IRAQ, WMD AND HOW TO FIX IT

My liberal friends and relatives continue to ask me how I can support the U.S. going into Iraq. My conservative friends and relatives will occasionally ask how I can be critical of our operations. (Admittedly, the conservative crowd asks fewer questions. They seem to be happy to have anyone around who supports the war.)

The answer to this seeming dichotomy is simple, and it’s also at the root of why we’re having trouble and may ultimately fail in the Middle East. Our case for war was, of course, Iraq’s possession or willingness to make biological, chemical and even nuclear weapons to use indiscriminately. Let me repeat this for what has been a 2-year mantra, because maybe someone will even listen this time:

The elimination of a terrorist regime that also supports terrorism financially was the sole reason to go to war. WMD only throws up a smoke screen, obfuscating our real reason for invading Iraq, and can actually do more harm than telling the truth.

18 months later…do you think I might be right on this one?

If Bush loses the election, and I still believe that it’s his to lose, it will boil down to the administration’s mind-boggling decision to make the case for war based solely on WMD. Why, to get the world on your side?? Well, that failed. Was it to get the people of the country behind you? Unnecessary. All the reasoning was to follow the years of money funneled from Saddam to families of Hamas suicide bombers and Islamic Jihad. All the ammunition was in Saddam’s willingness to use chemical weapons to subjugate his own country.

This was low-hanging fruit. Saudi Arabia may be more guilty of underwriting terrorist organizations, but as twisted as it may be they’re still our strongest Arab ally. Iran may make more strategic sense, but the conflict would be bloodier and the people of the country have no love for the U.S. (There was at least some reason to believe that the Iraqis would see us as liberators. There is virtually no chance of that in Iran, nor has there ever been.) Going after Syria would simply exacerbate the problems we already have in the Arab world simply by our support of Israel.

So our 2 choices were this: clean up Afghanistan, declare victory, and say that’s it. Bad move on a lot of levels. Or, go into Iraq, take down a dictator that no one likes, and cut off a major terrorist funding source, as well as a visible supporter. Bush didn’t go to war because of WMD any more than Kerry voted to go because of it. The naivety of the argument was that without something that would strike fear to the rest of the world (e.g., WMD), no one would support us.

Kerry will not change our Iraq policy; only people who haven’t been paying attention to what he’s said believe that he will. So, I submit once again the same thing I’ve been saying for 18 months. Guys, the following path is up for grabs: any candidate bold enough to seize on this will win the election:

- Admit that the real reason for the war was because Saddam was funding terrorist organizations. Show the money trails and how they’ve dried up.

-Without pointing a finger at the other candidate, acknowledge what we all know: the WMD info was faulty. Reiterate that this was not the primary reason for going to war.

-Re-state that our war is a war on terror. The more that terrorists pour into Iraq, the more steadfast we’ll be and the more aggressively we’ll go after them, their families, and if need be, their home countries.

I wish I believed that Kerry had the courage or Bush had the vision to adopt that strategy. Sadly, we’ll probably just watch them spar with each other over half-truths and red herrings, each one not having the guts to believe that Americans and the world can actually handle the truth.