Safire’s ode to what might have been starts with “a scene in a Tikrit palace where Saddam lays out his plan to (a) amass billions through a U.N. oil-for-food scam and his secret oil pipeline to Syria, (b) increase contacts with Al Qaeda, (c) take leadership of the Arab world by developing W.M.D. or pretending to have them already, and (d) openly challenging Bush.” Note the carefully crafted phrase, “contacts with Al Qaeda.” Safire concedes there was no “collaborative operational relationship” between the two parties as the 9/11 commission found.
Saddam and Bin Laden were more often rivals than bedfellows. When Saddam invaded Kuwait Bin Laden voiced his intention to bring Saddam down and beat Iraqi forces out of Kuwait. Bin Laden told an Islamic theologian and a Saudi Prince, "I want to fight against Saddam, an infidel. I want to establish a guerrilla war against Iraq." Bin Laden supported the anti-Saddam Islamic terrorist group that would become Ansar Al Islam in the autonomous Kurdistan region. Iraq ignored requests from Bin Laden in 1995 to create terror training camps in Iraq. (American intelligence have doubts the meeting where Bin Laden allegedly requested Iraqi help took place.) Bin Laden formed Al Qaeda with the specific aim of overthrowing secular regimes in the Islamic world like Hussein’s before training his sights on the west. The contacts between the two are tenuous, murky, and sometimes hostile. Safire says Saddam planned on increasing his contacts with Al Qaeda – which implies 2 things.
1.Saddam had extensive working contacts and influence within Al Qaeda.
2.Saddam wanted to expand his involvement in Al Qaeda to a working relationship.
Both implications are false.
At the same time Saddam would “take leadership of the Arab world.” In reality Saddam was hated and distrusted by Arab leaders, as was Bin Laden. Saudi Arabia and the Sudan exiled Bin Laden. Ultimately the alienated Taliban granted him refuge in Afghanistan, but even the radical Taliban did not trust Bin Laden and almost exiled him several times. If Saddam had aligned himself with Bin Laden the rest of the Arab world would have seen him as an even more dangerous outlaw. Safire’s fantasy is inconsistent. Increasing involvement with Al Qaeda would undermine Saddam’s already discredited leadership in the Arab world. Safire did not present any evidence that Saddam enjoyed popularity or persuasion amongst any Arab populations.
Safire continues:
Back in D.C., at a critical go-no-go meeting in the Situation Room, Bush sides with Powell not to invade Iraq. Wolfowitz enters with news of a shoot-down of our "Northern Watch" aircraft by Iraq. Kofi Annan, on CNN, asks: What do we expect - the U.S. flies over sovereign Iraqi territory. Bush decides against his aides' audacious regime-change proposal, and chooses a restrained, Clintonian pinprick response with cruise missiles.
Whatever the legality or moral qualms surrounding the “Clintonian pinprick response,” the Duelfer Report credited it for finishing off what was left of the Iraqi infrastructure for weapons programs. In Safire’s yarn the downing of an American plane and neutered restraint from the White House leads to a situation where Saddam “becomes an iconic, heroic figure in the Arab and Muslim world.” As a result of his ability to gain “greater financial and weaponry strength” daily he is able to act without “fear of retaliation” and offer “safe haven in Iraq to bin Laden and followers seeking a center of operations.” Safire again ignores the unlikely ideological and political pairing of Bin Laden and Hussein, as covered above.
Safire’s newly empowered Saddam challenges Israel. The “Zionist entity is faced by a Hamas-dominated P.L.O. … heavily financed by Saddam. In 2003, he doubles his payments to the families of suicide bombers, ties the violent intifada tightly to Baghdad-based Qaeda, and sees to it that a Palestinian of his choice is ready to succeed Arafat.” Only one assertion is based in fact and it is false. Saddam donated money to a Palestinian aid group (PALF) which disbursed payments to approximately 1500 families with relatives who died in the 2000 intifada; 72 of which were suicide bombers. The suicide bombers families received more money – but the amount dispersed was determined by the PALF and not Saddam. It is misleading to claim Saddam funded suicide bombers or made "payments to the families of suicide bombers." The money was given posthumously, to families of the deceased generally and not specifically to bombers, and indirectly through an aid agency – not as a payoff before hand or for general funding.
In Safire’s fantasy Saddam pulls the strings of the PLO and appoints its leadership. Safire does not consider that Palestinians are people separate from Iraq with their own distinct motivations and concerns wholly different from Saddam Hussein’s. The unspoken racist assumption is that all Arabs think alike, uniformly sympathetic to Al Qaeda, and want to destroy Israel. For the record, the PLO is a leftwing secular based political organization. A Qaeda-PLO coupling is highly unlikely, especially considering that one of Bin Laden’s earliest influences was a founder of the PLOs political rival Hamas, Abdullah Azzam.
What is Safire's solution to a newly empowered Saddam Hussein? A war mongering Democrat ascends to the White House and overthrows Saddam. The message is pretty clear; the only option was war regardless of who is in office. If it did not happen then it would have happened now. It is sad that the terms of debate are no longer based in reality, or even in skewed reality (although there is that in Safire’s piece.) The debate is now centered in an alternate reality. The Iraq war is not justified by self defense because of Saddam’s support for terrorists and weapons programs. Safire justifies the war based on a fantasy. If reality does not support your stance, invent one that does.
In Safire’s subsequent column, Wave of the Future, he admits to “tactical” rather than “strategic” misjudgments about the Iraq war. Roth Part II is a tacit admission that the war is illegal. There would be no reason to construct an alternate reality if the present one sufficiently justified the use of force. In Wave of the Future Safire asserts that the war was right and narrows the scope and range of discussion.
Safire writes:
I now admit to having expected the war in Iraq to be won in a matter of months, not years. Saddam's plan to disperse his forces and conduct a murderous insurgency, abetted by his terrorist allies, was a surprise.
This by no means suggests that President Bush's decision to overthrow a dangerous despotism was a mistake. On the contrary, it was and is the right war (against a genocidal maniac who was gaining strength) in the right place (the Middle East cradle of terror) for the right purpose (to get the Arab street out of the rut of hatred and onto a path to freedom).
Saddam did not plan the current insurgency as it stands today. Saddam believed a geurrilla war would drive the Americans out in a relatively short time and allow him to resume his dictatorship. However, he feared that if the insurgency lasted too long his powerbase would collapse as religous militants took control. A memo from Saddam Hussein before the war to his henchmen warned against alliances with religious terrorists because they would threaten his power. The current insurgency is not driven by Saddam loyalty or led by Saddam’s terrorist allies (whomsoever that may be.) Whatever those reasons factor into the current problems, they are minimal. The insurgency is not a coherent military campaign. It is chaotic and consists of many groups with differing goals and motivations. Saddam planned on a guerrilla war but the insurgency has taken a life of its own. Saddam feared that Islamic based terrorists would take hold in Iraq and unsurp his power – they were not his allies.
Safire asserts the “genocidal maniac” (no argument there) “was gaining strength.” How he was accomplishing this is unknown. Despite the oil for food corruption, Hussein’s regime was decaying and severely weakened. His scientists misled him about their weapons programs to get funds for other research. New documents have surfaced indicating that Saddam obfuscated the truth about his weapons out of fear for his neighbors. A large portion of Iraq was not under his control and he had no air force – a necessary requisite for aggression in modern warfare. He was corrupt and dangerous, but definitely not “gaining strength.”
Safire proposes a deal for the anti-war crowd (directly):
In return for today's grudging concession of tactical misjudgment, however, I claim this expectation: When and if we discover hidden supplies of germ weapons in Iraq or Syria, and as future confessions reveal the extent of connections between Al Qaeda and Saddam, the legion of war critics will forthrightly admit their certitude was misplaced.
Somehow Syria’s germ supplies factor into the reasons for invading Iraq now. If and when future generations find new evidence of Iraqi connections with Al Qaeda or weapons programs in Iraq, however unlikely, it still does not justify the invasion. To be precise, you act on evidence and knowledge you have. Wild speculation and undocumented accusations do not justify acting on conclusions based on presupposed realities. No legal system could work this way, much less one governing the rules of warfare. If the US government jailed every corporate CEO on the assumption that they are involved in a corporate scandal would; it would not be justifiable if at a later date new evidence turned up indicating that some were in fact corrupt. On a global scale, wars should not be retroactively fitted with justifications. More importantly Safire’s seeks to delay the judgment of Iraq indefinitely as there is always the possibility that new evidence will turn up.
Safire perpetuates the intellectual hoax that the President acted on the best available intelligence and therefore believed he was acting on solid evidence and knowledge. This explanation ignores the mountains of evidence showing that the Administration cherry picked information, presented debunked intelligence as solid, and pressured analysts to give them the “right” information. There are many books, articles, and studies which demonstrate this point clearly with no rebuttal beyond rhetorical flair. It is beyond the scope of this article to review them here.
Safire significantly narrows the scope of democratic debate claiming, “The only debate in the US now seems to be about whether to raise the number of troops there,” adding “only a small minority (editorial note: 15%) is calling for a pullout.” It is interesting that in what Safire terms “the battle for democracy in the region” the democratic opinion of Iraqis is not considered. The opinion of Iraqis outside of the Kurds is for immediate American withdrawal. They overwhelmingly view the continued American presence as an occupying rather than liberating force. Iraqis believe American troops are destabilizing the country and undermining security. “Liberty’s light” continues to shine for Safire.
Safire repeats his misleading claim that Saddam was a “financial backer of suicide bombers” which has been addressed above. In what must be a cynical statement Safire posits that “our military activism emboldened Israel to risk withdrawal from Gaza” in a chain of events that has “revivified the prospect of peace in the Holy Land.” The Israeli pullout of Gaza is advancing the "prospect of peace" in Israeli. President Bush has stated that the "prospect for peace" rests unequivocally on the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s chief of staff Dov Weisglass stated his views of the Gaza pullout to the Israeli press. He brashly told Haaretz (emphasis mine), “The significance of our unilateral disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process. It supplies the formaldehyde necessary so there is no political process with Palestinians.” Weisglass continued, “When you freeze the process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state ... Effectively, this whole package called a Palestinian state, with all it entails, has been removed indefinitely from our agenda." The Israeli pullout is to prevent “the establishment of a Palestinian state” and therefore the “peace process.” It is a "formaldehyde" for the corpse of a Palestinian state, a necessary step in Bush's roadmap to peace. Safire may be unaware of Weisglass's statements, but the editorial page of the New York Times (his employer) alluded to them.
William Safire retires at the end of the year. He is a high profile commentator in the nation's – and possibly the world’s - largest “ultra liberal” newspaper. He closes his long running column with a series of screeds justifying the war in Iraq based on a fantasy. He twists the few reality based facts. (Saddam funding suicide bombers and the Gaza pullout aimed at “the prospect of peace in the Holy Land.”) He narrows the scope debate on Iraq to “whether to raise the number of troops” or remain at current levels. He narrows the range of debate by excluding the opinions of people most affected by the “number of troops.” The Arab world is seemingly homogenous and likeminded; the PLO, Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein all have the same goals and are in bed together. Is Safire a world class cynic skilled at disseminating propaganda or simply (other) worldly incompetent? – He reports, you decide.
0 comments:
Post a Comment