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Along the way to compiling a listing of the many, varied, and persuasive links that have now been shown to exist between Saddam and the al Qaeda terrorist organization, Andy McCarthy wonders aloud (again) why the administration refuses to forcefully make their own case justifying the invasion of Iraq.
The Bush administration evidently believes revisiting the case for toppling Saddam Hussein is a political loser. That this conclusion — which, of course, has played in the media like a tacit admission of guilt — is a terrible miscalculation becomes clearer with each passing day. As journalists, scholars, and analysts pore over more of the intelligence haul seized when U.S. forces toppled the Iraqi regime, the case for removing an America-hating terror-monger responsible for the brutal torture and murder of — literally — tens of thousands of people looks better and better. Still, the administration maddeningly refuses to go on offense in its defense.
McCarthy is compelling as usual, and this article sent me scrambling to my archives to retrieve something McCarthy wrote in a similar vein nearly two years ago. I saved it because I had been scratching my head for months wondering why the Bush team wasn't loudly touting the abundant evidence of the Saddam - al Qaeda connection.
McCarthy's words then made more sense to me than anything I had read to that point, and they make just as much sense today. It's all good, but this is what stuck with me...
Plainly, there is a case to be made that Saddam was, at the very least, an aider and abettor of a militant Islamic terror network with which we have been at war for over two years. If he was, then that was at least as good a rationale as fears about WMD for toppling him militarily. Why, then, has the administration, besieged by peals of thunderous criticism about the Iraq venture, failed to make the case?It is hard to say. It could be that the country's fervor for the summoning rhetoric of the Bush Doctrine is not matched by true conviction about what it literally commands. Iraq is hardly the only state sponsor of terrorism — Iran and Syria come instantly to mind, and the jury is still out on whether the Saudis (who say all the right things and fund all the wrong things) are friends or foes. The administration must thus ask: Do we really want to posit that evidence of terror ties is sufficient cause for us to launch military operations? Plainly, it is a far easier thing to heed the Bush Doctrine as a matter of hortatory aspiration than to execute it — which would involve explaining to an already weary country, through the din of an anti-war press, that Iraq is far from the last stop on the long march. Yet, when the case for war is argued as a "links with al Qaeda" test, it immediately implicates uncomfortable matters of policy: What's the principled reason for not having invaded Iran? Do we have a sufficiently robust military to execute the Bush Doctrine? Do we have the budget to carry it out? Do we have the will?
As far as I can see, the answers to McCarthy's last three questions are, regrettably, "probably not", "probably not", and "no".
Related:
FPM interview with Thomas Joscelyn
Posted by dan at April 18, 2006 11:43 PM