The right war, the wrong reasons
After the Bush speech, an extraordinary headline in the Washington Post today: Bush Clings To Dubious Allegations About Iraq. Extraordinary in part because of the judgment embedded in the headline -- a break from the rule of bland objectivity in the American media. But more than that: the Washington Post is broadly supportive of the war in Iraq, but even it is sceptical about the official justification for the conflict.
The Bush administration is going to war, supposedly, because of the links between Al Qaeda and Saddam, the threat of WMD, and because the Iraqi leader has defied the United Nations. And all those justifications are bogus even by the standards of international diplomacy, in which doubletalk has been elevated to an art form. The official case for war is insulting to our intelligence.
The real reasons occasionally seep out. The West needs Iraq, and its oil supplies, to put pressure on the real enemy, Saudi Arabia, and change the balance of power in the Middle East. Saddam's aggression, though not a direct threat to the US, is a danger to Israel, a country dear to many Americans. And fundamentalist Muslims, who hate the West whatever we do, might as well learn to fear it: the war in Iraq will demonstrate the price of defiance.
The administration shares much of this thinking, but it has failed to make the real case. In part because it is politically expedient to pretend, for instance, that the Saudis are still our friends, or that the conflict has nothing to do with US support for Israel. In part because Colin Powell let the US become trapped in a bogus diplomatic process, in which neither France nor the US has acted in good faith. And the Bush administration failed to make the case because it has a contempt for moderate opinion which will come back to haunt it.
So there we have it. The genuine arguments, unspoken. In their place a mish-mash of dubious allegations -- for which read lies. The Bush administration has undermined the credibility of the US government and squandered the goodwill of America's friends. This is the right war, but fought for the wrong reasons.
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