Unlike most of the country, Charles Krauthammer does not have a short attention span, and he remembers the context of President Bush's decisions about Iraq over the past three years, not just the controversy over WMD or not-WMD. He says the President made the right-- and only -- choice.
People forget that when the Bush administration came into office, Iraq was a very unstable situation. Thousands of Iraqis were dying as a result of sanctions. Containment necessitated the garrisoning of Saudi Arabia with thousands of "infidel" American troops -- in the eyes of many Muslims, a desecration (cited by Osama bin Laden as his No. 1 reason for his 1996 Declaration of War on America). The no-fly zones were slow-motion war, and the embargo was costly and dangerous -- the sailors who died on the USS Cole were on embargo duty.Posted by Alan at January 31, 2004 11:25 AMUntil Bush got serious, threatened war and massed troops in Kuwait, the United Nations was headed toward loosening and ultimately lifting sanctions, which would have given Saddam carte blanche to regroup and rebuild his WMDs.
Bush reversed that slide with his threat to go to war. But that kind of aggressive posture is impossible to maintain indefinitely. A regime of inspections, embargo, sanctions, no-fly zones and thousands of combat troops in Kuwait was an unstable equilibrium. The United States could have either retreated and allowed Saddam free rein -- or gone to war and removed him. Those were the only two ways to go.
Under the circumstances, and given what every intelligence agency on the planet agreed was going on in Iraq, the president made the right choice, indeed the only choice.
Via the Houston Chronicle