Thursday, February 05, 2004
The case for war, captured by a Soundfury
Soundfury (whoever he is, says I, TigerHawk) has posted a very complete discussion of the WMD debate, the justification for the Iraq war, what the Bush Administration may have said about same, and so forth. It is filled with links, and in my view disposes of the issue fairly definitively. You can read it all in less than two minutes, and it will steel your resolve or fill you with rage, depending on your point of view.
One of the points of the piece is that the Bush Administration never characterized the threat of Iraq as "imminent," a point reinforced by George Tenet in his speech today. In last year's State of the Union, Bush said quite clearly that we could not wait until the threat was imminent:
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?
If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.
Why is it that the Democratic candidates and critics of the war keep accusing the Bush Administration of using the "i" word? Because it serves their purposes, and those of the press, for which it is the controversy du jour.
The Bush administration did not use the word "imminent," and Bush himself said that we should not wait until the threat was imminent, because the administration was pushing a doctrine that calls for pre-emptive action against terrorists or states that give terrorists aid and comfort. An "imminent" threat, in the sense it has long been understood to justify preemptive war between states (Israel in 1967, for example), is not necessary to justify confrontational action, including actual fighting, under the Bush doctrine. This doctrine is -- correctly in my view -- quite popular in the United States since the attacks of September 11.
The problem with the Bush doctrine, though, is that it is in its barest form a rejection of post-war international law and custom, which purport to banish war between states except in self-defense or in the face of an imminent threat. These post-war rules and norms were designed to deal with the great power rivalries of the 19th and 20th centuries, not the terrorism of the 21st, but not everybody agrees that they are obsolete. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Bush Administration, in advocating for the war both at home and abroad, did not go out of its way to deny the imminence of the threat of WMD, even if it never itself claimed that the threat was imminent. Since many other people thought the threat of Saddam's weapons was imminent and that it was necessary that it be so in order to justify the war, it is not surprising that the Bush Administration, which advocated the war, did not disabuse them of this belief.
The problem that most of the Democratic candidates have is that they do not want to endorse the Bush Doctrine (that we don't need an imminent threat to take action against states that pose an inchoate threat via terrorism), but they cannot afford politically to repudiate it. So instead of saying "the Bush Doctrine is reckless -- we should require an imminent threat to launch a war and one did not exist in this case," they are ignoring the Bush Doctrine entirely. They are pretending that Bush said there was an imminent threat because they are unwilling to say either that we didn't need one, which would be agreeing with the Bush Doctrine, or that we did need one and we didn't have one, which would be rejecting the Bush Doctrine (and revealing them for the milquetoast internationalists that they are). Instead they are saying "we are shocked that there wasn't the imminent threat that Bush said there was," which in effect accuses the President of lying while quite conveniently avoiding either an endorsement or a rejection of the Bush Doctrine.
And the press is going along.
One of the points of the piece is that the Bush Administration never characterized the threat of Iraq as "imminent," a point reinforced by George Tenet in his speech today. In last year's State of the Union, Bush said quite clearly that we could not wait until the threat was imminent:
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?
If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.
Why is it that the Democratic candidates and critics of the war keep accusing the Bush Administration of using the "i" word? Because it serves their purposes, and those of the press, for which it is the controversy du jour.
The Bush administration did not use the word "imminent," and Bush himself said that we should not wait until the threat was imminent, because the administration was pushing a doctrine that calls for pre-emptive action against terrorists or states that give terrorists aid and comfort. An "imminent" threat, in the sense it has long been understood to justify preemptive war between states (Israel in 1967, for example), is not necessary to justify confrontational action, including actual fighting, under the Bush doctrine. This doctrine is -- correctly in my view -- quite popular in the United States since the attacks of September 11.
The problem with the Bush doctrine, though, is that it is in its barest form a rejection of post-war international law and custom, which purport to banish war between states except in self-defense or in the face of an imminent threat. These post-war rules and norms were designed to deal with the great power rivalries of the 19th and 20th centuries, not the terrorism of the 21st, but not everybody agrees that they are obsolete. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Bush Administration, in advocating for the war both at home and abroad, did not go out of its way to deny the imminence of the threat of WMD, even if it never itself claimed that the threat was imminent. Since many other people thought the threat of Saddam's weapons was imminent and that it was necessary that it be so in order to justify the war, it is not surprising that the Bush Administration, which advocated the war, did not disabuse them of this belief.
The problem that most of the Democratic candidates have is that they do not want to endorse the Bush Doctrine (that we don't need an imminent threat to take action against states that pose an inchoate threat via terrorism), but they cannot afford politically to repudiate it. So instead of saying "the Bush Doctrine is reckless -- we should require an imminent threat to launch a war and one did not exist in this case," they are ignoring the Bush Doctrine entirely. They are pretending that Bush said there was an imminent threat because they are unwilling to say either that we didn't need one, which would be agreeing with the Bush Doctrine, or that we did need one and we didn't have one, which would be rejecting the Bush Doctrine (and revealing them for the milquetoast internationalists that they are). Instead they are saying "we are shocked that there wasn't the imminent threat that Bush said there was," which in effect accuses the President of lying while quite conveniently avoiding either an endorsement or a rejection of the Bush Doctrine.
And the press is going along.
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