Operation Desert Storm began. After six months of build up as Operation Desert Shield, the first President Bush finally took the necessary next step. Months later, of course, he declined to take the subsequent logical step, which is why Saddam Hussein has enjoyed twelve more years of weapons development, financing terrorism, and slaughtering Kurds and dissidents.
If the current President Bush, who is by most measures outperforming Poppy, is serious about stopping this once and for all, he needs to act sooner rather than later. Every time he gives the UN inspectors yet longer to look around, and every time he kow-tows to world opinion, or hosts BBQs for Saudi kleptocrats, he takes away from the substantial momentum that had been built up in 2002.
This is the time to finally cut through the waffle and get the job done. Iraq is a poisonous dictatorship that is a threat to Iraqis, American allies like Turkey and Israel, Americans themselves and most of the civilized world. (Note that I do not include the French here; they fare far better with SH in power, through the wonder of illegal sales.) No further reason is needed to justify going to war against Iraq. If he does not currently have WMDs at hand, all the more reason to strike before they are developed and ready to use.
The inevitable Iraqi civilian casualties are regrettable, as were the deaths of hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese non-combatants. The prospect of these deaths though should no more stay Bush than it did Churchill. Well meaning Iraqis have three options: rebelling themselves, with little hope of success and high risk of death by torture at the hands of Hussein's lackeys; complicity in the dictatorship; and liberation at American hands, with the accompanying risk of a war and invasion. It seems clear which is the best of three admittedly poor paths ahead.
Posted by Clio at January 16, 2003 07:50 AM