Down the Memory Hole
Posted by: Dale Franks
The QandO Blog
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Ronald Brownstein, writing in the Los Angeles Times, presents his "analysis" of the President's speech on Iraq earlier this week. The article's title gives you a pretty good clue about Mr. Brownstein's take—which is either dishonest or ignorant:
<< "As War Shifts, So Does the Message" >>.
As Mr. Brownstein puts it:
<<<
In the lead-up to the war, Bush presented the invasion of Iraq primarily as a means of preventing the Iraqi dictator from providing nuclear, biological or chemical weapons to terrorists.
After coalition forces failed to find evidence of such weapons, and several investigations did not uncover meaningful links between Hussein and Al Qaeda, the president increasingly stressed the possibility that creating a democracy in Iraq could encourage democratic reform across the Middle East.
>>>
Really?
Is that the way it actually happened? Because I remember it a bit differently.
Yes, it was many, many years ago now, and perhaps I am simply unable to clearly recall the arguments made in that ancient time, but it seems to me that there was a multi-layered set of arguments about why we were going to attack Iraq.
But why should we depend on my faulty memory?
Hugh Hewitt points to an article by Nicholas Lehman, now the Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, but in his youth, all those years ago, he was the Washington D.C. correspondent for The New Yorker. And in that august publication, in the 17 Feb 2003 issue, a full month prior to the invasion of Iraq, Mr. Lehman wrote the following:
In his State of the Union address, President Bush offered
at least four justifications, none of them overlapping:
the cruelty of Saddam against his own people;
his flouting of treaties and United Nations Security
Council resolutions;
the military threat that he poses to his neighbors;
and his ties to terrorists in general and to Al Qaeda in
particular.
In addition, Bush hinted at the possibility that Saddam
might attack the United States or enable someone else to
do so.
There are so many reasons for going to war floating
around—at least some of which, taken alone, either are
nothing new or do not seem to point to Iraq specifically
as the obvious place to wage it—that those inclined to
suspect the motives of the Administration have plenty of
material with which to argue that it is being
disingenuous.
So, along with all the stated reasons, there is a brisk
secondary traffic in 'real' reasons, which are similarly
numerous and do not overlap: the country is going to war
because of a desire to control Iraqi oil, or to help
Israel, or to avenge Saddam's 1993 assassination attempt
on President George H. W. Bush.
Yet another argument for war, which has emerged during
the last few months, is that removing Saddam could help
bring about a wholesale change for the better in the
political, cultural, and economic climate of the Arab
Middle East. To give one of many possible examples, Fouad
Ajami, an expert on the Arab world who is highly
respected inside the Bush Administration, proposes in the
current issue of Foreign Affairs that the United States
might lead 'a reformist project that seeks to modernize
and transform the Arab landscape. Iraq would be the
starting point, and beyond Iraq lies an Arab political
and economic tradition and a culture whose agonies have
been on cruel display.' The Administration's main public
proponent of this view is Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy
Secretary of Defense, who often speaks about the
possibility that war in Iraq could help bring democracy
to the Arab Middle East. President Bush appeared to be
making the same point in the State of the Union address
when he remarked that 'all people have a right to choose
their own government, and determine their own destiny—and
the United States supports their aspirations to live in
freedom.'
The title of Mr. Lehman's article is quite interesting:
<< "AFTER IRAQ: The plan to remake the Middle East" >>
Indeed, the entire point of the article was to explain, in detail, the administration's strategy for a more Democratic Mideast after the toppling of the Ba'athist regime in Iraq.
So, it's clear there was some sort of plan for creating a representative Iraq, and extending that democratic revolution across the Mideast. Moreover, it was an argument that had emerged months prior to the actual invasion.
Somehow, that apparently slipped by Mr. Brownstein.
Now, Mr. Lehman is hardly a right-wing fanatic, and The New Yorker has never been a bastion of conservatism, either. And yet, there it is, in black and white. What, then can we make of Mr. Brownstein's argument, and, by extension, the arguments of legions of Democrats who've similarly made the "shifting arguments" accusation against the Administration? Because it is clear that the literate left, at least, was perfectly aware of these arguments at least a month prior to the actual invasion.
Not to put too fine a point on it, accusations that the Bush Administration is "shifting arguments" about Iraq are either dishonest or ignorant. There was, as Mr. Lehman puts it, an "elaborately justified", multi-layered approach to the reasoning behind attacking Iraq. Those like Mr. Brownstein who claim differently now are simply either fools or knaves.
And another thing: For those of you who, like Mr. Brownstein, are convinced that there was no link between al-Qaeda and the regime of Saddam Hussein because OBL and Hussein Hated each other, SoCalPundit presents a compilation of Al Qaeda/Saddam linkages.
qando.net
latimes.com
hughhewitt.com
newyorker.com
socalpundit.com |
