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April 20, 2004
Why WMD
The way I see things, the extraordinary blame Bush gets for the war against The Baath party owes much to the politics of Ritter, Blix and Fisk.
These days, few people are likely to consider the broad level of support our military action had, not only abroad but domestically. Congress gets almost no blame. There are no state governors who will say publically that they are against the war and that troops should come home immediately. Unless the anti-war sentiment can be spun into an indictment of Bush and an endorsement of Kerry, most political voices and elected officials are silent.
I say that the geopolitical conflict with Iraq was inevitable. The accumulation of damnation of Saddam Hussein grew greater as time went by. But that WMDs became the single most imporant issue of the domestic political legitimacy of the war owes primarily to the agendas of Blix, Ritter and Fisk.
I understand and respect any pacifist objection to this conflict, and I expect of that pacifist the acknowledgement that Hussein's murders would go unavenged. But the WMD argument is becoming ossified in opposition to the war, and I find it embarassing for my opponents to argue this point.
Blix represents the deliberation of the UN. His inability to find WMDs, in my opinion, was only exacerbated by the fact that the UN is incapable, on the ground, to be an effective fighting force. I don't think anyone doubts his eyesight, but his ability to get where he needs to see is entirely hobbled by the tactical incompetence of the organization he represents. Blaming Bush via Blix means you believe the UN is better at finding out secrets than our forces. He wouldn't even be as sure as he is today were it not for our thousands of troops pacifying large areas of Iraq. I would suggest that there was no other timely way of coming to the level of certainty we have today. The UN inspection regime has, ultimately lasted since the first war. It has failed for 12 years and not come up with a better raison d'etre than WMD, Bush's term.
Fisk embarassed all the journalists in the world by giving them a firehose of information they couldn't contextualize. He proved that few were doing their homework. In the end, about all the media could do was attempt to digest and regurgitate his politics, which were essentially that Bush was both stupid and conspiratorial. And yet our journalistic ethics blind us to advance the kind of thinking that could actually help Americans understand the situation on the ground. Were it not for the ready-made gripe that pool reporters and embedded reporters could only see a limited amount, media organizations might have an answer to Fisk. But like the CIA itself, media organizations have not been willing to invest in people with human intelligence on the ground. Between editorial and live footage of heads rolling, speculation ruled. Default to WMDs. Yeah that and a fair but self-serving documentary about a journalist's fate in Bagdhad the first time around.
Finally, and I believe most importantly, Ritter's decision to agitate against the war became a rallying point for the opposition. Yet Ritter made it entirely clear that he was not going to speak about humanitarian concerns, because if he were to detail what Saddam Hussein actually did, it would rally Americans to the cause of war. What Ritter knew and knows today is that Americans could be made to feel about Iraqis what it feels about Rwandans. Instead he chose to pursue a course which highlighted what he felt were abuses of our own democratic system. I think it is entirely reasonable for him to have done so from the point of view of a patriot willing to be isolationist in this matter. Yet the inevitable results of this is that it too combines to undermine the pacifist responsibility for averting their gaze from damage done by Saddam Hussein with or without WMDs.
The WMD argument is null and void. There are none, and perhaps there never were and those who needed to know, actually knew. As Woodward's book suggests, Bush and company had other significant geopolitical reasons to do battle with Saddam Hussein WMD or no. But in order to paint Bush in the colors of war, many Americans have undermined their own credibility as humanitarians with their suggestions that our deposing of Saddam has done more damage to Iraq than Hussein himself did.
Posted by mbowen at April 20, 2004 08:18 AM
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Comments
But in order to paint Bush in the colors of war, many Americans have undermined their own credibility as humanitarians with their suggestions that our deposing of Saddam has done more damage to Iraq than Hussein himself did.
Is that really what people are doing? Or, are people uncomfortable with the idea that the reasons presented for going to war weren't valid? That Americans didn't get the right facts.
Are many Americans really undermining their credibility as humanitarians? The question is, really, why this humanitarian effort? Why not deal with the dozens of other hot spots around the world where humanitarian effort might be useful?
Or, are many Americans frustrated with an administration that uses 09/11 as a get out of jail free card any chance they get.
The war in Iraq was supposed to be about the war on terror, except it really wasn't. The war in Iraq was about Saddam Hussein. No matter what the outcome will eventually be, good or bad, that's what it all seems to come back to.
And for many Americans, myself included, this administration's continued mis-information and double talk about terror and WMD and humanitarian efforts undermines our trust in our government.
And that's where the credibility flaw lies.
Posted by: Jason at April 20, 2004 02:35 PM
The war in Iraq was about Iraq. It was about the fact that Saddam Hussein, whatever his capability, had intentions on taking over the oil in the region. Remember where the scuds landed, Israel and Saudi Arabia.
When do Americans get the right facts? Did Americans get the right facts on Kosovo? Are they getting the right facts on Sudan? Do we have the right facts on Abu Sayaf in the Phillipines? Are we getting the right facts on the AQ remnants in Yemen? I don't think the majority of anti-war activists care squat for geopolitical facts, they're simply pacifists who couldn't think of any good reason for a military solution and whatever argument justifies their hostility to American military action is acceptable protest.
Double-talk or no, there isn't much different in the overall philosophy on Iraq between Clinton and Bush. Yes Bush took advantage, and perhaps in a cynical way it is the only way.. you have to get the country on a 'war footing'. Wasn't it abundantly clear that the same anti-war activists couldn't stand NATO bombing in Yugoslavia? Weren't they terrified of a ground war. Are they satisfied that having won that day that Radovan Karadzic has never been found and brought to justice, or do they just not give a fuck any more, because there's a new president to piss on?
The moral withdrawl of principled humanitarian concern from the imperial power of the US grants all responsibility to a president and congress smeared by Americans themselves. When geopolitically naive / willfully blind Americans suggest that their government works only for cynical and immoral reasons, despite the logic presented, it gives more credibility to haters abroad. Moreover, it undermines the legitimate influence they would have on the president. In other words, where is the constructive criticism?
I am particularly annoyed at the suggestion that the UN by its very internationalist nature is always more morally correct than America. The suggestion that American troops be commanded by the UN for these reasons is absurd beyond comprehension.
This is only half the rant it should be, I'm heading over to Royce Hall to hear Amis and Hitchens.
Posted by: Cobb at April 20, 2004 07:04 PM
(paraphrasing)
"the inspection regimes were unsuccessful."
by what metric?
"deposing saddam has done less damage to iraq than saddam himself."
by what metric?
a competent far seeing administration wouldn't have ever contemplated this....largely because they would still be going after al queda cells. similarly speaking, one would be hard pressed to argue that the combination of inspections with non-stop bombing (in no-fly zones) did not have an impact. i'd like to teach the world to sing, but the bottom line is i don't have the resources nor do i have the chops and the foresight.
Posted by: Lester Spence at April 21, 2004 06:38 AM
Going after AQ is an international police action. It always was and it always will be. Powell made the case clear that 'war as we know it' is not changed beyond recognition because of the role states play in providing aid and comfort to terrorists. Even I have been late in my praise of Powell's ability to finesse the relationship between our nation and Pakistan, who not one year earlier was on the brink of a nuclear exchange with India.
I am convinced that Blix and his inspectors were on a wild goose chase without any ability to see that they were prior to the assistance of the coalition's destruction of the Baath party. While Ritter suggests that the CIA knew the weapons programs weren't substantial and it just stood to reason that Iraq was not as dangerous to the world as it had once been, everything the UN was capable of doing short of an invasion ended in stalemate. That the weapons inspectors only this year came to the conclusion that everyone in Iraq had been lying to Saddam Hussein and everyone outside of Iraq had been misled by those lies. How long would it have taken had those top military officers not been taken prisoner and interrogated? Even when we had offered a witness protection plan for the top scientists, they wouldn't budge.
What I think most anti-warriors fail to recognize is the level of intimidation and terror Iraq sustained. As Hitch said last night, this kind of dictatorship works not because it provides consolidation of power that has an absolute 'can do' appeal to the citizens. It doesn't provide stability. It orchestrates capricious chaos so that no matter what you do as a subject of this power, you can never satisfy it. You will always look over your shoulder. If you are a top athlete and you win the match, Uday might still torture you because he didn't like the way you did it. And until you grasp the fact that Saddam modeled his republic and style after Stalin and has had absolute power longer than he and Hitler put together, a reign of absolute terror for over 3 decades, then you cannot understand how valuable relief from that is. If one cannot perceive the depth of depravity of Saddam's Iraq, then of course nothing we do in the interests of liberation makes sense.
Any administration which wouldn't contemplate the destruction of Saddam's vicious 1984 world has no business considering itself much more than self-serving. The world doesn't have to sing, but we might take the boot off it's throat.
Posted by: Cobb at April 21, 2004 07:51 AM
kerry the hope the man with no hope he is stupid and has no plan flips flops so he seems like a pair of beachwalkers
Posted by: stevo at April 23, 2004 10:34 PM