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Friday, March 19, 2004
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THOUGHTS ON THE WAR, THE SILLINESS OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY AND THE IMPEACHMENT OF PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
I've been thinking this through for a few weeks now. However, a post by Velociman today prompted me to put my thoughts down. Be warned this is more likely than not going to be a bad joke-free post, so if you're looking for a giggle, move along. I'll get back to being semi-funny later. Or not, I still have a suicide post I’ve been meaning to write too. Christ, I'm afraid of becoming serious, but I always intended for this blog to be a combination of the asinine and the thoughtful. I’ve probably failed on both counts but I continue trying.
As I've noted in this space before, I was very reluctantly for the war in Iraq. I was well aware of the problems the aftermath would present to the U.S as an occupying power and, if anything, I overestimated the number of casualties that American forces would sustain in combat. In conversations that I had in the 18 months before operations began, I said that the U.S could sustain upwards of 5,000 dead. As I write this, the number is slightly over one-tenth of that.
My support of the war arose from its inevitability. Given the continuing conduct of the Iraqi regime and its continuing non-compliance with the provisions of the cease-fire agreement it signed in March of 1991 and later ratified in several United Nations Security Council resolutions, this war had to happen at some point. As Velociman noted, the '91 Gulf War ended through a cease-fire NOT a peace treaty. Therefore, as is still true with North Korea, the United Nations was still in a state of war with Iraq. For Saddam Hussein to continue ignoring multiple resolutions of the Security Council and the conditions of the cease-fire calls into question the purpose of the U.N itself.
On the matter of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), it should be remembered that everyone was in agreement that Iraq was in continued possession of them. This includes the most passionate critics of the war such as France, Germany, Russia and Howard Dean. Insofar as John Kerry believes anything, he was certain of the existence of WMD in Iraq and voted for the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act on those grounds. For the Bush administration to predicate the war on WMD was a disastrous mistake and one that only fed the cynicism of the war's opponents. A much better case for war would have been Saddam's continuing abrogation of his commitments to the international community, or the threat that his having such weapons continued to pose to both his neighbours and the autonomous Kurdish region within his own country. At no time did serious people ever believe that Iraq's WMD posed a direct threat to the American homeland. Nor did anyone seriously believe that Iraq was an operational collaborator with al-Qaeda.
Those who opposed the war implored the administration to continue to leave the U.N sanctions in place. Yet many of those same critics decried the sanctions as unduly targeting the Iraqi people. The United Nations itself estimated that the sanctions were responsible for the deaths of some 500,000 Iraqi civilians.
President Bush, however, did predicate the war on the imminent threat of WMD and suffers the political consequences of that decision today. The administration concedes an "intelligence failure" but still stands behind the premise of the war. The problem with the opposition of the Democratic Party to American reliance on this intelligence is that it overlooks the fact that said failure was not contained to the CIA. The intelligence services of Britain, France, Germany and Russia all came to similar conclusions over the course of the previous 13 years. The Iraqi government itself did nothing to correct that misimpression. It is my belief that the Iraqis desired the world to continue to fear its possible possession of WMD for the strategic purpose of intimidating its neighbours, particularly Kuwait.
One should also remember that much of the same evidence that the Bush administration cited in its case for war was also the predicate for Operation Desert Fox, launched in 1998 on the eve of President Clinton's impeachment by the House of Representatives. In a speech to the nation Clinton clearly stated that the operation was launched because of Iraq's intransigence with weapons inspectors and the threat that WMD posed. For the most part, this is the same intelligence that Bush relied upon and very probably originated from the same sources.
The president's Democratic critics, however, have chosen to ignore the consistency of the faulty intelligence and have asserted that Bush has "mislead" and "lied" to the American people in his drive to war. There is no power more grave than a president's ability to make war. As I have noted before, most analysts felt that the 2003 war on Iraq could well have sustained between 5,000 to 10,000 dead servicemen and women. If the Democrats wish to assert that President Bush knowingly and with malice aforethought deceived the American people and therefore endangered thousands of lives in doing so, then they are suggesting that this president is guilty of a war crime at most and an impeachable offence at minimum. Accordingly, if Senator Kerry truly believes that this assertion, then it is his moral and constitutional obligation to call for the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives to begin an impeachment inquiry against President George Walker Bush. The fact that he has not done so belies the fact that this is mere campaign rhetoric. If Kerry honestly believes that Bush has committed what most people would agree is a High Crime and Misdemeanor and does not call for the impeachment of the president, he is in violation of his own oath to "preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States." The president would do well to point this out during his campaign for re-election. In short, he should call for his own impeachment and note that failure to do so exposes that the Democrats are "playing politics" with national security.
The Republican Party should welcome a debate on executive reliance on intelligence agencies. Any such debate would allow for the exploration of what intelligence the Clinton administration exploited in the 1998 bombing of Iraq, and perhaps even the 1994 bombing conducted weeks before the disastrous Congressional elections. As the Democrats continue to point out, the Kay Report asserts that there is no evidence that there were WMD in Iraq after 1994. They cannot have it both ways. Either Presidents Bush and Clinton manipulated intelligence for political purposes, or neither did. Bush/Cheney '04 can make no wiser political move than to expose the cynicism of Kerry's position. The president should stand up and say, "If my congressional opponents firmly believe that I knowingly endangered the security of the United States for political purposes, the constitution makes their recourse clear. I am, in effect, being accused of treason. If they believe that I betrayed my country and my oath of office, they have no choice but to begin the process of impeachment. If they do not, then the voters can infer what their true motivations are in making such a charge."
At a minimum, the president can elevate the campaign by challenging his opposition and inoculate himself from potentially damaging charges during a campaign. At maximum, there actually will be congressional hearings that will get to the root causes of intelligence failures over the past decade. In any event, the presidency and the national security apparatus of the United States will be better for it.
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