CaptShady
22nd June 04, 09:08 AM
There exists "no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda
cooperated on attacks against the United States."
There were contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq, but "they do
not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
In 1994, Baghdad rebuffed approaches from bin Laden to
establish terrorist training camps inside Iraq. So the 9-11
commission has concluded.
And so, with no weapons of mass destruction yet found after
18 months of searching, the second pillar of the president's
case for war falls to earth. Iraq was an unnecessary war.
Yet, now we have 138,000 soldiers there, with casualties
mounting, the cost rising and the hostility to America's
presence growing. Every attack on U.S. troops or contractors,
even when they involve Iraqi dead and wounded, seems to be
cause for jubilation.
Yet, George Tenet of the CIA excepted, the men who told
President Bush the war was necessary, that it would be a
"cakewalk," that the Iraqis would welcome us with candy and
flowers and take to democracy like kids to ice cream are
still in place, still in power.
In his now-famous 2002 State of the Union, President Bush
named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil." He
vowed that America would not allow any one of the three to
acquire weapons of mass destruction.
In 2003, we attacked and invaded the only one of the three
that did not have a secret nuclear program. And since that
State of the Union, the other two have accelerated their
programs to acquire the atomic weapons President Bush said
they would not be permitted to have. At this point, the
Bush Doctrine has to be judged a limited success.
Given the mess in Iraq, neither the American people nor
the White House appears to have the desire or will to force
an end to the Iranian or North Korean bomb programs. The
Iranians, who are threatening to crash the Nuclear Club,
are bristling with defiance. Tehran seems to have concluded
that America has no stomach for another war.
Tehran may be right. But if North Korea already has an
atomic bomb and Iran will not be stopped from acquiring
one, what does a new world of 10 nuclear nations, six of
them in Asia, mean for U.S. foreign policy? We had best
begin to consider the possibility.
No nation that has acquired nuclear weapons has ever been
invaded – for a reason. The strategic base camp for any
Normandy, Inchon or Desert Storm invasion could be turned
into an inferno in minutes by atomic weapons.
This suggests that in confronting a nuclear-armed North
Korea or Iran, U.S. Army and Marine bases in South Korea
and Kuwait, and U.S. naval bases on Okinawa and on the
south shore of the Persian Gulf are becoming strategic
hostages and not strategic assets.
Put bluntly, if Pyongyang and Tehran acquire atomic
weapons, there are no more axis-of-evil nations with
which we can risk war. For there is nothing to be gained
from such a war to justify running the risk of nuclear
retaliation on U.S. bases in Asia or the Middle East, or
on Israel, an almost certain target in any war with Iran.
During the Cold War, both sides accepted outrages that
might have been casus belli before atomic weapons. The
United States did not use on Chinese armies in Korea over-
running our troops the weapons Truman unhesitatingly used
on Japanese cities. For Stalin, too, now had the bomb. Nor
did we intervene to halt the massacre of Hungarian freedom
fighters in 1956, or the building of the Berlin Wall in
1961. Carter's response to the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan was a wheat embargo and a boycott of the Moscow
Olympics.
Moscow, too, was inhibited from taking action in Berlin,
where it was strong, when the United States used tactical
and theater superiority to force the Soviet missiles out
of Cuba. And Moscow also failed to respond to Reagan's
seizure of Grenada and aid to the Afghan resistance.
As they used to say in the West, "God may have created all
men, but it was Sam Colt who made them equal." Nuclear
weapons are the great equalizers. They concentrate the
mind of a statesman wonderfully. And with North Korea and
Iran plodding along toward the building of these awful
weapons – in blatant defiance of the Bush Doctrine – the
president and Sen. Kerry should be thinking about the world
that will exist in the next presidential term. For by the
end of that term, Iran and North Korea could both be full-
fledged members of our nuclear fraternity.
If they are, the idea of an American empire will become as
outdated as the British Raj.
cooperated on attacks against the United States."
There were contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq, but "they do
not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."
In 1994, Baghdad rebuffed approaches from bin Laden to
establish terrorist training camps inside Iraq. So the 9-11
commission has concluded.
And so, with no weapons of mass destruction yet found after
18 months of searching, the second pillar of the president's
case for war falls to earth. Iraq was an unnecessary war.
Yet, now we have 138,000 soldiers there, with casualties
mounting, the cost rising and the hostility to America's
presence growing. Every attack on U.S. troops or contractors,
even when they involve Iraqi dead and wounded, seems to be
cause for jubilation.
Yet, George Tenet of the CIA excepted, the men who told
President Bush the war was necessary, that it would be a
"cakewalk," that the Iraqis would welcome us with candy and
flowers and take to democracy like kids to ice cream are
still in place, still in power.
In his now-famous 2002 State of the Union, President Bush
named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as an "axis of evil." He
vowed that America would not allow any one of the three to
acquire weapons of mass destruction.
In 2003, we attacked and invaded the only one of the three
that did not have a secret nuclear program. And since that
State of the Union, the other two have accelerated their
programs to acquire the atomic weapons President Bush said
they would not be permitted to have. At this point, the
Bush Doctrine has to be judged a limited success.
Given the mess in Iraq, neither the American people nor
the White House appears to have the desire or will to force
an end to the Iranian or North Korean bomb programs. The
Iranians, who are threatening to crash the Nuclear Club,
are bristling with defiance. Tehran seems to have concluded
that America has no stomach for another war.
Tehran may be right. But if North Korea already has an
atomic bomb and Iran will not be stopped from acquiring
one, what does a new world of 10 nuclear nations, six of
them in Asia, mean for U.S. foreign policy? We had best
begin to consider the possibility.
No nation that has acquired nuclear weapons has ever been
invaded – for a reason. The strategic base camp for any
Normandy, Inchon or Desert Storm invasion could be turned
into an inferno in minutes by atomic weapons.
This suggests that in confronting a nuclear-armed North
Korea or Iran, U.S. Army and Marine bases in South Korea
and Kuwait, and U.S. naval bases on Okinawa and on the
south shore of the Persian Gulf are becoming strategic
hostages and not strategic assets.
Put bluntly, if Pyongyang and Tehran acquire atomic
weapons, there are no more axis-of-evil nations with
which we can risk war. For there is nothing to be gained
from such a war to justify running the risk of nuclear
retaliation on U.S. bases in Asia or the Middle East, or
on Israel, an almost certain target in any war with Iran.
During the Cold War, both sides accepted outrages that
might have been casus belli before atomic weapons. The
United States did not use on Chinese armies in Korea over-
running our troops the weapons Truman unhesitatingly used
on Japanese cities. For Stalin, too, now had the bomb. Nor
did we intervene to halt the massacre of Hungarian freedom
fighters in 1956, or the building of the Berlin Wall in
1961. Carter's response to the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan was a wheat embargo and a boycott of the Moscow
Olympics.
Moscow, too, was inhibited from taking action in Berlin,
where it was strong, when the United States used tactical
and theater superiority to force the Soviet missiles out
of Cuba. And Moscow also failed to respond to Reagan's
seizure of Grenada and aid to the Afghan resistance.
As they used to say in the West, "God may have created all
men, but it was Sam Colt who made them equal." Nuclear
weapons are the great equalizers. They concentrate the
mind of a statesman wonderfully. And with North Korea and
Iran plodding along toward the building of these awful
weapons – in blatant defiance of the Bush Doctrine – the
president and Sen. Kerry should be thinking about the world
that will exist in the next presidential term. For by the
end of that term, Iran and North Korea could both be full-
fledged members of our nuclear fraternity.
If they are, the idea of an American empire will become as
outdated as the British Raj.