Junto Boys

WHY ARE WE AT WAR?

I heard weapons inspector, David Kay on NPR this morning bemoaning the quality of intelligence that led us to war. He himself knows that the weapons could still be hiding. After all, Saddam successfully hid for months and he needs food and water and air. The weapons could also have been moved to Syria. Remember Colin Powell played a surveillance tape at the United Nations where it was obvious that a Iraqi official was telling another man running a compound to move the contraband because the inspectors were on the way. What were they hiding?

More importantly, it has to be remembered that Weapons of Mass Destruction was just one of the reasons for pursuing a war with Iraq. It was the justification that got the most play in the media, because other Nations could just say, “No they don’t!”

Other reasons include:

1. Saddam had violated the terms of the ceasefire from 1991, which meant that we were already legally in a state of war. Bush 41 had him under control when he left office, but the Clinton Administration didn’t make him live up to the agreements because it might have meant sending in troops.

2. The President decided to fight a war against Islamic terrorism, not just against Al Qaeda. This was a popular proposal when Bush expressed it. The idea that only Al Qaeda was dangerous became something Al Gore championed when he opposed the war before the invasion. Let’s not forget that it was this kind of surgical thinking that led to 911. Clinton was never willing to take a broad approach to beating terrorism. He wanted to treat each case as an isolated event, and not hold nations responsible for harboring the bad guys. Iraq’s dealings in the past put them squarely in the middle of the conflict. Don’t forget that invasion led to the capture of the guy who hijacked the Achille Laurel and threw that man in the wheelchair overboard. Our inability to do things in the past made Iraq a safe haven for guys like that.

3. Whether or not Saddam actually possesses the WMD is less important than whether he was trying to acquire or manufacture them. North Korea didn’t have any when Jimmy Carter went and signed that peace treaty in 1994. Somehow despots can’t be trusted and North Korea now has the weapons. The North Korean problem is good example of what happens when a country negotiates instead of acting.

4. Maybe unspoken but every bit as important, we had to show the world that we would defeat nations that harbored terrorists and cause upheaval. It’s the kind of culture that only understands action. Since the invasion, Libya has tried to normalize relations with the United States, the people of Iran have been marching for freedom, and Saudi Arabia has made overtures to allowing their citizens to vote.

Kay’s conclusion was “no weapons found” discredits the doctrine of preemption. Now that was a bold statement and NPR didn’t even call him on it. Kay is a weapons inspector, not a foreign affairs specialist. NPR let him use his expertise in one area to give himself credibility in another. That mistake is taught in Freshman level journalism class. The big media will criticize the Internet and Talk Radio, but turn around and present stories like this one as objective reporting.

Preemption prevents weapons from being made. Weren’t we better off invading a country before they had the weapons to use on our troops? Kay’s conclusion is that we can only use preemption if the enemy has the weapons. That leads us to this quandary; If we invade a country with usable WMD, that country will use them on our troops, therefore we won’t get support in Congress for an invasion. That’s why we haven’t invaded North Korea. If we invade a country who openly states they are pursuing WMD, we must actually find working WMD to make the action just.

Hidden in Kay’s conclusion is that the only time we can justify going to war is when the danger to our troops is so great that popular support for the war will be nil. At some point this thinking leads to an actual nuclear war. If we cannot use ground troops tp secure areas, eventually we'll have to nuke them before they nuke us.

According to Kay's approach, we should just take terrorism and like it, lest we make the Europeans uncomfortable with our power.