| Submit your comments on this article |
| International |
| War in Search of a Reason |
| 2004-01-19 |
| A War in Search of a Reason 1/15/2004 - Political - Article Ref: IN0401-2190 Number of comments: 4 Opinion Summary: Agree:2 Disagree:1 Neutral:1 By: Ivan Eland Independent Institute* - Paul O’Neill, George W. Bush’s former Secretary of the Treasury, has confirmed what many critics of the Iraq war had already suspected to be a cynical and self-serving Bush administration myth: that the September 11 attacks had moved a reluctant president, who during his campaign had advocated a "more humble U.S. foreign policy," to invade and occupy Iraq. Despite campaign rhetoric accusing the Clinton-Gore administration of being overly interventionist, O’Neill asserts that going after Saddam Hussein was the most important topic on the National Security Council’s agenda 10 days after the president’s inauguration and eight months before September 11. O’Neill, a former member of the council, also alleges that rather than conducting a debate about why Saddam should have been deposed and why the removal was so urgent, the initial council meetings in January and February 2001 centered on how to get rid of Saddam and plans for a post-Saddam Iraq. And there’s more cynical manipulation to come. Rather than talking about democratizing Iraq and then the Middle East by invading and occupying Iraq -- the public face of the intervention -- the council meetings focused more on divvying up Iraq’s oil booty. Surprise, surprise. So how does this situation differ from Imperial Japan’s invasion of other countries during the 1930s to grab their resources? O’Neill also characterized President Bush, in his decision-making and communication at cabinet meetings, as being like a "blind man in a room full of deaf people." But this sorry state of affairs is better than the Bush administration’s pre-war assessment of the threat to the United States posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction -- which could be deemed "the blind leading the blind." The U.S. intelligence community and other allied intelligence agencies had little new information about Iraqi nuclear, biological, chemical and missile programs since the U.N. inspectors left in 1998. But according to a study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, intelligence reports on such unconventional weapons programs did not ring alarm bells until mid-2002. The authors of the study allege that the Bush administration put the screws to the U.S. intelligence community to get the conclusions they wanted. Also, the authors accuse the administration of spinning intelligence estimates by marginalizing dissenting opinions and eliminating caveats. Another inquiry, by Washington Post reporter Barton Gelman, examined Iraqi documents and interviewed Iraqi scientists and members of the American team searching for Iraqi unconventional weapons. Gelman reported that such weapons programs were a long way from fruition -- belying the need for an immediate invasion of Iraq. The Iraqis had long-range missiles only on paper and likely would have taken at least six years to build them. Similarly, he uncovered a letter from Iraq’s chief of unconventional weapons programs reporting the destruction of all Iraqi biological weapons in 1991 -- contradicting U.S. intelligence estimates predicting that Iraq had retained large stockpiles of such weapons. Most important, Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was largely terminated after the Gulf War and never restarted -- contrary to the administration’s pre-invasion claims that the Iraqis could have a nuclear weapon within a year. It would have probably taken the better part of a decade before the nuclear program would have produced a weapon. But such wild exaggerations should not be surprising from an administration on a mission in need of justification. Other rationale for the U.S. invasion have also collapsed. Both the president and Secretary of State Colin Powell have admitted that the implied link by administration officials between Saddam and al Qaeda or the September 11 attacks has no concrete evidence to support it. Finally, by preferring indirect non-representative caucuses to ensure a friendly Iraqi government rather than a democratic one with an interim assembly directly elected by Iraqis -- which is being advocated by Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, the administration has exposed the hypocrisy of its "democratize Iraq and then the Middle East" war justification. Wars for legitimate and well thought out reasons usually foster the formulation of effective plans for both the conflict and its aftermath. In Gulf War II, the rush to war on flimsy grounds has made difficult the development of sound U.S. strategy and tactics to fight the continuing guerrilla war. It has also complicated post-war reconstruction efforts. Most important, if the pillars of your house are built with soft wood, they will probably collapse if there is an earthquake. That is, if the fighting continues to go badly in Iraq, the American public is liable to eventually awake from its slumber and demand a withdrawal of U.S. forces from a war whose justifications were questionable. In the wake of September 11, public opinion was willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt on an invasion of Iraq. That tolerance may evaporate now that the pillars justifying the invasion and occupation have been weakened one-by-one. The guerrillas can figure out that much. Paul O’Neill’s revelations about a war in search of a reason may have sawed through the last timber. |
| Posted by:Cheddarhead |
| #11 If anyone starts in on me, all I'm going to ask them if they believe after sanctions were lifted (and it was coming time to) if Iraq would be knee-deep in the stuff he has plans, money and people for. |
| Posted by: Anonymous2U 2004-1-19 11:39:38 PM |
| #10 One point rarely gets discussed now when we are talking about the "legitimacy" of going to war against Saddam rather than Iraq. Imagine 9/11 would never have happened, how long could the world have looked at Iraq without doing anything. Oil for food until when? How long could we have allowed Saddam to plunder the country and torture his people? If there was a quagmire, it was before the U.S. went to cut the Gordian knot. 12 years of sanctions didn't work, probably 24 years wouldn't have worked either. Let's assume (I say "assume") that Saddam really destroyed all his WMD in 1991 and was just to "proud" to prove it, his regime would still have been inacceptable. One thing I really hold against the UN is that it felt rather comfortable with the status quo that held Iraqi people in one of the most brutal dictatorships of the second half of the 20th century. Saddam's regime defied any of the ideal the UN was founded upon. To quote a famous Roman philosopher, Cicero: "Quo usque tandem abutere, Saddam, patientia nostra"? ("How long are you going to abuse our patience, Saddam?) 12 more sanction years = how many more murdered, starved, tortured Iraqis? |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2004-1-19 9:45:23 PM |
| #9 Aw, ferchrissakes, Chowderhead - GROW UP! |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2004-1-19 8:42:01 PM |
| #8 No way, Fred, we can use the exercise. |
| Posted by: Matt 2004-1-19 8:30:41 PM |
| #7 Ah there we go they're back now (maybe it was MY browser or sumthin). |
| Posted by: Val 2004-1-19 8:26:39 PM |
| #6 lol well Fred you seem to have deleted the comments instead! ;) |
| Posted by: Val 2004-1-19 8:25:54 PM |
| #5 Grrr... I was going to delete this article. Zhang Fei! Stop making comments that are worth more than the original article! |
| Posted by: Fred 2004-1-19 8:24:12 PM |
| #4 I felt that the reasons Bush gave were good ones, while the criticism was way-off base, Cheddarhead's included. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2004-1-19 8:21:15 PM |
| #3 Cheddarhead: In the wake of September 11, public opinion was willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt on an invasion of Iraq. That tolerance may evaporate now that the pillars justifying the invasion and occupation have been weakened one-by-one. The guerrillas can figure out that much. Paul O’Neill’s revelations about a war in search of a reason may have sawed through the last timber. I can't really read the minds of the Iraqi terrorists as well as Cheddarhead seems to be able to. But it's no surprise Cheddarhead might be able to put himself in their place - he may see them as latter-day Che Guevaras* and get a vicarious thrill from the exploits glamorized by the anti-American press. The truth about Cheddarhead's impressions is that they are wrong. Just as Che Guevara was better at striking poses than at guerrilla warfare, Iraqi terrorists are better at taking out Iraqi civilians than in confronting American troops. Iraqi terrorists are being taken apart at a rate that beggars the imagination, given the hundreds of millions of dollars (potentially billions)** of equipment and money available to them. Even the Vietcong were not as well-financed, despite the money shoved at them by China and the Soviet Union. And yet despite the suicide bombers and anti-aircraft missiles, Iraqi terrorists are only managing to kill one American every day, compared to 24 a day in Vietnam. The Vietcong also assassinated South Vietnamese officials at the rate of a dozen a day. But all the Iraqi terrorists can do is kill innocent civilians who are not even working for US forces. Paul O'Neill's revelations about his floundering in the Bush cabinet may have sawed through the last timber of his credibility. He failed miserably in implementing administration policy and was forced to resign instead of doing so voluntarily. He worked with a reporter who is renowned for making up quotes, endorsed the book and then had to disown it because this reporter had once again veered into writing fiction. Given that O'Neill said he would vote again for Bush in 2004, it's simply amazing how such a lousy judge of character (in choosing a reporter specializing in fabricating quotes to write about his experience in the administration) ever became Treasury Secretary. * Destroyers of what Cheddarhead may feel to be the "Western imperialist order". ** US troops have confiscated a billion dollars from Saddam's organization. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-1-19 8:20:40 PM |
| #2 It's only in search of a reason if you aren't inclined to look at the big picture. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-1-19 8:11:45 PM |
| #1 cheddarhead - lay off the cheddar |
| Posted by: Dan 2004-1-19 8:00:49 PM |