Congratulations
We've just won the wrong war
By William Saletan
03 May, 2003
"In the battle of Iraq,
the United States and our allies have prevailed," President Bush
announced Thursday night. "The battle of Iraq is one victory in
a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001." In the
wake of that dark day, Bush recalled, "I pledged that the terrorists
would not escape the patient justice of the United States." Saddam
Hussein's defeat caps "19 months that changed the world,"
Bush concluded. "The war on terror is not over
but we have
seen the turning of the tide."
In Bush's telling of the
story, it all fits together. The war on terror gives meaning to the
battle of Iraq. And the battle of Iraq demonstrates tangible success
in the war on terror.
Except it doesn't. The two
storiesIraq and al-Qaida, the battle and the warhave never
really meshed. Bush keeps saying they're the same thing. But saying
doesn't make it so.
Remember Saddam's weapons
of mass destructionthe ones whose concealment justified the invasion
of Iraq? A week ago, the Washington Post reported that 38 days after
entering Iraq, the United States had "yet to find weapons of mass
destruction at any of the locations that Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell cited in his key presentation to the U.N. Security Council in
February." We hadn't even "produced Iraqi scientists with
evidence about them." The only thing Bush said we had learned from
interrogating Saddam's scientists was that "perhaps he destroyed
some, perhaps he dispersed some."
What about Saddam's links
to terror? Bush repeated Thursday that the Iraq war had "removed
an ally of al-Qaida." Really? According to the Post, U.S. officials
"have not turned up anything to support Powell's claim to the Security
Council that 'nearly two dozen' al Qaeda terrorists lived in and operated
from Baghdad." A Los Angeles Times investigation of the al-Qaida
affiliate touted by Powell found "no strong evidence of connections
to Baghdad" and concluded that the group lacked "the capability
to muster a serious threat beyond its mountain borders." Saddam
didn't even "control the region where the [group's] camps were
located."
What does Bush have to say
about the absence of evidence on these two points? "This much is
certain," he observed in his victory address. "No terrorist
network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime,
because the regime is no more."
Well, that's true. No terrorist
network will get weapons from Pat Moynihan, either. That doesn't make
his death essential to the war on terror.
Saddam was a tyrant, butcher,
and serial aggressor. He jerked around the U.N. Security Council for
12 years, and the council did nothing about it. Even if all his biological
and chemical weapons were destroyed years ago, his refusal to prove
itas he had pledged to doby turning over records and personnel
defied any hope of enforcing nonproliferation rules for gross offenders.
Something had to be done, and Bush did it.
But don't tell us this was
a triumph in the war on terror, Mr. President. Don't tell us the defeat
of a secular dictator has turned the tide against a gang of religious
fanatics. And don't talk about patience. You inserted a battle that
could have waited into a war that couldn't, precisely because you lackedor
thought we lackedpatience for the slow, diffuse, half-invisible
struggle against the people who hit us on Sept. 11. You wanted a quick,
clear victory, and you got it. But don't flatter yourself. You haven't
changed the world in 19 months. You've only changed the subject.