Thursday, June 5, 2003
Michael J. Totten points to this Thomas Friedman piece, "Because We Could." I don't agree with all of it, but I like this part:
Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war: the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason.
The "real reason" for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't enough because a terrorism bubble had built up over there — a bubble that posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured. This terrorism bubble said that plowing airplanes into the World Trade Center was O.K., having Muslim preachers say it was O.K. was O.K., having state-run newspapers call people who did such things "martyrs" was O.K. and allowing Muslim charities to raise money for such "martyrs" was O.K. Not only was all this seen as O.K., there was a feeling among radical Muslims that suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die.
The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of that world. And don't believe the nonsense that this had no effect. Every neighboring government — and 98 percent of terrorism is about what governments let happen — got the message. If you talk to U.S. soldiers in Iraq they will tell you this is what the war was about.[...]
That makes sense. I disagree when Friedman says that the Bush administration "opted for the stated reason: the notion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that posed an immediate threat to America."
He couldn't make overt mention of Friedman's "real reason" for obvious...reasons, and Bush certainly emphasized the WMD factor, since it was the most "saleable," but he's always stated the moral reasons as well. He simply emphasized the WMD's, and he's always put it in perspective, talking about Saddam's never ending quest for WMD's. At his UN presentation, Powell held up a small vial of "anthrax" and emphasized how much damage even a tiny amount of such stuff in the wrong hands could do.
The farther we get from the events, and the more spin is allowed to be put on (BBC radio fairly well spent the day saying over and over "where are the WMD's" as if simply asking the question is making a point), the more the various other purposes of the Iraq invasion will recede into memory.
We have to keep it fresh.
