different strings response to The Happy Carpenter's questions

Recently, I got an interesting email from Pedro of The Happy Carpenter Blog, who has been soliciting responses from liberals to some questions he's had. I thought I would go ahead and post both his questions and my responses to them here, for anyone who has intersted. Just FYI, this is the reply exactly as I sent it to him, except formatted for HTML rather than the plain text I use for e-mail. I have to give Pedro credit, while a few of the questions may have a bit of a "tricky"-type slant to them, he does seem to be sincerely interested in hearing what we have to say (he has also posted these questions as a thread at his blog, if you wish to add your own thoughts) and from my own experience and what I've seen at his blog, he's one of the more civil conservatives I've run across. I appreciate his taking time to ask these questions and to read the responses (and as with most things I write, this one runs a bit to the long-ish side. I've been accused of having a motto of "Why use 2 short words when 10 perfectly good long ones will do?")

Pedro's questions are indented and bolded, my comments are normal text, and quotes I'm using to support my arguments are indented and italicized (like normal.)

I got into blogging recently because I needed help answering the question, How could nice people be against the war in Iraq?

Yes, the dialog between Left and Right has degenerated. In fact it has all but disappeared. Maybe you can help me in my humble attempt to restore it. Maybe we do have common ground, but I gotta be honest with you – I don’t get it.

I have to be honest - I've found almost no one on the pro-war side who is sincerely trying to discuss or understand, but I will give you the benefit of the doubt and see if I can help explain - at least for myself - why I've opposed the war in Iraq.

One thing I do want to clear up, though - and this is a common misunderstanding I've run across. Many assume that if someone opposed the war in Iraq they also opposed the war in Afghanistan. Thinking back, though, remember that there weren't the massive protests, calls for trying to find a peaceful solution or world-wide anger that we saw in the run-up to Iraq. I, and many, many other who opposed the war in Iraq, actually supported the war in Afghanistan. In fact, the only problem I, at least, have had with the Afghani campaign is that we've provided almost NO followthru - largely because of all the attention being paid to Iraq.

As for invading and kicking out the Taliban, I supported that whole-heartedly because it was very clear that they were providing aid to bin Laden and Al Qaeda - who were, after all, the one's who had attacked us. We were not making a war of aggression, there, but were attacking in response to an attack that they had clearly facilitated. For me, that is perhaps the most crucial difference at all. There was no question of their complicity in the 9/11 attacks, and for that, they deserved to face all the wrath and might this nation can bring to bear.

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs since the war began, and I know a lot about the arguments, but I would sincerely like some answers to questions like the following:

• Why is it bad that the mass graves of Iraq are being emptied instead of filled?
• Why is it bad that a criminal-against-humanity is in custody?
• Why, given the on-going mass murder by the Ba’athists, is it bad to give up on demonstrably fruitless negotiations?
• How long are you willing to wait for sanction to work, given the on-going murder rate by Saddam Hussein?
• Why is it bad that the Taliban is not murdering women during soccer games any more?

I don't consider ANY of these things to be "bad" at all, and if we had to prosecute this war, then I'm glad at least something beneficial has come out of it. I do not, however, feel that these things justify the loss of life of our countries young men and women, nor do I believe it justifies putting them at risk. Interestingly, Paul Wolfowitz - one of the main proponents of the war - agrees we me on that point.

Here is a quote from the Department of Defense's transcript of an interview Wolfowitz gave to Vanity Fair. This is NOT the reporter's interpretation, but is taken directly from the DOD's posted transcript of the interview itself. I am providing both the full question and full response so that you can see the exact context. The only things I have deleted are a couple places where Wolfowitz had to answer phone calls during the interview. If you want to verify what I'm putting here, it can be found at http://www.dod.gov/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html near the end of the interview:

Q: Was that [Being able to remove the soldiers from Saudi Arabia] one of the arguments that was raised early on by you and others that Iraq actually does connect, not to connect the dots too much, but the relationship between Saudi Arabia, our troops being there, and bin Laden's rage about that, which he's built on so many years, also connects the World Trade Center attacks, that there's a logic of motive or something like that? Or does that read too much into --

Wolfowitz: No, I think it happens to be correct. The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but [...] there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. [...] The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it. That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there's the most disagreement within the bureaucracy, even though I think everyone agrees that we killed 100 or so of an al Qaeda group in northern Iraq in this recent go-around, that we've arrested that al Qaeda guy in Baghdad who was connected to this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his UN presentation.

This doesn't mean that I'm not happy to see those improvements happen, nor does it mean that I wanted to see them continue. I simply wanted us to find a much better way to get Saddam out of office.

As for how long I'd wait for sanctions to work, I can't really answer that. We'd already waited 12-years, and then all of a sudden this was such an emergency we had to pretty much drop our search for bin Laden (who's group has planned and carried out quite a few attacks against other countries during the time we've been focusing on Iraq. Sanctions probably weren't the answer - but we could have tried to come up with other means of trying to force him our.

It's also important to keep in mind that Saddam was NOT the only murdering thug running a country as a totalitarian dictator, killing and/or torturing his own citizens and defying international law. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (who has equated himself with Hitler), Charles Taylor of Liberia (who was removed from power over the summer though international pressure and internal pressure from the Liberian people), Karamov in Uzbekistan (who, even though he forbids opposition parties, has severely curtailed civil rights and has killed at least 2 people by boiling them alive, is considered a US ALLY). Yet we have not chosen to invade any of THESE countries to help their people or stop the carnage. I have no doubt there are more examples. And don't forget that just recently, when the current leader of Taiwan wanted to hold a referendum to allow the people of Taiwan decide if they wanted to tell China to stop pointing missiles at them and renounce violence in their quest to keep Taiwan as a part of greater China (a resolution which would not have been binding nor have had ANY kind of real world effect, except to let the Chinese know how they feel about the matter), China responded by saying if the question were to be put on the ballot, they'd even risk losing the 2008 Olympics if necessary to use force against Taiwan - and that it might even possibly consider it a reason to go to WAR with Taiwan, President Bush harshly rebuked the Taiwanese President and told him not to take this step (which would be seen by some as a Taiwan trying to take a step toward freedom and Democracy) but only cautioned China not to respond with violence.

The point of all that, being that, while I want to see people free and safe all over the world, there are many places where that isn't happening, and only one in which we decided to intervene. It's a fact that we simply cannot intervene in every situation where people are being mistreated by their leaders. I personally believe that we should ONLY intervene in those situations where the citizens are making it clear that they want our assistance. The Liberians would gather outside at the US Embassy and literally BEG for our help, and even as the rest of the world moved in to force Taylor out violently if necessary, we could only spare them 20 soldiers. Even in a severely repressive regime, there ARE ways for people to get the word out to the rest of the world if they are desperate for help. There wasn't any such indication from the Iraqi people. We're trying to force our concept of democracy on a people who may have something entirely different in mind for what they want in a government. We tell them they can have any kind of government they want, but then rule out an Islamic theocracy - that doesn't help our credibility.

To cap it all off, even though Saddam himself is no longer able to kill his own people, the situation there now has other Iraqis killing Iraqis who are helping us, and because we don't really have any good way to tell the helpful Iraqis from the ones trying to kill us, we end up killing who-knows-how-many innocent Iraqis on a fairly regular basis. I don't see this as much of an improvement. There's no way to know how long this will go on - and even once we do get some kind of government up and running and are able to pull out, there's always the possibility that civil war will break out.

As for the proffered justifications for the war, I'll start with the WMD issue.

IF we had actual, current proof that actually possessed WMD or was in the process of obtaining/manufacturing them, I would have supported the war. The President has admitted, however, that we were working from the same evidence that had led President Clinton to bomb Iraq in 1998. And Rumsfeld has said that we had no new evidence, just that we were looking at old evidence in the new light of the 9/11 attacks. The problem with that is that even in January - 3 months before we launched the Iraqi war, President Bush said flat out that we could not make the claim that there was any tie between Saddam and 9/11 - and if we couldn't make that claim, then there wasn't any "new light" to be looking at the evidence through. (I'll address the 9/11 - al Qaeda aspect in just a moment)

From the Boston Globe, 7/9/2003 (original story no longer available): He [Bush] leaned forward on a podium shared with President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and said angrily: ''Imagine a world in which this tyrant had a nuclear weapon. In 1998, my predecessor raided Iraq, based upon the very same intelligence. And in 2003, after the world had demanded he disarm, we decided to disarm him.''

From ABC News.com, 7/8/2003:
"The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit" of weapons of mass destruction, Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light "through the prism of our experience on 9/11."

Additionally, in 2001, Colin Powell said, during a press conference, that Iraq was not a threat to the US and was barely a threat to its neighbors because of the sanctions that were in place, which he said were working. This was 3 years after we had bombed Iraq in order to destroy any WMD they had at the time, and 7 months before 9/11. Note also that Powell says that he believes any weapons Saddam did have were pointed at his neighbors, and NOT at America.

From the US Department of State website transcript of a 2/24/01 press conference by Colin Powell regarding a trip to Egypt:

The Foreign Minister and I and the President and I, had a good discussion about the nature of the sanctions -- the fact that the sanctions exist -- not for the purpose of hurting the Iraqi people, but for the purpose of keeping in check Saddam Hussein's ambitions toward developing weapons of mass destruction. We should constantly be reviewing our policies, constantly be looking at those sanctions to make sure that they are directed toward that purpose. That purpose is every bit as important now as it was ten years ago when we began it. And frankly they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors. So in effect, our policies have strengthened the security of the neighbors of Iraq, and these are policies that we are going to keep in place, but we are always willing to review them to make sure that they are being carried out in a way that does not affect the Iraqi people but does affect the Iraqi regime's ambitions and the ability to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and we had a good conversation on this issue.

[...] May I just add a p.s. that if I was a Kuwaiti and I heard leaders in Baghdad claiming that Kuwait is still a part of Iraq and it's going to be included in the flag and the seal, if I knew they were continuing to try to find weapons of mass destruction, I would have no doubt in my mind who those weapons were aimed at. They are being aimed at Arabs, not at the United States or at others. Yes, I think we should...he has to be contained until he realizes the errors of his ways.

So, if, as Powell said just a few months before 9/11 sanctions were working and had contained Saddam sufficiently that he was not a threat, and given that we were working from 5-year-old intelligence (that had ALREADY been acted on by an earlier administration) AND we had NO new intelligence indicating that Saddam actually had WMD or was trying to obtain or build them, I can't consider the war justified on the claim of Saddam having WMDs - especially when you take into account that, during what little time the UN Inspections had prior to the war, even with the BEST intelligence we could given them about where WMD were likely to be found, they were unable to find any indication of WMD and considered our intelligence to be "garbage." Then, add to the mix the fact that many pieces of "evidence" were discredited so quickly after being presented (the African uranium purchase that was based on forged documents and had been determined to be non-viable a year before it made it into the President's State of the Union address, the aluminum tubes that were allegedly for making nuclear centrifuges, but which many experts quickly pointed out were entirely wrong for that purpose, the "drones" that turned out to be little more than model planes with roughly a 5 foot wingspan and no ability to be used for any kind of attack on the US, etc.) there was absolutely NO reason to believe the claims that we "knew" he had anything, and we CERTAINLY didn't have enough "evidence" to go to war on.

As for the claims about Saddam being affiliated with al Qaeda, so far, there is absolutely no evidence to indicate that he was. The one group in Iraq that is believed to have ties to al Qaeda was located in the Northern Kurdish territory, which was NOT under Saddam's control, and the group was opposed to Saddam. They were not there by his invitation, and they wanted him out of power. It's also known that bin Laden wanted Saddam out of power, so it's doubtful he would provide al Qaeda with much assistance or any weapons, since there would have been the risk that they might end up being used against HIM to achieve bin Laden's goal of an Islamic theocracy in Iraq. The stories of a possible meeting between Mohammad Atta and an Iraqi agent in Prague have been discounted, and the FBI has determined that Atta was in Florida at the time the meeting supposedly took place.

True, it IS known that Saddam has provided support for and paid the families of suicide bombers among the Palestinian terrorists who are attacking in Israel. This, however, would be a justification for ISRAEL to attack Iraq, not for the US to do so. If Israel wants to retaliate against Saddam for his part in those bombings, then they need to have the courage to participate in it. (And yes, I know exactly how bad that could be and I am quite glad they didn't. But it doesn't change the fact that just because it's a justification for Israel to go to war, it isn't justification for us - especially in the absence of any other justifications.)

As for the 9/11 attacks themselves, at a joint press conference with Tony Blair, BOTH Bush and Blair acknowledged that they could not make the claim that Saddam was involved in the attacks. This is from the White House website's transcript available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030131-23.html

Q One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?

THE PRESIDENT: I can't make that claim.
THE PRIME MINISTER: That answers your question.

This was reaffirmed the week of September 17th by both President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This quote is taken from a page of my blog because the original source I had for it has moved the article to their paid archives. If you wish to verify it, though, you can probably enter a part of it into Google and find it that way.

Today, Bush said:

"No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th," Bush said. "What the vice president said was is that he [Saddam] has been involved with al-Qaida."

When asked about the matter on Tuesday, Rumsfeld had responded:

"I've not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that I could say that."

So, those are the reasons why I did not and cannot support this war, even though I had no problem with the war against Afghanistan.

On to your other questions.

Those and other questions like them are the really fundamental questions I cannot explain. Then there are other questions that sound a little more contentious, but still defy my ability to explain the Left’s position, such as: Why is it more important for the Republicans in general and GWB in particular to fail than it is to liberate Afghanistan and Iraq?

I don't believe that it is. I do not like and have no respect for Republicans in general, but my opposition to the Iraqi war is completely independent of my party affiliation - just as my support for the Afghanistan war is. While I don't believe that we should have fought the war in Iraq, once we went in there, I wanted to see us succeed and to be able to get in and back out as quickly and with as few deaths as possible.

I have also repeatedly made clear that my opposition to the war is separate from my feelings for our troops fighting it. Our soldiers have my full support and always will unless THEY initiate an illegal action - which is very rare. They don't get to choose where they're assigned, and I consider each and every one of them to be someone worthy of my sincere respect for their willingness to risk their lives for this country, even if our government decides to send them someplace where we have no business going.

Why is the assertion that preventing weapons of mass destruction from getting into the hands of terrorists is a vital national interest of the United States controversial?

As a general assertion, I don't think the CONCEPT of preventing terrorists from getting WMD to be controversial at all. The problem in THIS SPECIFIC CASE is that there was absolutely NO SUBSTANTIAL OR VIABLE EVIDENCE to show that there was ANY danger of that happening. As I discussed above, virtually every piece of evidence the government offered was found to be unreliable or flat-out wrong, or it was 5 years old, and pre-dated the bombings we had made to destroy what weapons he had. If the administration had been able been able to provide any evidence that withstood scrutiny and which substantiated their claims, I would have supported the war, but it just wasn't there (and we now see why)

My brother in law is a very liberal Jew. I cannot understand why he, like so many Jews, is against the war on terror given that the first nuclear target of the muslim terrorists is probably Tel Aviv and the second, New York.

Being Pagan, I can't answer for a Jew. I'm sorry, but I just don't have the foundation to even speculate on that.

Even now, after unprecedented victories (I write this on December 22, 2003) the President and his policies are still being slammed by the left. Why?

Because capturing Saddam isn't that big of a deal. He wasn't a threat to us while he was in power and he certainly wasn't one after he was deposed. Symbolically, his capture will likely mean something to the Iraqi people, but even as Bush himself said, there's no guarantee that his capture will slow or end the violence in Iraq.

As for other policies, there are many I'm ideologically opposed to, I don't agree with his taxation priorities, I am outraged by the unprecedented amount of secrecy he insists upon, I'm tired of the way he will say one thing at a photo-op and then later fails to follow through (for example, pledging a sizable sum for fighting against AIDS and then only actually requesting 1/3 of that amount, or saying he supports AmeriCorp and plans to increase their budget just before he cust their funding drastically), I'm worried by the problems he left in his wake in Texas - the failure and misleading statistics of the "No Child Left Behind" program implemented there, the budget crisis due to his tax cuts, and other issues, I'm embarrassed at the way America's standing in the world has gone from being reasonably good to being in the toilet, I resent the fact that he's made America look like little more than a schoolyard bully, I'm bothered by the way his administration sends conflicting messages (such as the Pentagon telling certain countries they can't participate in the rebuilding of Iraq, and then having the State department ask that they consider forgiving Iraq's debts to help US out), I'm angry at the way it's so obvious that his primary concerns are giving big business pretty much anything they want, rewarding his buddies and those who contribute to his campaign. I could go on, but the basic point is that even if he'd fought the war in Iraq for the right reasons and even if the war had gone well, there are so many other issues that are important to me and to this country on which I disagree with him that there's no way I could support his Presidency.

None of the anti-war predictions of mass civilian death, refugees, mass terrorist attacks, famine, dogs & cats living together, etc., have come to pass. Yet it is very rare to find a person who was against the war before it started but willing to admit it was on balance a good thing. Why? Shouldn’t there be many people like that?

Actually, for myself, what we're seeing is pretty much EXACTLY what I expected would happen. I don't make a lot of predictions, but I did express some concerns for how the war might come out, but this is pretty much exactly how I thought it would go. And, no, on balance it wasn't a good thing because - as noted above - even though some good came out of it, it wasn't justifiable (and it was clear even before the war that it wasn't justifiable - that's why so many were opposed to it), it diverted us and our resources from being able to track down and destroy the REAL threat, which is bin Laden, it has cause SO much damage to America's reputation, making it harder for us to get help in the future if we need it, and is costing the lives of far too many of our soldiers. Remember, even Wolfowitz said that Iraqi freedom BY ITSELF (and it's the ONLY possible justification left) wasn't a reason to risk our soldiers, especially in the capacity that we did.

Sure, war is bad, but some things are worse. Aren’t they?

Yes, but in this case, taking it all into account, I believe that war was the worst option and the worst outcome, even if it does result in some good. It's much like how if someone dies of some new disease - their death may allow medical science to understand, identify and treat this new illness, but that doesn't mean that I'm glad the person is dead or that I think their death is necessarily a good thing. It happened and good came out of it - and I wouldn't want to see all the others who were treated for the disease to have died - but I will still mourn the death itself.

What’s up with Canada?

Not being a Canadian, I can't answer on their behalf.

I’ve tried asking questions like these before, one-on-one and in the comments section of various blogs, but invariably I get sneers and jeers. One nice European replied that it would be fruitless for us to correspond. Please believe me: I am not looking for argument – there’s plenty of that – but for understanding. Yes, ultimately I’d like to persuade you to agree with me, but for now I seek only enlightenment.