Thanks. I do my best, qh.
Saddam was not a clear and present danger. He was a danger-in-the-making. But what a danger he could have become! An incredible, world-changing immense danger. This was recognized by all who thought half-way objectively about things. The best case, of course, was made by Pollack, who has apparently not changed his view that Saddam needed to go. And while I understand every single aspect of Pollack's views, as expressed in his book and as expressed after the war, during the postwar I have for the first time sensed a bit of waffling in him, a bit of uncharacteristic going along with the flow, which was more pronounced during Awful April, which too, will pass. And which, by the way, was definitely not as bad militarily as everyone thinks, proof of which is the magnificent way we handled the ill-timed insurgency.
I still think the postwar was very poorly handled. However, I have no problem whatsoever distinguishing between the justifications for the war, its incredible success, and its later bungling. I can, however, at the same time withhold judgment until we have more perspective into the matter, which will only come as time passes.
Unless I've missed something, which is quite possible, I don't think Pollack has commented on Saddam's possible purchase of WMD, specifically nukes, in any of his post-war commentary.
I'd really like to hear and read some decent commentary along these lines. I'm surely not getting it here. The elephant sleeps unnoticed in the bedroom.
The thought of Saddam skiing down Hubbert's Peak, controlling the flow of a increasingly scarce yet absolutely essential resource, is sufficient justification to get rid of him. No one but no one has tackled that concept. Three parallel tracks were likely to take place, namely, that as years passed, while containment became increasingly a joke, and Saddam armed himself with nukes, at the same time the era of cheap oil would slowly be ending without any serious steps being taken to sever our dependency on petroleum. The third rack was a substantial increase in the demand for oil as China and India entered the market as serious consumers. China, no true friend of ours, was destined to become our competitor in the ME. It could be expected to aggressively push its interests, which do not coincide with ours in this regard.
In sum, there's no telling how many serious future difficulties could result when these three parallel tracks somehow ceased being parallel and meshed at some critical juncture sometime during this decade. By eliminating one of them, we have decreased the risk significantly.
If these thoughts do not affect anyone's risk assessment of the future, I don't know what can.
A successful postwar also means that we open up the market for ideas in the ME instead of propping up thugs and dictators. An exciting, ground breaking, positive change in how we do business that may do more to change the ME than anything we have ever done. The jury is still out, of course, but I'm hopeful.
We simply could not have ignored or lived in fear of some very nasty and potentially inevitable realities. I am heartened that we took steps to control our own destiny, a lesson both Reagan and FDR taught us. |
