD program when a SCUD landed in the United States or in the land of an ally loaded with such a warhead. Saddam also was giving aid to numerous terror groups. And despite what the MSM would have you believe, he did have ties to Al Qaeda, even if he had no role in 9/11.
But here’s the part that bothers me even more. One of the mantras of the Obama campaign is that he will use all the (presumably diplomatic) tools at his disposal to prevent Iran from going nuclear. The assumption is that these diplomatic tools will be effective. But Sen. Obama never seems to consider what would be if diplomacy fails.
Sen. Obama’s implication is that President Bush failed to use all the diplomatic tools available to him to bring Iraq into compliance. President Bush did try, but he was undermined (as Pres Clinton was before him somewhat) by countries like France, Germany and Russia that had commercial dealings with Saddam and were thus willing to subvert the UN resolutions that were supposed to bring him in line.
Rather than take a chance, President Bush chose to take action. Sen. Obama claims that a nuclear Iran is “intolerable.” But if it becomes inevitable because diplomacy fails will Sen. Obama continue using those tools? Or will he act?
Related from Anne Bayefsky:
Wake up. There is a genocidal maniac on the verge of reaching the point of no return in his ability to make a nuclear weapon. A fanatic with the stated ambition to murder five million Jews living in Israel — to start. A villain who has already funded and armed a terrorist war against the Jewish state that in 2006 forced one-third of Israel’s population to live underground for almost a month. In other words, an individual who is ready, willing, and able to give the nuclear trigger to a terrorist group — to terrorists who cannot be bargained with because they prefer their death to your freedom. As for the suggestion that the Mullahs are more powerful and nicer guys, the millions brutalized and subjugated in Iran tell a different story.
h/t LGF
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
The WMD issue was only one of the reasons for the Iraq Campaign, and the other reasons bear directly on the War Against the Jihadist Terrorists, although Senator Obama, and many others, are not sophisticated enough to understand it.
The “root causes” of terrorism, the actual ones not the fantasies of those who generally use the term, lie in the dysfunctional Arab and Persian political culture. It is that political culture that keeps thtrowing up tyrants into power there. For those who are enamored of the economic “root causes” foolishness, it is those tyrants whose rule brings about the lousy economic conditions of the Middle East. So even that grows directly out of the dysfunctional political culture. The radical Islamists arose as an alternative to the failed Pan-Arab Nationalists like Nasser who had made such a mess of things yet still clung to power as tyrants. This movement actually has no more promise of success than the earlier one, as we can see in Iran. But frequently the mosque is the only political breathing space people have in Arab countries.
So if the jihadists are to be permanently defeated (or as permanently as possible) the dysfunctional political culture will have to be reformed, as it was in Germany and Japan after WWII. The virus of liberty had to be injected into the Middle East. Western specialist in the Arab culture have always thought Iraq was the most promising Arab country for modernizatrion because of the character of its people. So Iraq was the logical place to start this process.
There was also the matter of Saddam being a long time enemy of the USA, certainly at least since 1990. His continued presence tyrannizing his people and threatening war with others made a mockery of the US. It was a sign of US weakness that we did not need after 9/11, which was brought on in part by the perception of US weakness.
The Iraq Campaign also gave the US the opportunity to fight the jihadists on grounds of our own choosing. Geographically we could fight them in the Middle East instead of in New York. Tactically we could pit skilled US soldiers and Marines against them, instead of relying on unarmed airline stewardesses and passengers to do the fighting. Strategically it allowed us to seize the initiative from the jihadists, to make them react to our moves rather than we to their’s. Taking the initiative away from the enemy is always important in winning a war. Finally it allowed us to pit our big idea against their big idea. The jihadists’ big idea is a new caliphate, where Muslims will swagger around lording it over the wretched dhimmis. It’s an attractive vision for Muslims stuck under tha thumb of Mubarak, Assad, or some despotic King or Amir. Our big idea is liberty and prosperity in the modern world. That is also an attractive idea. Which will win? It’s still in dispute, and will be for a long time.
There was an additional aspect that I think we did not expect but has helped us in the war of ideas. Nobody expected the jihadists to be so savagly bloodthirsty against fellow Muslims. Their terrorism, approved by so many Muslims when directed against Jews and Americans, sickened them when directed against them. This has led to a major diminution of support for the jihadists in the Muslim world.
Sorry for the long post, but WMD is only a part of the story, and I think not the greater part, however necessary it was to make sure that Saddam or his psychopathic spawn did not have nukes to throw around the next time they wanted to invade Kuwait for its oil, or to throw at Israel in support of Saddam’s fantasy of being the new Saladin.