Looking Forward

The Shrub, early in his Meet The Press interview, reassured the teevee viewing public that

There is going to be ample time for the American people to assess whether or not I made a good calls, whether or not I used good judgment, whether or not I made the right decision in removing Saddam Hussein from power, and I look forward to that debate, and I look forward to talking to the American people about why I made the decisions I made.

That's awfully white of him. But, gee, you don't think the proper time-frame for debating whether or not it would have been the right decision would have been before the war? There was certainly "ample time" then -- and "ample" public willingness to take up the debate. But we'll recall that, at the time, the Dubya had insisted that he couldn't "decide policy based upon a focus group."

Here's an analogy: a serial bank-robber, finally apprehended by the po-lice, agrees to "debate" the merits of his practice with a judge, all the while keeping hold of all his stolen assets, and continuing to plan and execute further robberies.

Who could possibly complain?

In other Meet The Press logical hijinks:

• You remember U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 clearly stated show us your arms and destroy them, or your programs and destroy them. And we said, there are serious consequences if you don't. That was a unanimous verdict. In other words, the worlds of the U.N. Security Council said we're unanimous and you're a danger. So, it wasn't just me and the United States. The world thought he was dangerous and needed to be disarmed.

And, of course, he defied the world once again.

By submitting the required weapons declaration, allowing inspectors into the country, and agreeing to destroy the al Samoud missiles (all in addition to having allowed the destruction of his banned weapons years earlier), he demonstrates "defiance"? Okay, dude.

• Libya, for example, there was an positive effect in Libya where Moammar Khaddafy voluntarily disclosed his weapons programs and agreed to dismantle dismantle them, and the world is a better place as a result of that.

Leaving aside the reality that Libya had been attempting a rapprochement with the West for a good decade, why is Libya the only country to renounce its WMD programmes in the wake of the "disarming" of Saddam? Why not North Korea? Why not Israel? Why not Pakistan? Why not Russia? Why, for god's sake, not the United States? Huhn. Could it be that WMD are a red herring? Could it be that WMD-hoarding dictators on friendly terms with the Bush Administration are free to disregard the "message" sent by the Iraq invasion?

• The fundamental question is: Do you deal with the threat once you see it? What - in the war on terror, how do you deal with threats? I dealt with the threat by taking the case to the world and said, Let's deal with this. We must deal with it now.

An issue this blog has raised time and time again. The Iraq "threat" was "seen", presumably, no later that the 2002 State Of The Union address, when Iraq was included in the "Axis of Evil" club. Or, at the very latest, on September 24, 2002 -- the date of Tony Blair's infamous "45 minutes" dossier. If the "threat" was of such pressing urgency that it could be "dealt with" not "now", but 14 months after it was first "seen", that's some big-time negligence, by Bush's own logic.

• In complaining that Saddam was not the world's only "madman", Russert's first example is Fidel Castro. Whatever his faults, in 45 years in power, Castro has never invaded another country, never fired off radiological munitions, never overthrown a democratically elected government... If Castro is a "madman", Russert is correct indeed -- there are a fuck of a lot of madmen in the world.

• And the reason why I felt like we needed to use force in Iraq and not in North Korea, because we had run the diplomatic string in Iraq. As a matter of fact, failed diplomacy could embolden Saddam Hussein in the face of this war we were in. In Iraq I mean, in North Korea, excuse me, the diplomacy is just beginning. We are making good progress in North Korea.

Waitasecond. Didn't you just, not fifteen seconds earlier, get done saying that once we "see" a "threat", "We must deal with it now"? What reason is there to suppose that diplomacy would "embolden" Saddam, but will not "embolden" North Korea?

• And the reason I'm not surprised [by the "level and intensity" of the resistance] is because there are people in that part of the world who recognize what a free Iraq will mean in the war on terror. In other words, there are people who desperately want to stop the advance of freedom and democracy because freedom and democracy will be a powerful long term deterrent to terrorist activities.

Uh, wasn't the reason that the 9/11 perpetrators carried out the attacks supposed to be because they despise freedom and democracy? Then, shouldn't an increase in the "level and intensity" of freedom and democracy serve as a powerful catalyst to terrorist activities? In a world ridden with enslavement and autocracy, bin Laden wouldn't have anything to bitch about, so would have to retire from terrorism, yes? Granted, this presents a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem. But surely the bin Laden-ites should be able to prioritise their target selections. First, go after the most free and democratic societies -- the Scandinavian countries. Then hit the pseudo-democracies in North America and Europe and/or the semi-democracies in Latin America and East Asia. Then, finally, the "emerging" democracies under U.S. tutelage (Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia, Turkey, et al.).

• I look forward to articulating...

Brother, we all look forward to you articulating something, anything.

Posted by Eddie Tews at February 11, 2004 03:33 PM