My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.
2007-02-04
I Wish I’d Known Then What I Know Now.
Four years ago, I supported the invasion of Iraq. I thought that a man who had invaded his neighbors, who had used weapons of mass destruction, who had ignored seventeen United Nations resolutions, who had failed to establish his compliance with his treaty obligations, who had murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people, and who had attempted to assassinate an American statesman was a person who deserved to be removed. However, I would have rethought that support if I’d known than what I know now.
Am I talking about phantom weapons of mass destruction? No. How about clear, credible links between Saddam and al-Qaeda? No. While those are the arguments of the left, who are desperately clinging to any reason to back their original, knee-jerk reaction, those aren't the things I wish I'd known then.
I wish I’d known then that the United Nations would dishonor the memory and honorable service of Sergio Vieira de Mello by removing all United Nations presence from Iraq after de Mello was murdered, all the while obstructing the U.S. to hide the Oil for Food Scandal. I wish I'd known that the Russians and the French would constantly act to block the responsible behavior of the United Nations so that they could continue lining their corrupt pockets with Saddam's oil money.
I wish I’d known then that the entrenched bureaucracies within our own government would undermine the policies of the President at every opportunity and fail miserably at their role in reconstructing Iraq. I wish I'd known just how institutionally inept the CIA is, regardless of the individual heroism of some of it's agents; I also wish I'd known then the institutional CYA-ism of the Defense Department, which has managed to bungle every success its special forces operatives have conjured out of sand and air by enforcing Big Army groupthink.
I wish I’d known then that the American media would refuse to tell the stories of Medal of Honor winners or other heroes like the Deuce-Four (even though “unprofessional” journalists like Michael Yon managed to get their story), refuse to show pictures of enemy atrocities while magnifying embarrassments like Abu Graib, happily transmit uncorroborated stories of carnage by the enemy, and publish details of top secret national security programs.
I wish I’d know then that the political class would grow a mile-wide streak of cowardice, including taking such “principled” stands as unanimously confirming the general who has advocated and would implement the President’s new strategy, while simultaneously contemplating several measures that would express disapproval of said strategy. I wish I'd known then that even the Republicans in Congress would get in line to offer meaningless "alternatives" to the war plan by the Commander-in-Chief when they saw political advantage to doing so.
I wish I’d known then that just five short years after getting a “wake up call” which we would “never forget,” the country would roll back over and hit the snooze button, blithely returning to the post-Vietnam glory days of American impotence and Iranian ascendancy.
Yamamoto was wrong, apparently, when he warned his Emperor that they had “awakened a sleeping giant;” he just chose the wrong strategy to slay that giant. One body, one drop of blood, one kamikaze at a time would have been a better way to fight America . . .
As we seem poised to prove—yet again. | |
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