Tee " That’s his prerogative to oppose it, but like I already suggested Chirac has little say in matters of US national security. “Merely searching for some pretext” is backwards - the US and the UK had the pretext (at the time there’d been no inspections in Iraq for years) and were seeking UN involvement in invading Iraq by way of previous resolutions. If there is a case for protecting national interests then no permission from any organization is needed; if UN-sanctioned action is sought and refused and the threat is still there, obviously the US is still going to act. We risk the French and others accusing us of arrogance and blatant disregard for world opinion, international relations - so what’s new, everybody does - but we get rid of a source of weapons proliferation as well as an asymmetrical threat to our people and untold others via state-sponsored terrorism, and who knows what else, with humanitarian side benefits. Wow, tough decision."
Gosh, Tee, you have really bought the administration’s line hook, line, and sinker. Do you remember what weapons got to us on 9/11? Hint: box cutters. And now we have helped this problem because even more inflamed Muslims are marching in the street? This would be an interesting editorial for you to read, I think (written by a columnist who was not wholly critical of the war, btw):
"**…[T]he biggest attraction of continued war, I suspect, is that in the war on terror, offense is just a lot more exciting than defense. The military triumph in Iraq, despite some mishaps and heartbreak, was a romp compared with the long slog to secure our own shores. Protecting our ports, securing vulnerable chemical plants, tracking foreign visa holders, fixing our dysfunctional intelligence community, getting emergency equipment to firefighters and hospitals ? there are no cakewalks on the home front.
…
The government has…made serious headway in policing the millions of shipping containers that enter the country every year. Since Baltimore was cinematically incinerated by a containerized nuke in “The Sum of All Fears,” this has been everyone’s favorite candidate for delivery of some hideous weapon. The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection has introduced earlier screening, better scanners and radiation detectors, and especially a computerized crunching of shipping information to identify suspicious containers. The system will never be fail-safe, but it is no longer a pushover.
For a pushover, you might consider your local chemical plant. The Environmental Protection Agency lists 123 chemical plants so close to urban centers that a “worst case” terrorist attack at any one of them could endanger more than a million people. In this case, though, the chemical lobby has risen up to fight off mandatory safety measures, like efforts to substitute less hazardous chemicals where possible. The Bush administration and its regulation-phobic allies on Capitol Hill have decided we can trust the industry to fix itself voluntarily. Sure we can.
The other day [a reporter] asked a homeland security official why the administration was willing to force safety on the airline industry but not on chemical makers. The answer: because the weapon of choice on Sept. 11 was not a chemical plant. In other words, wait until they blow up a chlorine tank."**
Do you remember why Osama bin Laden was so angry with the United States? Hint: something about troops stationed in his country ever since the Gulf War. And now, thanks to Bush’s brilliant foreign policy, here is what we plan to do in Iraq by way of winning hearts and minds:
**" American military officials, in interviews this week, spoke of maintaining perhaps four bases in Iraq that could be used in the future…
…
Whether that can be arranged depends on relations between Washington and whoever takes control in Baghdad. If the ties are close enough, the military relationship could become one of the most striking developments in a strategic revolution now playing out across the Middle East and Southwest Asia, from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean."**
Yep, I feel safer already.
Do you know what has, in the opinion of most experts, been the single most effective prong in the war against terrorism? Hint: not “preventive” invasion and occupation of countries with 20 million people and lots of infuriated neighbors.
No it’s international police networks: in other words, the cooperation and goodwill of our friends and allies in countries from Germany and France to Pakistan and India to the Middle East.
Since 9/11, writes the same Times columnist, “the more liberal flow of intelligence from allies has led to some important arrests…”
But let’s go ahead and offend our largest and oldest European allies b/c our President tells us it’s our national interest to do so and that six month’s or a year’s diference in additional inspections time will save us from the supposed “imminent” threat we faced from this regime that took us 3 weeks to topple. And those WMDs that supposedly threatened us so imminently? Where are they now? Well darned if the President’s men can’t answer that question. Coz, wouldn’t cha know it, maybe in the chaos of war they were just passed on to some other country like Syria. Dang!
I seem to recall that possibility predicted by just about everyone not directly toeing the Bush party line. So maybe an expanded inspections regime backed up with UN troops in Iraq might not have been such a bad idea? And maybe the French timetable would have been a good way to back it up with force, as well as a way of compromising with our allies and involving the UN?
No, no. We’re a unified country now led by a great strong man with really smart guys like Rumsfeld and Perle to tell him what to do. If they say it’s in the country’s national interest, the rest of us will just hop to it. After all, we’re either with him or against him, right?