The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Doubters and Skeptics

6.14.07 @ 12:01AM

(Page 3 of 6)

There was nothing inevitable about the current situation in Iraq. The only thing inevitable was that U.S. policy would be as stupid and destructive as it has been.
-- Roger D. McKinney
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma

The problem isn't that America invaded Iraq but they made a hopeless mess of a task that could have turned out quite well. America has had two chances in Iraq and they missed both of them by a mile -- losing one war is bad enough, but losing two really is a sign of rank incompetence. The great military commanders that America has had in the past; George C. Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower and George S. Patton must surely be groaning in their graves at the humiliation of it.

The fact of the matter is that America had a chance to win a crushing victory in 1991 with little cost -- the troops might have been in Baghdad within 48 hours, with nothing to stop them but the risk of uncooperative traffic lights and the faint hearts of their commanders. The Iraqis had no idea where the American troops were until they came to the ceasefire negotiations and saw the positions on American maps. No war fighting force in history has ever had a better opportunity to win a crushing victory than America had in 1991, but the opportunity was thrown away with complete disregard of the possibilities for the future. Sure, it would have been hard to rebuild Iraq, but no harder than rebuilding Germany and Japan after World War 2, which turned out quite well. Those who were frightened of the risks in Iraq were small men who in way can be compared with the giants who preceded them in World War 2.

All the failures of nerve and imagination that were apparent in the first Gulf War were repeated endlessly in the second, with an obviously inadequate force with no clear objectives, frightened of taking risks, ignoring dangers that should well have been anticipated, bound hand and foot by self imposed restrictions that benefited nobody but the enemy and looking to bolt at the first opportunity. The tragedy is not that America invaded Iraq but they tried to do so in an utterly ridiculous manner. Wars in history have never been won the way that America has tried to fight in Iraq and it is horrifying that so many people in positions of responsibility never understood this and still don't. No wonder Vladimir Putin is piling on the cold war rhetoric -- he has no reason to fear a bunch of third-rate dilettantes who never learn anything. The Iraqi mess is war by Bozo the clown, but that is not at all what the CIA warned against. They missed a golden opportunity themselves -- again.
-- Christopher Holland
Canberra, Australia

I do not know who Mr. Reiland is, but is article is mindless. Anyone can cite whatever they want to support the thesis that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has not gone well. But the evidence is as tall as the WTC towers once were that Saddam was sponsoring terrorism around the world, was supporting al Qaeda in Iraq, was developing and even had some WMD's and, once he got around the UN sanctions (which was coming soon given the UN reliance on Blix and ElBaradei) the whole level of terrorism in the world would increase dramatically. So, he was not directly involved in the 9/11 attacks -- big deal -- he did not have to be directly involved. He could let Osama do it and bear the brunt of the retaliation -- he got the best of both worlds; or so he thought.

Besides the evidence (invasion of Kuwait, overt support of Palestinian suicide bombers, support of terrorists inside Iraq -- Abu Nidal of Achille Lauro infamy-- WMD test labs, as per Duelfer report, not the David Kay preliminary whitewash), nuclear research and development, wanton killings of thousands of his citizens per year, attempt on the life of a USA President) there is the fact that we were attacked on September 11 by a group that had declared war on us many years earlier and was and is still intent on attacking us some more.

Viewed (in GWB's words) in the prism of the 9/11 attacks, Saddam Hussein had to be corralled. And, after giving him much time to do so and his refusing to abide by UN resolutions, he was deposed. Given the amount of resources that he would have been able to devote to terrorism if we had not deposed him in March, 2003, and the progress that Iran has been able to make, imagine how much he would have accomplished without our intervention.

All the arguments in the world that revolve around "this report or that report" carry no weight at all when put up against the actual track record of killing by al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and their avowed intent on further hurting the USA and the whole of Western Civilization.
-- Tom Abella

No matter what had happened after our invasion of Iraq, it would be easy enough to find a few people and orgs with opinions that would look prescient in hindsight. It's disingenuous of the author and poor AS editing to waste our time with this kind of thing.

The author's assertion that only six senators "personally read the report" is a similarly valueless piece of information since it's the purpose of congressional staff people to read such things and to present a summary to their boss.

The author's argument seems to be that almost no one in our government was paying any attention to the facts of the crucially important decision to dethrone Saddam. Nonsense.
-- Jim Cady
Arizona

Reiland is right to be appalled that only six senators bothered to read a 90-page National Intelligence Estimate about the perils of invading Iraq before voting to authorize Bush to do it. But he's wrong in suggesting that the State Department and CIA were especially wise in seeing the dangers and that Bush just ignored them.

Anyone (including even myself) who had simply followed events in the Middle East over the last thirty years could foresee dangers both in overthrowing Saddam and in not doing so. I couldn't put it any better than James Bowman did in his column comparing Carter and Gore to Bush ("Smart Enough to Be Cretins"): "Any fool can be right in foreseeing danger. It takes a rarer quality to lead when, as now, danger is unavoidable whatever we do."
-- D.M. Duggan

OUTMUSCLED
Re: Eric Peters's 2008 Camaro: Dead on Arrival? and Peter Skurkiss's letter (under "Muscle Cars") in Reader Mail's Child's Play:

Eric Peters hits a lot of good points about these muscle cars. And he's correct they aren't going to sell many of these to younger drivers.

Letter to the Editor

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