The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 3 of 7)

We went to war because of Saddam's established past patterns of seeking WMDs and of defying and deceiving inspectors who subsequently found WMDs and WMDs research especially thanks to defectors, and because he was once again defying and deceiving inspectors in violation of signed accords and UN mandates, not to mention because of his established past pattern of brutality, sadism, oppression, imperial ambition and expansionism, warmongering, WMD use, etc. A repeat perp in many ways, Saddam was a clear and growing threat. If Saddam could get away with that, then so could any despotism. Really, all of that was enough.

We never argued that we were going to war premised -- premised, mind you -- on the expectation of finding actual WMDs and WMDs research on a large scale -- much less, all set up and ready to rumble, ready to attack the U.S. and other countries, in which case we might have hesitated, or taken a somewhat lengthier approach to the eliminating the danger. Now he is gone, and we are confronted with one less set of malignant synergies arising from the co-presence of various evil folks in the world. There is somewhat less mass-murder-breeding swamp to drain. But drain it we must, before it's too late. We have no particular reason to think that, once the historical window of opportunity is shut, it will open again.

We couldn't have kept our armed forces around Iraq forever waiting for Saddam or Qusay or Uday to slip. Even just one year would be a lot for us, the "hyperpower," to handle. For Saddam and sons it would have been a matter of holding out during the, historically speaking, brief window of opportunity (a decade?) when the world's "hyperpower" has the power to rein in WMDs proliferation without collateral mass horror. For technology keeps marching on. We already knew what Saddam & sons were. We got them before it was too late. Thanks to that action and the manner in which we performed it, we can more effectively discourage others.

p>Technology marches on. There is no sign of any abatement in the foreseeable future of the general ongoing and, in some ways, accelerating general development -- in power, accessibility, miniaturization, deadly synergies, etc. -- of technologies adaptable for mass destruction. In general, defensive security measures will not suffice to meet offensive threats. The Left will be in particularly weak position to argue against that point, having opposed "Star Wars" defenses as a destabilizing pipe dream for decades -- and we're not talking just about incoming missiles any more. To the extent that technological development drives geopolitical change, the human adventure has only begun. If we can't meet the challenge of reckless/ambitious despotisms seeking or possessing WMDs, then what's coming down the pike in the next decades will destroy us if we survive that far. br> -- ForNow br> New York City /p>

There will be no political problems with the missing WMDs unless our noble mission to democratize Iraq goes badly and the situation gets ugly. If that happens, WMDs will return to center stage as an issue of Words of Mass Deception about a lot of assumptions and those politically lethal WMDs can be easily be found by a Nexus search.

p>Invasion cheerleader Daniel Pipes already sees the hand writing on the wall for democracy in Iraq. He is suggesting with "trepidation" a "democratically inclined strong man" (a.k.a. dictator) to keep a lid on the natives for us as we slip out the back door. The WMD and the democracy rationale were great pre-invasion deal closers for the terminally naive. But the post-invasion reality is that previous attempts by the West at assuming the white man's missionary burdens have had a notoriously bad ten-century track record. br> -- P.T. Garrett /p> p> PURE SILICON

topics:
Foreign Policy, Military, Iraq, Israel