QandO

April 02, 2004

Context and perspective
Posted by McQ

I think Diana West makes an important point that's been lost in the media noise as we consider the 9-11 Commission hearings.

It must have been last week's sound and fury that obscured the signifying-nothing part of Richard Clarke's September 11 commission testimony. The question was, former Sen. Slade Gorton wondered, could the September 11 attacks have been prevented if President Bush had implemented each of Mr. Clarke's recommendations immediately on taking office?

"No," replied Mr. Clarke.

Its a bottom line thing, folks. Clarke is saying that nothing ... NOTHING ... would have stopped 9/11 ... in his opinion.

So whether Bush had talked about terrorism in his speech, or his administration had focused on nothing but terroism in the 7 months after it took office, Richard Clarke says it wouldn't have mattered.

... could the September 11 attacks have been prevented if President Bush had implemented each of Mr. Clarke's recommendations immediately on taking office?

"No," replied Mr. Clarke.

So what's going on then? If Clarke is as "credible" as the left would like to make him, why isn't this answer enough? Why aren't we saying "case closed?"

Because this isn't about 9/11.

Its about trashing the Bush administration.

Its about Clarke and the left's opinion that the Iraq war was a huge mistake which has diverted our attention from the real terrorist treat.

But has it? Question: Does anyone here believe a terrorist network can survive without some sort of state sponsorship?

If so how?

Because I just don't see it.

So any coherent strategy which attacks terrorism must consider removing support for terrorism at the state level if it is going to succeed. Seem reasonable?

Now we can argue all day long about Iraq's involvement with terrorists (it was involved and there's plenty of proof it was), but how about the results of taking out Iraq in terms of removing OTHER threats?

1) Rogue-state Libya would not have voluntarily surrendered its weapons of mass destruction program and applied for membership in the community of nations. In an interview last year with the British Spectator, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi told him, "I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq and was afraid."

2) Pakistan's secret role in passing nuclear secrets to such rogue states as Libya, Iran and North Korea would not have been exposed. As editor at large of The Washington Times, Arnaud de Borchgrave, has reported, "Suddenly, Col. Qaddafi, suitably impressed by U.S. military capabilities in Iraq, had no compunction about leaking secrets that led to a Pakistani and Iranian connection."

3) Syria would not be showing signs of wanting to come in from the cold. "Syria has appealed to Australia to use its close ties with Washington to help the Arab nation shake off its reputation as a terrorist haven," reports The Australian newspaper. That, of course, will require a whole lot of shaking, but any such movement is noteworthy. "The overtures by Syria," the paper writes, "are seen as a response to the West's determination to confront rogue nations that may either pose a threat themselves or pass on weapons to terrorists."

4) And, of course, there would not be a shiny, new, hard-won interim constitution in Iraq that promises to allow democracy to take root.

Meanwhile in other areas:

Iran's bold students struggle on for freedom. Scholars in Alexandria have called for an elected legislature, an independent judiciary and a free press.

Pro-reform demonstrators have marched through Damascus (before being arrested).

A recent editorial titled "Arab Reform Now" in the Jerusalem Post summed up the situation this way: "Among the conclusions the Bush administration drew from September 11 was that the risks of inaction outweighed the risks of action: that advocating stability above freedom in Middle East was counterproductive, hypocritical, and unworthy of the United States; and that reforming the Arab world was a sine qua non for defeating terrorism ... The more forcefully the Bush administration [follows these conclusions], the more it will put repressive Arab regimes on the defensive, and the more courage it will give to the best elements in Arab society."

In other words, bold action, vs mealy mouthed inaction, is beginning to pay dividends. And those dividends, if they result in the beginnings of democratic reform in the Arab world (and thereby removing the ability of terrorists to feed off of the oppression now present there), will all have started where?

Iraq.

Which, not surprisingly, seems to have somehow escaped Mr. Clarke and those on the left bent on trashing the Bush administration's effort there.

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