RALEIGH — Now it has come to pass — the event that to my mind has seemed inevitable since 9/11. The United States and several dozen other countries in President George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing” have made the decision to invade Iraq, overthrow Saddam Hussein, and deprive Islamofascist terrorism with another of its bases, financiers, trainers, and suppliers. There’s no bright red line between the butchers of Baghdad and the savages of September 11. But there is evidence of Iraq’s harboring of, and support for, al Qaeda operatives and affiliates; part of Saddam Hussein’s motivation, it appears, is to compete for influence with Iran, which has far more extensive links to al Qaeda. As the president said just after the 9/11 attacks, terrorists and the countries that harbor them are equally guilty — and equally deserving of vigorous American attention.
Saddam, that ominous droning you hear is the sound of vigorous American (and British and Australian) attention coming your way.
We’ve all heard the arguments for and against the impending military action. I see some legitimate concerns within the anti-war case, though it is infused with some risible ideological baggage, bad faith (inspections were a non-starter until Bush ordered the troops to deploy, for example), and hidden agendas (be they French delusions of rediscovered grandeur or leftovers of the American communist movement pursuing their own delusions).
For me, the fundamental point is this: Saddam Hussein is one of the few thugs in the world — and yes, there are many we are not going after right now, so what? — who cheered the 9/11 attacks. He has tried to assassinate American presidents, and exhibits no willingness to stop. He has not accounted for dangerous chemical and biological weapons we know he once had. As I’ve argued before , deterrence via nuclear weapons or military encirclement is not a reasonable response to the risk that Hussein will deliver a deadly cocktail to al Qaeda or a like-minded group. He must be disarmed, dislodged, and discarded into the ash heap of history.
The level of historical ignorance and faulty analysis one can find on this subject is truly frightening. Some folks apparently think they demonstrate superior knowledge and wisdom by dismissing the possibility that secular Saddam would ever cooperate with Islamist nutcases. History is full of such marriages of convenience. Democratic Greece allied with barbarian Scythians against Imperial Persia. The Crusaders welcomed the aid of the marauding Mongols in their fight against the Saracens (bad plan, that). America broke its bonds with the King of England with the help of the King of France (now, please pass the Freedom Fries). World War I saw republics allied with czarists and imperialists against the Central Powers. World War II started with a Nazi-Soviet alliance and ended with an American-Soviet alliance. Then, the countries formerly fascist allied with the Americans against the Soviets.
Superior knowledge, indeed. These people should crack open a book now and then.
Will Gulf War II start on Tuesday? On Thursday? Next week? There’s no way to tell for sure at the writing. But war has come, as this weekend’s summit meeting in the Azores made abundantly clear. Now we can only hope and pray that it is swift and successful. It will only get harder, after.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.