Posted on 07/11/2014 9:26:46 AM PDT by Kaslin
As the jihadists of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) capture territory and establish a caliphate stretching across the now-eradicated Syria-Iraq border, hard-won gains secured with American blood and treasure are being lost. We are watching the rise of potentially the gravest threat to our national security in a generation, one that surpasses even the threat we faced on 9/11. Against this backdrop, as we debate what our response should be, it has become fashionable in some quarters to say, “Let’s not relitigate Iraq.” It’s not politically expedient, this line of argument goes, to discuss why we invaded Iraq in the first place, or the lessons we learned. This view is wrong on the history, misguided on the politics, and dangerous as a matter of policy.
The larger war, of which the liberation of Iraq was part, is still ongoing. Winning it requires that we understand the truth about the liberation of Iraq, the challenges America faced in the aftermath of the invasion, how we overcame them with the 2007-08 surge, how we defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq and established a stable, functioning nation allied with America in the heart of the Middle East. We must understand how President Obama squandered it all, creating a vacuum in which ISIS, the richest terrorist organization in history, now thrives.
Those who say the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a mistake are essentially saying we would be better off if Saddam Hussein were still in power. That’s a difficult position to sustain. It is undisputed, and has been confirmed repeatedly in Iraqi government documents captured after the invasion, that Saddam had deep, longstanding, far-reaching relationships with terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda and its affiliates. It is undisputed that Saddam’s Iraq was a state based on terror, overseeing a coordinated program to support global jihadist terrorist organizations. Ansar al Islam, an al Qaeda-linked organization, operated training camps in northern Iraq before the invasion. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the future leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, funneled weapons and fighters into these camps, before the invasion, from his location in Baghdad. We also know, again confirmed in documents captured after the war, that Saddam provided funding, training, and other support to numerous terrorist organizations and individuals over decades, including to Ayman al Zawahiri, the man who leads al Qaeda today.
It is also undisputed that Saddam Hussein had the technology, equipment, facilities, and scientists in place to construct the world’s worst weapons. We know he intended to reconstitute these programs as soon as the international sanctions regime collapsed. He had an advanced nuclear program in place prior to Operation Desert Storm in 1991. In 1998, he kicked the international weapons inspectors out of Iraq. He violated every one of the 17 U.N. Security Council Resolutions passed against him.
Anyone pining for the days of Saddam would do well to read the accounts of his 1988 chemical weapons attack on Halabja, Iraq. Listen to the survivors talk about the babies and children who died slow, painful deaths in bomb shelters where they had sought refuge with their families. The shelters became, as Saddam knew they would, gas chambers. The lesson of Halabja is that Saddam had no compunction, no moral compass, no hesitation to use the world’s worst weapons, including against his own people.
Saddam’s was a reign of terror characterized by torture, rape rooms, the murder of parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents, and the oppression and slaughter of Kurds, Marsh Arabs, and Shiites. George W. Bush captured it well when he wrote that Saddam was a homicidal dictator pursuing WMD and supporting terror at the heart of the Middle East.
Leaving Saddam in power after 9/11, in light of the threat he posed, would have been, as Tony Blair has noted, an act of political cowardice. We are not saying Saddam was responsible for 9/11. What we are saying is that in the aftermath of 9/11, when we saw thousands of our fellow citizens slaughtered by terrorists armed with airline tickets and box cutters, our leaders had an obligation to do everything possible to prevent terrorists from gaining access to even worse weapons. Saddam’s Iraq was the most likely nexus for such an exchange.
Against the weight of historical evidence, some critics claim the Bush administration manufactured or exaggerated the intelligence about Saddam’s weapons programs. The charge doesn’t stand up against the facts. Both the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Robb-Silberman Commission issued bipartisan reports concluding there was no politicization of the intelligence or pressure on analysts to change their judgements about Iraq’s WMD.
In fact, the intelligence assessments about Saddam’s weapons programs stretched back at least a decade:
We weren’t the only ones who read the intelligence. Others who did, going back to 1998, recognized the danger Saddam posed, urged action, and later changed their views when the going got tough. Some of these included:
In 1998, Congress passed, and Bill Clinton signed into law, the Iraq Liberation Act, making regime change in Iraq the policy of the United States. A few months later, President Clinton launched airstrikes against Saddam’s WMD capabilities.
As we know now, Saddam did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. However, it requires a willing suspension of disbelief and a desire to put politics above safety to assert that the absence of stockpiles meant the absence of a threat to the United States. David Kay, who led the international Iraq Survey Group tasked with finding Saddam’s stockpiles, said this: “I actually think that what we learned during the inspections made Iraq a more dangerous place, potentially, than in fact we had thought before the war.”
Saddam’s support for terrorists, his willingness to use the world’s worst weapons, his intent to reconstitute his own programs, including with scientists, technology, equipment, and facilities he kept on hand, his nuclear ambitions, and his thwarting of the international community for over a decade and 17 U.N. Security Council Resolutions combined to form the toxic mix that made Saddam a grave threat to the United States. We were right to invade and remove him from power.
America’s invasion of Iraq also sent a clear message to others in the region that America would take action if necessary. Within a few days of our capture of Saddam, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi announced he would like to turn over his nuclear program. He feared he would suffer the same fate as Saddam. Shortly after that, A.Q. Khan, Qaddafi’s supplier of nuclear technology, was also put out of business and placed under house arrest in Pakistan.
Those who say we should not have taken action in Iraq should spend a moment contemplating what the Arab Spring might have looked like with a nuclear-armed Qaddafi in power in Tripoli.
The war to liberate Iraq was indisputably difficult. It included tragedy and challenges we did not foresee. Every war does, but these challenges do not detract from the rightness of our cause. The question is what do you do in the face of setbacks. History has proven that President Bush’s decision to surge forces into Iraq and adopt a counterinsurgency strategy under the command of Generals David Petraeus and Ray Odierno worked.
Success in Iraq was also secured by the skill of people like Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General Stan McChrystal. The methods McChrystal and our special operators developed in Iraq—taking down a terrorist target, exploiting the information found at the site, moving immediately to act on the leads and take down other terrorists—were honed over a number of years. In April 2004, McChrystal writes, they ran a total of 10 operations in Iraq. That August they conducted 18. By 2006, his teams had improved their methods to the point where they could average more than 300 operations per month, “against a faster, smarter enemy and with greater precision and intelligence yield.”
Re: “America’s invasion of Iraq also sent a clear message to others in the region that America would take action if necessary.”
No.
It sent the message that the Republican Party “might” take large scale military action.
And, it sent a second message, that the pacifist Democrat Party will do everything possible to avoid such action.
Any foreign leader who does not understand those simple facts does not understand American foreign policy.
I believe Bush is allowing Obama to fall flat on his face on his own. If he spoke up the left would be all over him blaming the GOP failure on his intervention. Maybe he is letting the GOP fail on their own as well. He is not like his father and definitely not like Jeb.
At first I was disappointed until I realized he wasn’t giving anyone an excuse to blame him....let them stand on their own merit. I noticed he did not jump on the Jeb Bush for President bandwagon either.
It may not ever get better this time.
It may not ever get better this time.
I’m definitely trying to “recognise the signs”.
Now that I can agree with.
Now that I can agree with.
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