I'll see you one safire and raise you one WSJ editorial:
December 22, 2003
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Gadhafi's Conversion
Now we know why the Bush Administration was willing to go along this past summer with Moammar Gadhafi's attempt to buy off the victims of his terrorist past. It was secretly negotiating a much larger Gadhafi concession to abandon his programs to produce weapons of mass destruction.
We criticized that earlier payoff as trading with a terrorist, but the result announced late Friday at least yields real security gains. The Libyan dictator since 1969 has now admitted lying for years about his weapons plans, has already allowed Americans and others to inspect 10 weapons sites, and has promised to allow "intrusive" inspections in the future.
Shutting down any rogue nuclear weapons project is a big deal in the age of al Qaeda. U.S. officials say Libya's program was further along than the CIA had thought, much as Iraq was before the first Gulf War, and included centrifuges intended to enrich uranium. More important will be any intelligence that the U.S. now gleans about what countries or underground networks supplied Libya. U.S. officials are hinting that they've already picked up such helpful information.
The timing and nature of this conversion also vindicates the Bush anti-terror Doctrine. Gadhafi's emissaries first approached British officials in March, just as the war in Iraq was getting under way. From the first days after September 11, Mr. Bush offered state sponsors of terrorism a choice to be with us or against us. If Gadhafi had any doubts about U.S. resolve after the Taliban fell in Afghanistan, they vanished once he saw that Saddam Hussein was also headed for the spider hole of history.
It's amusing to see the same people who have opposed the Bush Doctrine now claiming that Gadhafi's conversion is the triumph of "diplomacy." European Commission President Romano Prodi averred on the weekend that Libya's reversal "demonstrates the effectiveness of discrete diplomacy and engagement, which has been the European Commission's consistent approach." The French and Senator John Kerry said something similar, as usual.
But years of diplomacy by itself didn't seem to move Libya from its terrorist ways. Only when Gadhafi could see that WMD programs were a path to his own self-destruction, as they were in Iraq, did he agree to turn state's evidence against himself. Mr. Bush's new Proliferation Security Initiative, which is attempting with 10 other nations to use the military to intercept WMD shipments, was also noticed by the Libyan.
Mr. Kerry's Saturday statement that "this significant advance represents a complete U-turn in the Bush Administration's overall foreign policy" shows why he's going to have to mortgage more than his Beacon Hill home to become commander-in-chief. He doesn't understand that the credible threat of force, and often its use, is essential before diplomacy has any chance of working.
Along those lines, we'd offer two caveats amid all of the cheering over the Gadhafi news. One is that the dictator continues to be responsible for killing hundreds of innocents, many of them Americans. In international relations and especially in the age of terror, moral trade-offs for the sake of security are sometimes necessary. But Mr. Bush's promise on Friday that Colonel Gadhafi "can regain a secure and respected place among the nations" goes too far in our copybooks. He may be giving up his weapons but he isn't becoming a democrat. We'd still like to see him tried for his terrorism, a la Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam. Short of that but as a proven liar, Gadhafi must be held to his new commitments.
The other caution is about the limits of the Gadhafi outcome as a precedent, especially for North Korea and Iran. Both countries are much further along than Libya in their weapons plans, so they will have an even harder time giving them up. Both regimes have also previously agreed to honor global arms-control agreements, only to be caught lying and then repudiate those commitments.
As it basks in the Libyan surrender, we hope the Bush Administration keeps the pressure on both of those charter members of the "axis of evil." Iran's most recent promise of renewed cooperation with U.N. inspectors isn't nearly as extensive, for example, as what Libya is now promising. And since its nuclear threat is the only reason North Korea has any claim on world attention, we doubt Kim Jong Il will ever give up his secret programs.
With the capture of Saddam and now the concessions from Gadhafi, it has been a good 10 days for Mr. Bush's policy of military power and diplomatic resolve in the war against terror. Now is not the time to abandon it.
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