I respond to the challenge to the blogosphere issued by Orin Kerr at the
Volokh Conspiracy. Mr. Kerr posed three questions to which he asked that pro-war bloggers respond:
First, assuming that you were in favor of the invasion of Iraq at the time of the invasion, do you believe today that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea? Why/why not?
Second, what reaction do you have to the not-very-upbeat news coming of Iraq these days; such as the stories I link to above?
Third, what specific criteria do you recommend that we should use over the coming months and years to measure whether the Iraq invasion has been a success?
I respond as follows:
Do I believe today that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea?
I answer an unequivocal:
Yes. The fact that we have found no stockpiles of
WMD has zero affect on my conviction that we have done the right thing. You see, we are not involved in war confined only to Saddam, or leftover Baathists or Zarkawi or Al Queda. We are at war with all of them, but we are also at war with those we have assumed to be our allies, France, Germany and Russia. The war with the latter three is not direct as it is with the former three. It is a shadow war that predates our consciousness of it. In fact, we did not have any real awareness of it until we went to the U.N. to ask for support in toppling Saddam.
Even before we faced the obstruction of our three shadow enemies, I supported toppling the regime of Saddam. To me, it was inconceivable to have our soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and searching for the leaders of Al Queda with Saddam sitting like a malevolant spider ruffling and spinning his web throughout the region. Given the hostility he harbors for the United States, it seemed obvious to me that he would prove to be a “a friend to his enemy’s enemy” providing sanctuary to fleeing Al Queda operatives as we routed them in Afghanistan and God know what else. His affinity for terrorists was made all too palpable by his financial support for Palestinian homicide bombers. Indeed, the terrorist Zarkawi who rivals, if not eclipses, Bin Ladin in one-on-one savagery found his way to Saddam after the fall of the Taliban and before the toppling of the Saddam regime.
In the absence of direct evidence that Saddam’s weapons were moved elsewhere, it is fair to make the argument that he was not stockpiling
WMD’s. But what he was probably doing may have been even worse. The head of Saddam’s nuclear centrifuge program, Mahdi Obeide, in an
opinion piece published in the New York Times, points out that the fact that Saddam was piling up so much money through the UN oil for food scam may have proven to be a huge disincentive to his reconstituting his weapons program. There is evidence that this money was being l
aundered by the same agents who launder Al Queda money, as well as actually being
funneled to Al Queda. This places Saddam squarely in the camp of our terrorist enemies.
But what about our shadow enemies, France, Germany and Russia? Bill Gertz, in his excellent book,
Treachery; How America’s Friends and Foes are Secretly Arming Our Enemies, reveals the perfidious motive behind the obstructionist actions of France, Germany and Russia prior to the invasion of Iraq. The fall of Saddam enabled our discovery of the extent to which these countries aided and armed Iraq right up to and during the invasion. In fact, according to Gertz, had Saddam not relied upon the promises of these three countries that they would successfully block a U.S. invasion by political maneuvering in the U.N., toppling his regime might have taken much longer. Saddam was simply taken by surprise.
And, according to Gertz, what was one of driving forces behind the mendacity of France, Germany and Russia?
Oil.
Iraq has approximately 15% of the world’s known reserves, and anyone who thinks that it is not important for us to be in a good position to buy this oil is living in a fantasyland. Christopher Hitchens said yesterday in a
piece published by Slate:
“I have written before in this space that I think Bin Laden is probably dead, and I certainly think that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a far more ruthless and dangerous jihadist, who is trying to take a much more important country into the orbit of medieval fanaticism and misery.”
The reason that Iraq is a much more important country is, again: Oil.
My father, who is a retired petroleum engineer, commented on the anti-war demonstrator’s chants about
No War for Oil by saying in a matter of fact way: “They damn sure better hope the war is for oil.”
He began his career in the 1950’s, almost twenty years after the peak of discovery of new fields in the U.S. which occurred in the 1930’s. During the 1970’s, U.S. oil production peaked and he began to work in secondary recovery operations. (extracting oil from “played-out” fields)
My father has many of the same fears about the future of cheap oil (which fueled the economic miracle of the twentieth century) as
Dr. Colin Campbell, founder of
Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. It is Dr. Colin Campbell’s opinion that the day of cheap oil is almost over. He believes that peak production of oil for the world will be reached before 2010, and that the world is in for a huge and disruptive shock in the near future. Dr. Campbell’s theories are provocative and vigorously questioned by some. I argue that he has drunk too deeply from the Kool-Aid served up by the Greens and the be-sweatered Jimmy Carter given that he advocates such band aid solutions as car pooling and higher gas taxes It is also thought that he ignores the same factors of technology as did Malthus. That said, the truth is probably somewhere in between, and we will experience an uncomfortable degree of economic shock.
What is clear to me, is that we could not forever tolerate a huge percentage of the world’s oil being under the control of a hostile and brutal dictator with a decided affinity for terrorists and perfidious Frenchmen, Germans and Russians. Especially when the latter three were intent on circumventing sanctions to aid Saddam in rearming.
The bottom line is that leaving Saddam in power was not just bad for the War on Terror. It was also counter to U.S. (and Britain and Australia) interests in the larger geo-political competition against a Europe that clearly sees us as an economic enemy in the acquisition of the cheap oil required to maintain our standard of living.
The reasons for going to Iraq were a mixture of both the sublime and the material. To understand this and to protect our future and our children’s future requires the ability to face the whole truth.
Second, what reaction do I have to the not-very-upbeat news coming of Iraq these days
Given what I believe is at stake, my reaction is a stiffening of resolve that we must win. We have stirred a hornet’s nest in an effort to eradicate it. It is to be expected that, just as with hornets, the terrorists and other thugs are swarming and stinging more viciously in a last ditch effort to survive.
If we cut and run, we leave a vacuum to be filled, not only by Baathists, Terrorists and Iranian proxies, but also by the French, Germans and Russians, who have no compunction about dealing with monsters. We should plan to be there for many years.
Again, as Hitchens recognizes, Iraq is an important country. It is far more important to us than Bosnia and look how long we have been there. In this game, we cannot afford to default to Old Europe and the Russians
Third, what specific criteria do I recommend that we should use over the coming months and years to measure whether the Iraq invasion has been a success?
I would measure success by trends and not specific “wins” or setbacks. If we see a positive trend of establishing representative government, repairing and protecting the infrastructure, and improving security, etc., then we are experiencing success. We cannot let nay Sayers make every setback grounds for declaring failure because that is simply not the way that the world works.
Conclusion
I reach the conclusion that going to Iraq and staying the course is in our interest. As well as protecting and achieving our interests, we must also leave a legacy of individual liberty, stability and friendship to the Iraqi people. Our competitors, the Baathists, terrorists, France, Germany and Russia do not couple their designs on Iraq with such noble motives. For our sake, and the sake of the Iraqis, our only exit strategy should be victory.
