March 3, 2004

Why The War Was Fought

J.J. McCullough
OP Columnist

When the war was
y| launched, I remained
confident that the
weapons would be
found. Of course, I certainly didn’t
think the marines would just “stum-
ble upon” a gigantic warehouse full
of nukes and anthrax spores—espe-
cially when so many of Iraq's mili-
tary facilities lay in ruin. It seemed
logical, however, to assume that
once the post-war.occupation peri-
od began, numerous previously hid-
den caches of banned weapons
would slowly begin to be uncovered.

Of course, now this scenario is
looking increasingly unlikely.
Several weeks ago, David Kay, the
ex-head weapons inspector, testified
before Congress and gave the most
pessimistic assessment of the WMD
(weapons of mass destruction) hunt
to date. Various soundbytes of his
testimony were widely repeated in
the news media—“Turns out we
were all wrong,” he said of the
claims of weapons, adding that
based on his own observations it was
“highly unlikely” that significant
WMD stockpiles existed in pre-war
2003 Iraq.

What does all this mean? On one
level, this all spells quite a dire crisis.
To know that WMDs will likely
never be found in Iraq, after they
were hyped so extensively in the pre-
war days, is an enormous embarrass-
ment to the Bush Administration,
and not one that should be brushed
off. To deny the importance of find-
ing WMDs would require a political
spin of the highest order. The fact
remains, such weapons were guaran-
teed to be found, but now will most
likely not.

At the same time, these latest rev-
elations are not a grim portrait of
deception, nor, contrary to the
claims of the left, do they in any way
“prove” that President Bush in any
way lied, deceived, or cheated his
way into war.

While the media was very keen to

 

repeat the most damning lines of
David Kay, many of his most telling
statements have been _ largely
ignored. Though he found no stock-
piles of weaponry in Iraq, the ex-
inspector did find numerous
instances of proof indicating that
Iraq's WMD programs and “techni-
cal infrastructures” had not, in fact,
been dismantled. Research and
development continued, and “hun-
dreds” of violations of UN mandates
were discovered. Though these
offenses are not equal to the finding
of actual, functioning weapons, they
are still very significant.

The real key point in Dr. Kay's
speech was the “we all” in his “we
were all wrong” statement. The
weapons of mass destruction argu-
ment was not just an allegation that
was concocted out of thin air. Every
single piece of available intelligence
pointed to their existence. President
Clinton used WMDs as a pretext for
a 1998 bombing raid on Iraq. There
is a widely circulating document on
the net that is a collection of quotes
from prominent Democrats from
the late 90s, all vouching for the
existence of WMDs. President
Chirac of France believed they exist-
ed, so did Chancellor Schroder in

-Germany, and Kofi Anan of the

UN. So did our own government in
Canada. The debate, leading up to
the war was never about the exis-
tence of WMDs, it was about what
to do with them. The Security
Council did not pass a resolution
demanding for Iraq to prove
whether or not it had WMDs, it
passed a resolution demanding the
regime disarm. Hans Blix was the
weapons inspector, not the weapons
detective.

In retrospect, playing up the
WMDs to the degree that they were
was shortsighted. The Bush admin-
istration, under heavy pressure from
Colin Powell’s State Department,
focused on the WMD angle in order
to win support from the Europeans

 

Vhy tinker around with

this masterpiece?

Patel e toe ii ees erel |

Beet

/

http://www. filibustercartoons.com

eS

ad

and the UN—both of which, as
noted, believed strongly that
Saddam possessed banned weapons.

While not everyone agreed with
Bush's “first strike” policy, asking a
rogue state to follow international
law seemed much less offensive. As
the much vilified Deputy Defense
Secretary, Paul Wolofowitz, quipped
in a Vanity Fair interview, the
WMD angle was selected for
“bureaucratic reasons” because it
seemed the most clear-cut, and least
divisive.

Of course, the actual policy-mak-
ers like Wolofwtiz knew that this
war was about much more than
WMDs. After 9-11, the US under-
went a dramatic, and important for-
eign policy shift. No longer content

in a past column, one needs to only
look to areas of the world like Asia
and Latin America to see how
quickly a group of nations can be
forced to adopt democracy when a
prominent country takes the initia-
tive and creates a good example to
inspire the rest of the region. This
cause often gets caught up with
another key argument—humanitar-
ianism,

To be sure, the war on Iraq was
not sorely launched because Saddam
was a “bad man,” as critics so face-
tiously put it, but to suggest that
Saddam’s brutal legacy of terror
towards his own people is any way
inconsequential to the wars motiva-
tions is simply a rejection of reality.
A regime as brutal as Saddam's is a

The weapons of mass
destruction argument was not

just an allegation that was

concocted out of thin air.

to wait for further terrorist attacks
on US soil, President Bush outlined
an ambitious doctrine of bringing
regime change to any nation that
sponsors and harbors terrorists.
Saddam's regime did both of the
above, a fact that has only become
clearer since the war's end. From al-
Qaeda to Hamas and others,
Saddam had a considerable track
record of dealings with Islamic ter-
rorist groups, but unfortunately,
this, as well as other key motivations
for the war, have been systematically
sidelined, and ignored by the media
and critics in favor of the WMD
“upset.”

The third, and in some ways most
important, rationale for the war was
the idea that removing a tyranny in
the Middle East would help serve as
an initiative for overall change in the
Middle Eastern region. As I argued

literal breeding ground for terror, as
are most of the Middle East’s tyran-
nies. When your personal freedom is
squashed by a brutal, totalitarian
regime, becoming a professional ter-
rorist doesn't sound quite so bad.
Terrorist leaders pray on the down-
trodden and apathetic, and present
convenient scapegoats, (America,
the Jews, etc.) who are blamed for
everything that is wrong in their
lives. The simple fact is that many
Arab men and women have very lit-
tle to lose by joining terrorist
groups. To effectively fight the War
on Terror, it is this cycle that needed
to be broken. Targeting Saddam's
three-year regime was a logical way
to start disrupting this cycle of
tyranny and terror.

It is, on some level, fairly bizarre
that so many nations protested this
war, and even more bizarre that

these nations did so using rhetoric
of peace, human rights, and interna-
tional law. The Saddam regime
openly violated all three principles,
and yet it was still America who was
portrayed as the evil one. To their
credit, several leftists were able to see
through this nonsense, and briefly
put their anti-Bush agendas aside to
favor thé removal of a tyrant who
opposed every right, minority, and
idea that liberals supposedly stood
for. The former leftist gadfly,
Christopher Hitchens, was once
such “liberal hawk” who, in his
book, The Long Short War, attacked
his former comrades for their igno-
rance. To Hitchens, it was extremely
baffling that President Bush actually
had to spend over a year “convincing
people that Iraq should no longer be
run by a psychotic crime family.”
The fact that this case still needs to
be made speaks volumes about the
left’'s true priorities when it comes to
foreign policy.

President Bush has ordered a bi-

_ Partisan investigation into pre-war

intelligence on Iraq, which will
hopefully expose whatever flaws led
to the embarrassing WMD miscal-
culations. But regardless of the find-
ings, this is not a war to apologize
for. The tyrant is captured, his mur-
dering sons are killed, and for the
first time in decades the Iraqi people
have a chance to live free. Iraq is
right now the freest nation in the
Arab world, and the Iraqis have
tremendous opportunities ahead of
them. Their lives will not be cor-
rupted by terror, tyranny, or Islamic
fundamentalism. They have an
opportunity to build a new society
of freedom and democracy, to prove
to the world that there is indeed
“another way” for Muslim people to
live, and that given the chance, they
can be as productive and prosperous
as any western nation. If Iraq evolves
into a successful, peaceful, and sta-
ble country, it will be a key blow to
terrorism, and in the long run help
make American lives safer.

And that is what this war was all
about.

And thus, the most sacred
baton of America’s resident
third party kook
was passed.

http://www.otherpress.ca

Page 9

 

Cartoon by J.J. McCullough