So We Found Him. "And Den?"

TITLE: So We Found Him. "And Den?"
STATUS: Publish
ALLOW COMMENTS: 1
CONVERT BREAKS: 1
ALLOW PINGS: 1
PRIMARY CATEGORY: News
CATEGORY: News

DATE: 12/15/2003 02:29:47 PM
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So as everyone in America probably knows, U.S. forces found Saddam Hussein. The news is so ubiquitous that I'm not even going to bother linking to an article.

All I have to say is: so what?

Finding Saddam Hussein was hardly the first item on my agenda after 9/11. My first item was finding Osama bin Laden, finding the head of the Taliban, and exacting justice on all those who supported 9/11, especially financially.

Have we done that yet? It doesn't look that way to me.

Catching saddam is great for the future of Iraq, and terrific for the memories of all those who died at his hands. But is this what the U.S. should be focusing on?

Ultimately, capturing Hussein doesn't make America any safer. It doesn't put a huge dent in the resources of terrorist organizations working to harm the U.S., unless you believe the (so far) unfounded links the Bush administration has tried to make between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein.

And it does nothing to alleviate the main problem after a dictator is deposed: the power vaccuum. Pop Quiz: if the U.S. left Iraq today, who would be in charge? Therein lies the problem. The U.S. still must replace Saddam with a credible, legitimate government, or else the successor in Iraq could end up being worse than Saddam. If you think this will be easy, just take a look at Afghanistan, where attempts to establish legitimate government have thus far failed. It's almost a miracle that Hamid Karzai is still alive, much less running anything.

So as a human being, it's great that the Iraqi people can feel safer knowing that Saddam the butcher isn't coming back.

But as a selfish American bastard, I don't feel any safer about our situation. Despite his efforts to make us believe otherwise, the president cannot turn Saddam Hussein into Osama. There are many more 'Saddams' in the world, and this does not bring the United States any closer to its stated goal of making the world safe from terrorists. Somewhere in Saudi Arabia, the 'nobles' that helped to fund the 9/11 attacks are snickering. And somewhere else, Osama is still running aorund with his dialysis machine, trying to kill people he doesn't know.

Speaking of potential terrorist attacks, did we ever find out what - or who - caused that massive blackout? Just a thought.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Rob
DATE: 12/18/2003 07:36:25 PM
Jide, you have found the weak point of my argument and the part where I am myself least certain.

My advisor at UVA put it quite neatly and I would mostly agree with him. The case for going to war in Iraq was reasonable on a number of grounds, but the case for doing it when we did is another matter altogether. One can argue that the hypothetical risks posed by Saddam's research into WMD (as we understood it beforehand) was too great, but we do have to look at the opportunity costs involved as well.

Nothing summed it up for me so much as reading in the New Yorker that we've taken most or many of our Arabic speakers out of Afghanistan and moved them to Iraq. The hunt for Osama goes nowhere as a result and I can't disagree that he was the more immediate threat.

Numerous strategic benefits can ensue from constructing a democratic Iraq in the middle of the Middle East, but this is such a long-term project that these cannot be immediate in nature. Nothing we could have anticipated doing there would undo Al Qaeda, at best we disabled one particular resource they might have had.

If I sound ambivalent, it's because I am. The humanitarian aspect of this made it very hard for me to be satisfied with anything short of his overthrow - reading about what Saddam did to the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq was enough to do this for me (I hope that my prior posts have made it clear that I don't expect to see many if any interventions founded solely or even primarily on humanitarian grounds, but think that mixed motives will suffice if the outcome alleviates a human disaster). So, to answer Ed's original question, it was justifiable on those grounds.

As far as the question of whether it advances the war on Al Qaeda, well it doesn't directly, but it may not have fallen entirely under that aegis. If no link would have existed, but the WMD threat was still there, the fear of him acting aggressively in the region might have done it (just as no Al Qaeda linkage would have been necessary to justify war against North Korea). Capturing bin Laden is going to be 10-100 times as hard as getting Saddam. It has to remain a cardinal priority but other things will necessarily have to happen as well.

If I can sum this up, I'd cite Mao's response when asked about the significance of the French Revolution: "It's too soon to tell."
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: apeksha
DATE: 12/18/2003 01:05:12 PM
to add to this conversation, this is in the ny times today:

<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/politics/18PREX.html">http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/politics/18PREX.html</a>

"This was a pre-emptive war, and the rationale was that there was an imminent threat," said Senator Bob Graham of Florida, a Democrat who has said that by elevating Iraq to the most dangerous menace facing the United States, the administration unwisely diverted resources from fighting Al Qaeda and other terrorists.

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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Virve
DATE: 12/18/2003 09:23:09 AM
If you're interested in the numbers game, this site is a quick reference- The people who maintain it gather the numbers from multiple news sources.

<a href="http://www.iraqometer.com/">http://www.iraqometer.com/</a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: jide
DATE: 12/17/2003 10:33:16 PM
So Mohammed Atta was trained in Iraq, and there are interesting links between Iraq and the original WTC bombers. That's great. But didn't the hijackers get trained at United States schools? Didn't those hijackers have links to individuals in this country?

Does that make George W. Bush responsible for 9/11? Should some coalition go into this country and remove him from power? Of course not. Just because somebody got trained someplace doesn't make his ruler guilty of supporting his cause. Though that memo may be convincing, it is not conclusive evidence that Saddam knew what was going to happen on 9/11 - only that Saddam knew a terrorist from another place was going to be training another terrorist to do something or other.

It's an argument that would have trouble hold up in a court of law; the defense would shoot it down as circumstantial evidence. Let's call a spade a spade, shall we? These relatively weak arguments, the lack of more definitive connections between Saddam and 9/11 terrorists, and the admission by Dubya himself - <a href="http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/thisweek/2003_9_18_terr.html">http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/thisweek/2003_9_18_terr.html</a> - that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, reflect an administration clutching at straws to justify the timing of this war.

Rob, you constructed a decent argument for going to war with Iraq - eventually. Your points are all well-taken. However, they fail to address my main argument, summed up with this question:

Who posed, and still poses, a more immediate danger to Americans: Saddam Hussein, or Osama bin Laden?

In my opinion, the answer to that question (since around 1992 or so) is Osama bin Laden. Since 1992 or so, he has killed far more westerners than Saddam has. That's really the bottom line, in my view. I'm sure most Americans would agree with me.

It can be argued that Saddam posed a threat once, and may pose a threat again...

...but First Things First. Osama bin Laden scurrying around having planes flown into buildings, bombing embassies and causing havoc across the globe with his money and terror network is a far greater threat to U.S. safety than Saddam Hussein.

In fact, I would argue that even the IDEA of Osama roaming free after giving the USA one of its darkest days in history poses a huge danger, as it inspirtes others to heed his maniacal call to arms against the so-called "infidels" of the west. The vast majority of United States' resources should be deicated to smashing his network and bringing him to justice. I hate to be callous, but I believe you should protect yourself before you try to protect others.

After 9/11, Bush promised that those responsible for the 9/11 attacks would be brought to justice. Now, with so much focus on the Iraq conflict (and Bush's post-capture interview with Barbara Walters), the underlying objective of the recent Iraq conflict seems obvious: to try to make us forget that those primarily responsible for 9/11 still have not been brought to justice.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Rob
DATE: 12/17/2003 07:52:53 PM
OK, I keed, I keed, I couldn't stay away.

Ryan raises a good point about the secular/non-secular divide and Osama's offer to fight Saddam. An alliance between Baathists and Islamists is about as improbable as . . . an alliance between Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong or an alliance between Hitler and Stalin. My view is that these kind of improbable partnerships can and do form, particularly when a common enemy exists. That's not, of course, reason enough to think a Baathist-Islamist partnership existed, but reason enough to think one was not impossible. A far less likely one occurred when Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei supported Saddam against Poppy Bush in 1990 - two years after the end of the Iran-Iraq War. Other than Osama's brief offer of support to Riyadh in 1990, do we have any other reason to conclude that a lasting enmity existed between the two?

Some evidence of discussions has emerged - Slate recently looked back at the controversial question of whether Mohammed Atta met an Iraqi diplomat in Prage and concluded that the question of whether it happened is still open (<a href="http://slate.msn.com/id/2091354/).">http://slate.msn.com/id/2091354/).</a> The Telegraph recently reported that Mohammed Atta was trained in Baghdad (<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/14/wterr14.xml&sSheet=/portal/2003/12/14/ixportaltop.html).">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/14/wterr14.xml&sSheet=/portal/2003/12/14/ixportaltop.html).</a> Laurie Mylroie has charted interesting links between Iraq and the first set of World Trade Center bombers. I'd say that the jury is still out, but also that it was reasonable in March to think that the possibility of Baathist-Al Qaeda ties was both there and intolerable.

In assessing the case to invade Iraq, it's important to distinguish between what we now know, and what was reasonably known then. The general shoddiness of the administration's case about WMD is well-established. However, the general consensus outside of Washington before war was that Saddam posed a threat - the German intelligence service reported in 2001 that Saddam would be able to fire nuclear missiles within three years (<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/germany/02/24/iraq.weapons/).">http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/germany/02/24/iraq.weapons/).</a> Escaped Iraqi scientists, like Khidhir Hamza, had painted a similarly frightening picture. So, I don't think we can read the current inability to find WMD backwards in time to conclude that Team Dubya was lying all along.

Believing that Saddam had simply abandoned his desire to develop these weapons requires quite a bit of faith; what we have determined after the war would indicate that he sought the ability to quickly restart his programs following the imminent collapse of the sanctions regime, which was continually eroding. Saddam saw himself playing a historic role in Arab history, he was never a status quo player. The presence of US forces in the north hardly deterred him from invading the Kurdish area in 1996.

Finally, on the question of civilian casualties, I'm all for counting and studying the civilian deaths of this war. But, as Jide would agree, we are as culpable the deaths that occurred due to our inaction - most notably from our failure to go to Baghdad in 1991. The death toll that ensued from that failure - much of which was due to efforts by the Iraqi people to overthrow Saddam - far exceeds that which has occurred this year. There are no easy ways out from this - to liberate Western Europe from Nazism, the Allies had to conduct attacks that killed thousands of French, Dutch and Belgian civilians. Few would now suggest that the civilian death toll made the overall goal unjustifiable.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Ed
URL:
DATE: 12/17/2003 06:13:55 PM
First to Ryan: Glad to hear about the HIV test, little bro.

Second to Rob: The reasons, according to the Administration that we went in was a lie. They said Iraq had chemical, nuclear, biological and various weapons of mass destruction. Well, the U.S. hasn't really come through on their discovery. Since his address to the UN, Colin Powell's "intelligence" that he was laid out for attacking Iraq was found to be plagarized or old.

Ryan addressed the terrorism thing, and it had been more than a decade since Iraq had attacked a neighbor. Largely, I'm sure, because of the presense of US forces in the region enforcing the no-fly zone.

The reason we didn't attack Venezuela is that there is no boggie man there. The Administration worked to make Saddam into the ultimate boggie man after the 9/11 attacks suggesting he took part in that horrible day. Combined with the first Gulf War he was an easy target. Saudi Arabia isn't on Bush's hit list because he's best of friends with the royal family. This is very, very well documented. In fact, on the night of 9/11 he met with a member of the Saudi royal family.

Anyway, I agree that casualties can't be viewed in a vaccuum, but do you think it matters to the dead and their families who killed them: Saddam or George the Second?

As for my point about counting civilian casualties, you said to put the death toll under Saddam into perspective. I'm putting the number of casualties under the US into that same picture. I don't think the Administration would stop counting US casualties, so why should it negate the number of Iraqi dead by not keeping the most accurate tally possible.

As for our involvement with Saddam pre-Gulf War I, check out this link.

<a href="http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php">http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php</a>
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: ryan
DATE: 12/17/2003 04:09:41 PM
re Rob: "ultimately...the struggle against terror coincides with the struggle against tyranny"
i couldn't disagree more. after the iraqi army in 1990 invaded kuwait and treatened the kingdom of saudia arabia, osama and company put in a phone call to the government/tyrants in charge of the kingdom. in the phone call, osama offered his guerilla clan to defend the holy kingdom against sadam.
****this is the importantant part*****
osama offered his services of the mujahadeen to go to war with sadam!!!!! this tyranny and terror you speak of are not the same, they are enemies. the king turned down the offer and allowed red, white and blue troops into the kingdom instead. which was a slap in the face of islamic militants everywhere.
*****here's the other important point*****
at this point in history(not before), the mujahadeen declared a holy war on the west AND the king of saudi arabia. the reasons given were not reasons of madness and insanity. the reasons given were to liberate muslims of occupying western armies(in their own twisted way)
all sides have been at war ever since.
rob, your arguments, the presidents arguments, and the mainstream media's arguments simply don't take these facts into account. hard facts show that sadam(a secular leader) and the mujahadeen(a decentralized non-secular network) are not in cahoots. why would sadam give or sell wmd to his own enemy? obvoiusly he wouldn't.
i'm sorry you're wrong. but you're right in that their is plenty of blame to go around...especially the american government, the israeli government, the plo, al queada, the french and russian governments, the war profiteers, and most especially sadam, osama, and every other fucking tyrant. my main prayer to god every night and day is that every goverment on earth crumbles and normal people regain their freedom from all their terror and tyranny.

but most importantly(if you read this far jackasses......is that my hiv test is negative....which means....no more condoms again....hahahahhahahah
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Rob
DATE: 12/17/2003 02:26:13 PM
Some of the sense that this conversation normally would have had was absent due to time lags. At least two of my posts were made without seeing your most recent comments, so a certain repetitiveness ensued.

Ultimately, I think, the struggle against terror coincides with the struggle against tyranny. I would argue that focusing on one at a time poses the problem of giving other states a free pass while the US is distracted - North Korea seemed to be seeking to exploit US distraction in Iraq, but they certainly would have done the same if we were engaged elsewhere as well. In the end, we may not be able to choose the terms of our engagement in each circumstance.

I do hope that the US can fashion (under a different govt) an international concert of powers that can act in such a way. The goal that we both want is only obtainable through a durable democratic alliance. We may not be able to directly intervene in Zimbabwe, but we can help Britain. The same would apply for Australia in East Timor. That's my leading objection to Team Bush - they are not constructing lasting alliances. They called in a lot of favors to get support from other countries in Iraq and they're not that good at reciprocating.

Anyway, I should probably stop hogging the board here, but it's good to chat about these things.

Oh yeah, I think you're right about Somalia. Maybe there were some arguments made about regional instability, but the "CNN effect" seems to have been paramount. Of course, the popular consensus for that intervention proved to be especially fragile.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: jide
DATE: 12/17/2003 02:13:33 PM
I read more than one article during the first Gulf War that Saddam was fighting with arms obtained directly from the United States less than 10 years earlier. I can't give you any sources, because it was a long time ago.

As for resources, I think the U.S. is quite capable of going after each dictator, **one at a time**, despite limited resources. Sure, it would take decades. But Rome wasn't built in a day. I think the current strategy of splitting forces between Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines, Liberia and wherever else we have troops engaged with hostile forces across the world is the flawed one. As the saying goes, "Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts, and only a madman fights one on three."

From what I've written already, I would think the answer to your theoretical question should be obvious: absolutely. In fact, I was all for the 1991 Gulf War all along, and still am today - even subtracting out your hypothetical. In this day and age, countries should not be allowed to gobble up other countries unless involved parties agree to it.


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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Rob
DATE: 12/17/2003 02:02:22 PM
Not to be petty about it, but I'd be interested in getting a better sense as to what was found. Iraq captured quite a bit of US-made weaponry from Kuwait in 1991, and possibly some from Iran previously. Much is also available on the arms market without the need to purchase directly from the supplier.

My point isn't that the US only kinda supported him, it's that US was far from being his biggest supporter. There's plenty of blame left over for other states once we get done with looking at the US. But few antiwar voices in the presses concern themselves with the question of what was to be done about Saddam or that of the shared guilt for his survival once they rehash the American share of it. Some things are apparently only crimes if done by Americans.

I'm all for tarring and feathering the Reagan administration for turning a blind eye to him - embarrassingly, opponents to the war have cited Team Reagan's initial blaming of the Halabja gas attack on the Iranians. Lefties citing the Reaganites as sources is a funny thing, but Team Reagan should have been a lot less warm to the guy.

I'd like to see us overthrow dictators from Afghanistan through Zimbabwe myself, but the humanitarian impulse is never (or rarely) enough to commit a government to a serious intervention.
These actions are always going to have other motivations bound in and the administration never made a solely humanitarian case for war. Most American wars happen because of a confluence of mutually reinforcing causes and this was no exception. My own support for it was premised more heavily on humanitarian grounds than the administrations, but I don't think I was alone in that. Given the limited resources of any government, even ours, selectivity is inevitable. I'd rather see a few dictators deposed in circumstances that dovetail with American national interests than none - consistency does not strike me as the highest virtue in foreign policy.

May I restate the question: would anyone here have supported going to Baghdad in 1991, had the US been utterly opposed to Saddam beforehand?
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: jide
DATE: 12/17/2003 02:01:03 PM
Didn't the truly humanitarian intervention happen with Somalia?

I DO want the U.S. to threaten Saudi Arabia, and I DO want them to intervene in Venezuela. That's my point. Our difference of opinion stems from the I don't see Iraq's "threat" as all that much different (or worse) to their respective regions as Saudi Arabia's threat (terrorism), Zaire's threat, etc. These countries threaten their regions with instability, and have despotic rulers who butcher their own people.

When it comes to this issue, I am quite binary: either intervene in such situations as a matter of fixed, logical and coherent policy...or don't intervene in any.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: jide
DATE: 12/17/2003 01:36:40 PM
The U.S. also lent Saddam arms, some of which were found on the battlefield of the 1991 Gulf War. The fact that he had other allies doesn't justify or explain United States' support of a despotic regime. This isn't one of those things where you can say, "Well, the U.S only KINDA supported him until 1991." Iraq got plenty of American support during the Iran-Iraq war, and beyond.

And you just re-emphasized my point (and Ed's point as well): If the United States had a policy where we went around the world overthrowing tyrants, I'd be the first person on board supporting them. At least then I'd know that at at some level, despite the imperialism, there was a sense of moral necessity behind it. However, that is not the United States' policy at all. As previously mentioned, there are dictators in the world far, far worse than Saddam - some of whom the U.S. has supported.

For me, the selectivity of actions like the Iraq war makes me view them as hypocritical.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Rob
DATE: 12/17/2003 01:34:54 PM
Re Ed's post:

My argument doesn't relate to why we went in - historically speaking, the purely humanitarian intervention has yet to happen. Iraq's history of noncompliance with UN disarmament resolutions, history of regional aggression and Saddam's past record with terrorists (of the non-fundamentalist Abu Nidal-type variety at least) were also factors. If it had come down to oil alone, why not simply help the Venezuelans depose Chavez? Or one could just go after Saudi Arabia - the terrorism charge sticks to them very well. Factors other than oil were definitely at play here.

My point there is that casualties caused by our liberation of Iraq can't be viewed in a vacuum. There was and would have been a far greater human cost to staying out, just as the human cost of not going to Baghdad in 1991 has far outweighed the probable cost of doing so.

I'm not really sure what you mean by "why stop counting the number of Iraqi civilian casualties?" I don't know that it relates to any argument I've made.

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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Rob
DATE: 12/17/2003 01:23:25 PM
I probably should have been clearer - his Al Qaeda connections remain murky and hypothetical at most - though there was a recent report in the Telegraph alleging that Mohammed Atta was trained in Baghdad by the regime's guest Abu Nidal. But Saddam's connection to insurgents in Iraq was likely significant. If he wasn't directing it, he at least seems to have been kept apprised of the insurgency.

My sense is that the significance of US-Iraq ties before 1991 tends to be rhetorically exaggerated - people elsewhere I've spoken to have seemed unaware that Saddam was allied to anyone other than the US. The US did lend tacit and significant support to Saddam in his war against Iran. But Iraq remained a Soviet client state. The army that we faced in 1991 and 2003 was almost entirely armed with Soviet-issue weaponry, indeed the Gulf War could not have taken place if Gorbachev had not abandoned Saddam at the UN. From March 1991 onward, the rap against us is that we didn't get rid of Saddam, not that we supported him. The Arab states, the French, the Russians and others get that share of the blame, though they don't seem ready to accept it.

And what if we had never supported Saddam at all and carried the 1991 Gulf campaign to Baghdad? Suspending the fact that all of us here were 12 years younger at the time, would you have supported his overthrow then?
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Ed
DATE: 12/17/2003 01:12:28 PM
If we went into Iraq simply to halt the loss of life being caused by Saddam, then wouldn't that obligate us to do so all over the world? Oil aside, what makes this case special? So, essentially, as many as $10,000+ lives have been lost over the loss of Iraqi lives? Ok, then why stop counting the number of Iraqi civilian casualties?
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: jide
DATE: 12/17/2003 09:48:51 AM
Oh, we should definitely consider how many people died during Saddam's reign, since the United States supported his rule and helped him maintain it in the first place. Those deaths absolutely SHOULD weigh heavily on the world's conscience - the United States' conscience in particular.

As far as Saddam's terrorist connections: while I don't doubt that he has some, Bush himself has admitted that Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. And, again, catching the perpetrators of 9/11 would have been my first priority.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Rob
DATE: 12/17/2003 02:01:42 AM
As to the numbers, I think we might consider the death toll inflicted by Saddam during his reign, for the sake of perspective. I can't accept the notion that we can only be blamed for deaths due to the effort to overthrow him, but that deaths due to a decision to tolerate his rule shouldn't weigh on the world's conscience.

Bush hasn't been hyping this as a deathblow to the insurgents or to Al Qaeda and I think that's worth bearing in mind. This administration has learned the hard way not to call something before its over and the public message has been more that attacks may continue.

Still, Saddam was not directing them, but he may have been financing them. Documents were found on him that related to them.
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: ryan
DATE: 12/16/2003 12:11:25 PM
shut up ted(or should i say ed), why are you posting when you should be watching the eagles? yeah baby....we going to the supa dupa bowl.....ofcourse i missed the game cuz i was getting busy over and over with my half asian girl.

ok...ok...on to saddam.. that was a great post jide, i think you hit the nail on the head. one more point to note is that if sadam was in a little farm house, he is NOT running la resistance. witch means he was relatively powerless. which means troops are still gonna die on the regular.....becuase you can't forcefeed capitalism to people(remember when americans say democracy what they really mean is capitalism).
terrorism ain't goin nowhere. we're in a quagmire. bush will be re-elected.....we,re fucked.....but at least i'm getting busy
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COMMENT:
AUTHOR: Ed
DATE: 12/15/2003 08:33:26 PM
American troops dead: 457
Iraqi dead: Between 7935 and 9766
Was it worth it?
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