I certainly won't argue that removing Saddam was bad
Except that you were against doing it, and you remain against doing it. Support under such circumstances is entirely hypothetical.
the argument made to the American people and to the UN was that Saddam was a threat to national security
Yes, that was the chief reason given, mainly for the sake of trying to get UN support. It was given because it was a) believed and b) thought to have the best chance.
That doesn't mean that there were no other reasons, or that they were not given, or that they can be dismissed as 'not counting' now.
Saddam's past and potential future support of terrorism was a very real threat, particularly after 9/11, an event that changed the way a number of people reckoned their chances in the Mideast. Saddam didn't just pay $25K to the families of Pal suicide bombers (though he was the only state head to do so openly), he had Zarqawi and Abu Nidal working for him in Bagdhad, he trained Islamist terrorists at Salman Pak, he sent Iraqi intelligence to Afghanistan to help AQ weapons training with poison gas. And just btw, he had a track record of using poison gas on his own people.
If you were President, would you look at this history, plus intelligence reports of hidden weapons programs, plus the North Koreans running around selling anything to anybody (we didn't yet know about AQ Khan), plus sanctions falling apart at the UN, and conclude that Saddam was not a threat, better just wait a few years and see what happened down the road? Sure, Saddam was trying to sound like an Islamist, but maybe his homebrew terrorists wouldn't amount to much?
This may come as news to you, but Presidents don't get to formulate policy in the light of hindsight. Even knowing what they know now, they still would have wanted to go in, since the other option was letting sanctions fall apart & a huge American climbdown that would leave Saddam as one of the biggest players in the Gulf. An undesirable outcome before 9/11, and an intolerable one after 9/11.
And as for the policies of PNAC, while we are going on about oil, which is certainly always a factor in the Middle East, let us not forget about democratizing and reforming the Middle East, also always high on PNAC's program. Why? Because without it, there is no ideological answer to Islamism, which presents itself as an answer to Arab dictatorships. And Islamism is a real danger to US national secuirty, as was discovered by everybody on 9/11/2001, in case you've forgotten.
I'll believe the crap about democracy when congress starts allocating $80 billion to save the Sudan.
So your rule is, the US should only undertake $100 billion dollar foreign policy initiatives where there is no conceivable advantage to the US? Because that way, no one can accuse us of hypocrisy, the worst possible charge. If anybody is suffering in regions where the US does have interests, I guess that is too bad for them.
This is not the policy of grownups, that is all I can say, nor a realistic view of foreign policy. If this is the new Democratic mantra, it's going to be a loooong time before the American people entrust their security to the Democrats again.
Amazing that the second paragraph reprimands Saddam for torture
That's like comparing the My Lai massacre to the Cambodian killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. One lieutenant runs amok and the Army court martials him, does that make it equal the million plus dead in Cambodia? Saying that the handful of people running amok in Abu Ghraib, who were also tried by the Army, is the same as Saddams reign of fear with hundreds of thousands in mass graves all over Iraq is hysteria, not serious criticism. |
