Tuesday, February 10, 2004
President Bush appeared on the show "Meet The Press" yesterday, where he responded to all of the criticisms leveled his way.
Having heard excerpts from that appearence, I've come to the conclusion that I should analyze the question here.
The question is simple. Should the President have gone to war?
Now, let's get some things out of the way first. We are not going to discuss whether the President lied or misled the American people, because he didn't. This isn't a debatable issue. President Clinton and the rest of the international community came to the same conclusions about Iraq as President Bush did. The Senate, which approved the resolution authorizing force in Iraq, saw the same intelligence Bush did. There is no way anyone can intelligently justify holding the position that Bush lied, so we're going to throw that viewpoint in the garbage. That's why it isn't a big deal that the President's independent commission on the intelligence in Iraq isn't going to come to any conclusions until 2005. That would be because that commission is not designed to investigate the President. We already have all the facts neccessary to do so. The commission is designed to evaluate lessons learned from Iraq, and apply them to North Korea and other hostile nations. They aren't going to damn the President for lying, because even a cursory look at what happened makes that assertion laughable.
Second, it is clear that oil has nothing to do with this. If the President had no problems using war as a method of procuring oil, then we would be invading Saudi Arabia right now. If you want to say that oil is negatively affecting our foreign policy, that's a valid point. Saudi Arabia, the home country of most of the 9/11 bombers, a country that has been tied financially to 9/11, is still considered an ally. This is partly for practical purposes, but mostly we don't confront the Saudis because we need their oil. This is not new: the Saudi royal family has been a corrupt regime for a long time now, and no American President has seen fit to confront them.
Now, let's analyze the buildup to the Iraqi war.
We'll work from this premise: YOU are President of the United States. It is 2002.
Currently, you have a few thousand troops in Afghanistan searching for Osama bin Laden. You're also working to establish a democracy there so that the people can decide for themselves where their country will go.
But while your attention is focused on the pursuit of bin Laden and helping the economy, your advisors come to you with warnings about an old foe: Iraq.
Now, you've considered what to do about Iraq before. You drew up a plan for invading Iraq soon after you became President, for when you had to deal with the problem. And you knew that eventually the problem would have to be dealt with. Saddam had kicked U.N. inspectors out of the country, and was being left to his own devices. Intelligence at the time stated that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program. You knew that he at one time had chemical weapons. You know because he admitted to it, and used these weapons on the Iranians and Kurds. However, you put it off. The status quo was to contain Saddam via the no-fly zones.
Your advisors said that Iraq isn't worth the trouble at this time. They've been successfully contained. (A site that states the pre-9/11 position of Bush's cabinet on Iraq using excerpts from Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice can be found here.)
Then, 9/11 happened. You took decisive action: you invaded Afghanistan, removed the regime from power that supported the terrorist organisation responsible, and dismantled the training camps of al-Qaida. However, Osama and the remnants of al-Qaida had yet to be found. So you left soldiers there to search for Osama.
About a year passed, and you had not yet found him.
But your advisors are coming to you with new intelligence. They are saying that it is likely that within one year, Saddam Hussein will have nuclear weapons capabilities.
So you demand that Saddam let U.N. inspectors back into the country and cooperate with them fully, or the U.S. will be forced to take action. You ask the U.N. to support this action, and they agree, passing resolution 1441. After originally laughing off the demands, Saddam decides the risk isn't worth it, and lets the inspectors back into the country.
You congratulate Saddam for doing the right thing, but warn that if Saddam does not show the inspectors where his WMD programs and stockpiles are, or what he did with them, then grave consequences will result.
After giving the inspectors a few months, your Secretary of State comes to the conclusion that Saddam is interfering with the inspectors' progress yet again. (A summary of Powell's testimony can be found here.)
You go to the U.N. with this evidence, and say that Saddam needs to be held in breach of U.N. resolution 1441. Their reply is to give the U.N. inspectors more time.
(David's Note: More time to do what? It was made clear to Saddam that if he wanted to avoid war, he would show the inspectors where his programs were and what he did with his weapons. He didn't. What was giving him more time going to accomplish?)
You consider the facts:
- Saddam Hussein has shown a willingness many times over to violate the cease fire agreement that ended the Gulf War.
- Saddam, at one point, had biological and chemical weapons. He had used these weapons on his own people. We had no clue what he had left.
- In 1998, Saddam threw U.N. inspectors out of the country. Before that, he had impeded their progress by stopping them from searching key sites on the inspector's schedule. Reasonable deduction suggests there was a reason why he did these things.
- U.S. intelligence had historically UNDERestimated the WMD programs of hostile nations, including North Korea, Iran, and Iraq itself at the end of the Gulf war.
- al-Qaida is still actively searching for WMD to use against America. If Iraq should have any, they could sell some to bin Laden, who could then turn around and use it in a terrorist action against America.
I now pose to you the following question:
Putting yourself in the place of the President at the time he made his decision, what would your decision have been?
If you choose to confront Iraq, you risk a political backlash both at home and abroad. However, you prevent an evil dictator from ever becoming the threat to our country that he would surely become if left in power.
If you choose to follow the U.N.'s lead and give Iraq a break, you give yourself a political foundation to fall back on. You don't take the risk of having American politicans criticising your decision, the people don't have a chance to disapprove of the risk you didn't take, and some countries aren't given a "reason" to hate you. However, you run the very real risk of Iraq becoming an imminent threat at some point. If that happens during your Presidency, or if god forbid, Saddam kills or supports an action that kills another 3,000 Americans, then you will be held responsible for not having dealt with Iraq when you had the chance to prevent it from endangering our country.
The responsibility. The possible blame. The risk. All of this burden is on you.
So the question remains.
What would you choose?
Having heard excerpts from that appearence, I've come to the conclusion that I should analyze the question here.
The question is simple. Should the President have gone to war?
Now, let's get some things out of the way first. We are not going to discuss whether the President lied or misled the American people, because he didn't. This isn't a debatable issue. President Clinton and the rest of the international community came to the same conclusions about Iraq as President Bush did. The Senate, which approved the resolution authorizing force in Iraq, saw the same intelligence Bush did. There is no way anyone can intelligently justify holding the position that Bush lied, so we're going to throw that viewpoint in the garbage. That's why it isn't a big deal that the President's independent commission on the intelligence in Iraq isn't going to come to any conclusions until 2005. That would be because that commission is not designed to investigate the President. We already have all the facts neccessary to do so. The commission is designed to evaluate lessons learned from Iraq, and apply them to North Korea and other hostile nations. They aren't going to damn the President for lying, because even a cursory look at what happened makes that assertion laughable.
Second, it is clear that oil has nothing to do with this. If the President had no problems using war as a method of procuring oil, then we would be invading Saudi Arabia right now. If you want to say that oil is negatively affecting our foreign policy, that's a valid point. Saudi Arabia, the home country of most of the 9/11 bombers, a country that has been tied financially to 9/11, is still considered an ally. This is partly for practical purposes, but mostly we don't confront the Saudis because we need their oil. This is not new: the Saudi royal family has been a corrupt regime for a long time now, and no American President has seen fit to confront them.
Now, let's analyze the buildup to the Iraqi war.
We'll work from this premise: YOU are President of the United States. It is 2002.
Currently, you have a few thousand troops in Afghanistan searching for Osama bin Laden. You're also working to establish a democracy there so that the people can decide for themselves where their country will go.
But while your attention is focused on the pursuit of bin Laden and helping the economy, your advisors come to you with warnings about an old foe: Iraq.
Now, you've considered what to do about Iraq before. You drew up a plan for invading Iraq soon after you became President, for when you had to deal with the problem. And you knew that eventually the problem would have to be dealt with. Saddam had kicked U.N. inspectors out of the country, and was being left to his own devices. Intelligence at the time stated that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program. You knew that he at one time had chemical weapons. You know because he admitted to it, and used these weapons on the Iranians and Kurds. However, you put it off. The status quo was to contain Saddam via the no-fly zones.
Your advisors said that Iraq isn't worth the trouble at this time. They've been successfully contained. (A site that states the pre-9/11 position of Bush's cabinet on Iraq using excerpts from Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice can be found here.)
Then, 9/11 happened. You took decisive action: you invaded Afghanistan, removed the regime from power that supported the terrorist organisation responsible, and dismantled the training camps of al-Qaida. However, Osama and the remnants of al-Qaida had yet to be found. So you left soldiers there to search for Osama.
About a year passed, and you had not yet found him.
But your advisors are coming to you with new intelligence. They are saying that it is likely that within one year, Saddam Hussein will have nuclear weapons capabilities.
So you demand that Saddam let U.N. inspectors back into the country and cooperate with them fully, or the U.S. will be forced to take action. You ask the U.N. to support this action, and they agree, passing resolution 1441. After originally laughing off the demands, Saddam decides the risk isn't worth it, and lets the inspectors back into the country.
You congratulate Saddam for doing the right thing, but warn that if Saddam does not show the inspectors where his WMD programs and stockpiles are, or what he did with them, then grave consequences will result.
After giving the inspectors a few months, your Secretary of State comes to the conclusion that Saddam is interfering with the inspectors' progress yet again. (A summary of Powell's testimony can be found here.)
You go to the U.N. with this evidence, and say that Saddam needs to be held in breach of U.N. resolution 1441. Their reply is to give the U.N. inspectors more time.
(David's Note: More time to do what? It was made clear to Saddam that if he wanted to avoid war, he would show the inspectors where his programs were and what he did with his weapons. He didn't. What was giving him more time going to accomplish?)
You consider the facts:
- Saddam Hussein has shown a willingness many times over to violate the cease fire agreement that ended the Gulf War.
- Saddam, at one point, had biological and chemical weapons. He had used these weapons on his own people. We had no clue what he had left.
- In 1998, Saddam threw U.N. inspectors out of the country. Before that, he had impeded their progress by stopping them from searching key sites on the inspector's schedule. Reasonable deduction suggests there was a reason why he did these things.
- U.S. intelligence had historically UNDERestimated the WMD programs of hostile nations, including North Korea, Iran, and Iraq itself at the end of the Gulf war.
- al-Qaida is still actively searching for WMD to use against America. If Iraq should have any, they could sell some to bin Laden, who could then turn around and use it in a terrorist action against America.
I now pose to you the following question:
Putting yourself in the place of the President at the time he made his decision, what would your decision have been?
If you choose to confront Iraq, you risk a political backlash both at home and abroad. However, you prevent an evil dictator from ever becoming the threat to our country that he would surely become if left in power.
If you choose to follow the U.N.'s lead and give Iraq a break, you give yourself a political foundation to fall back on. You don't take the risk of having American politicans criticising your decision, the people don't have a chance to disapprove of the risk you didn't take, and some countries aren't given a "reason" to hate you. However, you run the very real risk of Iraq becoming an imminent threat at some point. If that happens during your Presidency, or if god forbid, Saddam kills or supports an action that kills another 3,000 Americans, then you will be held responsible for not having dealt with Iraq when you had the chance to prevent it from endangering our country.
The responsibility. The possible blame. The risk. All of this burden is on you.
So the question remains.
What would you choose?
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