Bush's Record on Terror
March 21, 2004
Another former insider from the Bush administration has come out criticizing Bush on his handling of the War on Terror. Richard Clarke, who served in government for 30 years and specialized in anti-terrorism efforts since 1992, has had some choice comments for the administration's actions before 9/11 and afterwards (and its lack of action). Read the article - he'll also be on 60 minutes tonight. Meanwhile, we get more good news from that part of the world.
Sometimes I find it hard to argue against the good things that came from our invasion of Iraq - no more Saddam, a better life for Iraqis - but remembering that we still face a very big threat from Al Queda, and seeing that evidence points to that threat not being lessened, it makes you realize that Iraq was a colossal distraction when we should have been concentrating on those who are a danger to us.
Posted by Krikor Daglian at March 21, 2004 12:46 PMInvading Iraq was not necessarily a bad policy decision. Saddam Hussein was an awful ruler, even (especially) when the US supported him against Iran in the 80's. By choosing to contain Iraq with sanctions, after the first Gulf War, the US and UN did nothing to ameliorate the fact that Saddam was a dictator who ruled by fear. Instead of encouraging an actual resistance movement, sanctions allowed Saddam to consolidate his power within the country by focusing on the US and UN threats from outside.
There are two main problem with the second Bush war on Iraq:
1. It was sold under false pretenses
2. It detracts focus from international terrorism.
The false pretenses were the imminent threat from Iraqi WMDs (or Iraqi WMD programs) and a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Neither of these allegations have been supported by facts. If Bush & Co. had sold the Iraqi war as a nation-building endeavor (the Tom Friedman rationale), then there would be a better case for war. Of course, nation-building was a policy supported by the Clinton Administration and to the ideologically driven Bush policy apparatus, anything favored by the Clintonites is automatically a bad idea.
I think that the distraction focus from international terrorism rationale is fairly self-evident. The problem with focusing on international terrorism, is that it's not war. Instead, it is a series of intelligence and police actions, and that doesn't project power the same way that a war against a traditional rogue state can. Iraq was the best way for the Administration to apply the preemption doctrine to traditional state-centric foreign policy.
By doing so, however, Bush not only distracted US policy and political bodies from focusing on anti-terror initiatives (and is costing large sums of money that we don't have), but may hurt the anti-terror work. Because of the unnecessarily aggressive drive to war, our foreign allies less likely to cooperate with the necessary intelligence and police work for stopping the flows of information, plans, money and materials between terror groups.
There are plenty of reasons to argue why Iraq was the wrong war at the wrong time and even more reasons why it is so important to elect a new president.
Posted by: Andrew at March 21, 2004 5:49 PM