In recent weeks, I have received numerous messages from so many good folks telling me about conversations they have had with their liberal friends concerning the possibility of war with Iraq. Often I am asked for advice on how to respond to various charges questioning the President’s motivation or the necessity of war. So, I thought it might be useful to offer these few thoughts.
First and foremost, this war is about defending the American people. It is about preventing another September 11th. Never forget that. I know there is a debate about “preemptive war,” but given the world in which we live today, I believe such action is morally justified.
Men with airplanes killed thousands. The devastation they could inflict with weapons of mass destruction is unimaginable. As Prime Minister Tony Blair noted in the days following September 11th, if these terrorists could have killed not 3,000, but 30,000, does anyone think they would have hesitated?
My friends, this is the new reality we live in. Evil men are plotting right now in the shadows around the world. They do not desire dialogue with our diplomats. They do not seek to better understand us. They do not want more foreign aid. They wish us dead. And if we do nothing, the next terror attack could well result in tens of thousands of casualties.
Some note that Hussein has not attacked us and presents no serious threat. Obviously, I disagree. Few people took Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda seriously on September 10, 2001, and we paid a terrible price for our ambivalence. We must not repeat that same mistake.
Consider these three facts: 1) Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction AND he has used them. 2) Al Qaeda is operating inside Iraq. 3) Al Qaeda seeks to acquire weapons of mass destruction to use against us.
Knowing these things, are we going to blithely ignore the dangers and assume the best? Or should we act decisively to remove the imminent danger presented by a madman with weapons of mass destruction, who possesses both the will and the means (Al Qaeda) to use them?
We invade Iraq not for oil, but to remove a madman and to destroy his stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. We go to war to destroy the very weapons Al Qaeda desperately seeks.
Others have seized upon “intelligence” reports that suggest Hussein won’t use his weapons of mass destruction – the ones he doesn’t have -- unless attacked by us as reason enough to oppose the war. Similarly, some suggest that we are employing a double standard in not attacking North Korea, which has nuclear weapons. And because we are not going to war against North Korea, we should not attack Saddam.
First off, while North Korea is a brutal Stalinist regime, it is nevertheless far more stable than Iraq. North Korea has not used weapons of mass destruction; Saddam has. The Korean Peninsula has been peaceful for 50 years. Saddam Hussein has started two wars of aggression in the last 25 years. In the end, I believe Kim Jong-Il is bluffing. He is simply trying to take advantage of the current geopolitical situation to squeeze additional economic concessions out of the U.S., Japan and South Korea.
Secondly, this is nothing more than fear dictating our foreign policy. If we are afraid of Hussein because he has chemical and biological weapons, how much more menacing will he be when he possesses nuclear weapons? We must deal with Hussein before he becomes even more dangerous. Any superpower that can be blackmailed is no power at all. If we backslide now, we will lose all credibility and our enemies will only be emboldened by our weakness.
To those who argue this is all about oil, there is simply no response. They are ideologues and appeasers, and in their twisted world capitalism and Western values are the enemy. Despite 3,000 dead civilians and a national gapping wound at Ground Zero, anything George W. Bush does is the result of some nefarious “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
The peaceniks who oppose this war turn their backs on the suffering of the Iraqi people. They give a free pass to the “butcher of Baghdad” – perhaps the only current head of state to actually use weapons of mass destruction. This does not faze them, but George W. Bush scares them to death!
They ignore the fact that Saddam Hussein has started two wars of aggression in the last 25 years. They ignore the fact that he is a mass murderer guilty of ethnic cleansing. And they conveniently forget that he committed the world’s worst act of environmental terrorism when he dynamited the Kuwaiti oil fields in a scorched earth policy. This is the man they choose to side with over their own President!
Putting national security concerns aside, there is a far greater argument for humanitarian intervention in Iraq than existed for Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia. But logic and reason have no impact with these folks. The Left’s hypocrisy and lack of moral clarity with respect to Saddam Hussein is astonishing and cannot be reconciled. |
