Reality Check, Paul Begala, and more.
From the June 30, 2003 issue: The New Republic on Iraq and Paul Begala on how Clinton saved us from Saddam's WMD.
06/30/2003, Volume 008, Issue 41
Reality Check
Until last week, the editors of the New Republic had distinguished themselves in the liberal camp as defenders (for the most part) of the Bush administration's Iraq policy. Now, following in the footsteps of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, they've declared that the White House engaged in a campaign of "misinformation" and "deceit." The administration, they claim, "systematically exaggerated" the Iraqi threat and so "has undermined democracy at home."
And what of the New Republic's own past editorial support for removing Saddam? "This magazine's argument for war was different," they now insist. "It criticized the administration's unconvincing claims about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda and argued that, absent a clear terrorist link, it was Iraq's nuclear ambitions, not its biological and chemical stockpiles, that justified U.S. invasion."
You might think that a magazine would be authoritative on the subject of its own past editorial views. So you can imagine THE SCRAPBOOK's astonishment upon rereading the New Republic's September 2, 2002, editorial, headlined "Best Case." That editorial in fact emphasized Iraq's use of chemical weapons, and stands as an honorable and persuasive statement of the case for war. The words are worth remembering today, even if the editors wish us to forget where they once stood:
"What is it, then, about the villain in Baghdad that should provoke the United States to rid the world of him? One spectacular thing: He is the only leader in the world with weapons of mass destruction who has used them. He used them against Iranian troops and against Kurdish civilians. This is what makes Saddam Hussein so distinguished in the field of evil. Morally and strategically, he lives in a post-deterrence world. We do not need to speculate about whether he would do the dirtiest deed. He has already done the dirtiest deed. That is the case, and 'the case.'
"Of course there are some who are not overly impressed by the moral and strategic ramifications of chemical warfare. Writing in the Washington Post this week, Zbigniew Brzezinski argued that 'the frequently cited but essentially demagogic formula that Hussein used weapons of mass destruction (specifically gas) against his own people ignores the fact that he did not use such weapons in 1991 against either U.S. troops or Israel, both of which had the capacity to retaliate and thus to deter.' The implication here is that there is the rational gassing of innocents and the irrational gassing of innocents, and that Saddam Hussein practices only the rational gassing, and so we can deal with him.
"Brzezinski sleeps much too well. We would prefer to linger on this side of decency and to insist that the use of weapons of mass destruction denotes a general derangement. A man who actually employs these obscene devices, who regards them not with trepidation but instrumentally, is not a man who can be trusted to behave as the instructions of political science would have him behave. And it should not matter to us that these crimes were not committed against the United States, or that Saddam Hussein's missiles do not have the range to hit American places, because the use of weapons of mass destruction, rather like genocide, represents an international emergency. In international emergencies it is we who must lead. The physical defense of the United States includes also the moral defense of the United States; but the defense of American values sometimes requires action in non-American places. Democracy in the Middle East--in Riyadh, in Cairo, in Baghdad--would be splendid. But biological or chemical or nuclear war would be intolerable. If we do not prevent it, it is not least ourselves that we will have betrayed."
Baghdad Begala
During the war in Iraq, THE SCRAPBOOK was struck by eerie similarities between Saddam Hussein's former information minister, Mohammed Sayeed Al-Sahhaf, aka Baghdad Bob, and Bill Clinton's still-serving information minister and co-host of CNN's "Crossfire," Paul Begala. Both are from the nanny-nanny-boo-boo school of political discourse. Baghdad Bob once said of his opponents, the Americans, "They think we are retarded. They are retarded." Begala once noted of his opponents, when doing an electoral synopsis of red and blue America, that Texas is "the state where James Byrd was lynch-dragged behind a pickup truck until his body came apart--it's red." Both peevishly evade the tough questions. Baghdad Bob, when asked if Saddam was still alive, said, "I will only answer reasonable questions." Begala, when asked how he'd feel if Clinton admitted a relationship with Monica Lewinsky, shortly before he did, said, "I don't want to talk about my feelings. I just don't want to talk about my feelings. I just don't."
But let's not overdo the parallels. When Saddam fell, Baghdad Bob reportedly fled in shame and terror. When Begala's boss left office, he stayed on TV and kept distorting reality on his behalf. Begala's June 6 "Crossfire" broadcast was a classic. Nobody else knows what happened to Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, but Begala has come up with a novel (read: psychotic) theory: Clinton destroyed them!
During an exchange with Republican consultant Ed Rogers, Rogers asked Begala: "So how close did you guys get? What happened in the Clinton White House?"
"This is what happened," responded Begala. "In 1998 [on the eve of the impeachment vote], President Clinton bombed every known or suspected weapons site. And that's why he didn't have them when we invaded in . . . 2003. That's what happened, isn't it?"
ROGERS: "No, not at all."
BEGALA: "We bombed them in '98, and the right wing said it was 'Wag the Dog.' It turned out he actually destroyed all the weapons." Earth to Paul: Get help. As Baghdad Bob once said, "I now inform you that you are too far from reality."
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