Part 3 Why the Iraq War is the Right War in the Right Place at the Right Time.

Part 3 of 5

 

Why the Iraq War is the Right War in the Right Place at the Right Time.

Reminder Admonitions:  You are welcome to question my facts or argue my opinions.  But, you have to Counter my facts if you believe I am wrong.  You just can't generalize or pontificate without basis. I could be wrong you know.  I’m open to correction if I have misstated.  I tried hard to be objective in the reporting of the facts.  Much of this is just cut and pasted.  You can tell when I did, the writing is better. I am only an editor.

My Opinions are clearly stated in Red.  

 

Everything in Black comes from encyclopedic sources and I am presenting as objective fact.  In the parlance of the day, True Facts! (as opposed to what?)

 

 

 

George HW Bush takes office January 1989 

A soft leader again and worse a big believer in appeasement, consensus and the United Nations. 

 

He had been the ambassador to China.  They knew him well.  So, when a student uprising happened in Tiananmen Square they didn’t fear Bush would do anything about it.  He didn’t.  The Massacre ensued.

 

The Berlin Wall fell.  GHWB took credit.  It was a residual of Reagan’s cold war strategy.  He became best Friends with Gorbachev.  I liked Gorby better.

 

Emboldened by a weak Bush, and with some winks of the eye of a wishy washy ambassador, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.  Kuwait had been a province of Iraq formerly and he wanted it back.  Kind of like Texas and Mexico.  This couldn’t stand.  So, Bush instead of going right to war, fiddled while Saddam pillaged and established a beachhead. Bush organized a coalition.  Lots of countries.  More smoke than firepower.  Mostly it was the USA and Great Britain that fought the war. 

 

I was in Germany during Desert Storm. Germany sent in about 2000 troops.  The whining on the part of the German news media about how depressing it was to have to go to war for those poor German soldiers made we wonder how the Third Reich ever got organized. 

 

In February we massacred the poor Iraqi soldier in Desert Storm.  Saddam hid out in Baghdad betting we wouldn’t come for him.  We didn’t.  We stopped short of total victory firmly in our grasp because Bush said, “We would have incurred incalculable human and political costs, we would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and in effect rule Iraq”.   Now we have to do this anyhow because he and Colin Powell didn’t have the gonads to do what needed to be done. 

 

Ever the diplomat, he bragged that since Russia had been part of all this that there was a new world order emerging.  There was one emerging all right, a new world order of Islamic Fundamentalist gangsters terrorizing the western world and the “Infidels” of Islam as they had assassinated Anwar Sadat in 1981 for the Camp David Peace Accord.

 

After Desert Storm there were rebels in the south and in the north who were prepared to take on Saddam in his weakened condition.  They begged us for help.  We sort of promised we would and then we didn’t.  What would the Europeans think? We abandoned them to die. The Kurds were crucified. The massacres in the south of the swamp Arabs were brutal.  Their homeland which had always been lakes and swamps were drained or starved for water.  They starved and were displaced. 

 

We bailed out because of political pressure and a desire to have France think nice of us.  I was very angry with all this at the time, I contacted politicians to encourage finishing the job. I really wondered during that time if those mis-leaders who backed down in the face of victory had gone into the bathroom and reached down in their pants, would found anything there to indicate they were men?  They didn’t act like it.

 

Everyone blames the “no new taxes” pledge for Bush’s failure to be re-elected.  No, it was the promise of a true conservative (and we knew he had balls; that’s a sexual innuendo joke), even if he was a Democrat.  I didn’t vote for Clinton out of Republican loyalty.  I wonder now if I did right.

 

 

 

President William Jefferson Clinton

 

Clinton attempted things of great vision. He had hope.  Hope Arkansas and all.  But he hit political roadblocks to his vision. Failed health care plan, 94 midterm elections and the takeover of the house and senate by Republicans.  Gridlock. Lots of scandals ensued, mostly sex.  He angered values conservatives who had been warming to him with cultural actions, Gays in the Military etc.  I recall answering a question from a political pollster why I thought the Republicans had won so big in 94, I said, “Speaking for myself, I voted against the cultural freefall we were in”.

 

He became a friend and ally of Tony Blair.  He enjoyed good economics as a result of Reagan tax cuts, Greenspan’s work, and the 95 Republican Congress’s spending cuts.  I didn’t write that, it’s what the encyclopedia said.

 

He participated in disarmament talks that led to ultimate peace in Northern Ireland.  This was a good thing.

 

He knew we were under attack from Islamic Fundamentalist Fascists and took action.

 

There was the World Trade Center Bombing in 1993 by Islamic Fundamentalists.  Now the sirens were sounding.  There was a war brewing.  We took our first 6 casualties on American soil in this new war.

 

There was the failed plot by Saddam Hussein to kill Former President Bush in Kuwait.  The circumstances of the alleged plot, which ended in a trial and conviction of 11 Iraqis and three Kuwaitis, have always evoked skepticism, although Clinton himself was apparently sufficiently convinced after receiving reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to order a missile strike on the Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad that killed six civilians in June, 1993.

 

There was the battle of Mogadishu (Blackhawk Down) where after taking casualties he ordered withdrawal of our troops.  This emboldened the terrorists. 

OBL has pointed to this and our anemic retaliatory response to the American Embassy bombings (below) as instructional events.

 

He didn’t intervene in the Rwandan Genocide.  He with the UN sent troops to Kosovo. He says today that is one of the biggest regrets of his presidency.

 

He bombed Iraq several times in retaliation for various infractions, mostly with Tomahawk Missiles. 

 

He signed a unilateral nuclear disarmament treaty with North Korea that took all teeth out of any enforcement by their neighbors to the north and south.   It involved promises from North Korea and lots of money from us.  North Korea took our money, laughed all the way to the bank and thumbed their noses at us from then till now. This was a major disaster. 

 

Like Reagan’s Grenada, Clinton sent troops to Haiti to reinstall Jon Bertrand Aristide as the country’s leader.  It too became a disaster.

 

In 93 he mediated the Oslo peace accords.  It angered fundamentalist Islamists.  It also did little to advance the cause of peace.  Arafat shook hands with Itzak Rabin of Israel.  Clinton often preferred form over function.

In the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration authorized the CIA to pursue a dual strategy that entailed fomenting a popular uprising led by the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and Kurdish paramilitaries on the one hand, and seeking a coup from above, to be engineered by ex-Iraqi officers organized in the Iraqi National Accord, on the other. With CIA backing, the INC launched an uprising in 1994, and in March 1995, seized control of Mosul and Kirkuk in northern Iraq. The Clinton administration withdrew support for the operation at the last minute, and it (along with the attempted coup) was crushed by Iraqi troops.  Hundreds were killed because of our indecision. He couldn’t take the pressure from the media.

In 1995 there was the Oklahoma City Bombing.  Many thought it had Islamic roots.  It probably didn’t.  

 

Clinton recognized the influence of Osama bin Laden after the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in which hundreds were killed, many Americans.  For that he bombed a chemical weapons factory in Khartoum Sudan.

 

He put out an arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden to be captured or killed.  At the very end of his term, Al-Queada answered this threat by bombing the USS Cole killing more Americans.  Some conservatives believe he had OBL in his grasp in Sudan and didn’t act on it.  I don’t buy it.  Clinton knew this was an evil dangerous man. 

 

It was discovered in captured documents in Afghanistan during an Al-Queada headquarters raid that there was a plan in place by OBL to assassinate Bill Clinton in 1999. 

 

Clinton fought with a reluctant democratic party and many weak republicans to put in place terrorist fighting actions:

 

He authorized 100 Million Dollars to work with the Israeli Mossad to track down and kill terrorists in the Middle East.  We did.  They did.

 

He authorized the Iraqi Liberation Act that funded efforts militarily and otherwise to foment regime change in Iraq.  He backed down under heat however as you saw above.

 

He initiated by executive order Extraordinary Rendition or “Torture by Proxy” where Terrorists are sent to bad places to be tortured for info and then killed or imprisoned. A policy still in effect today and criticized by the left and John McCain who forget it was Clinton who put this in place. Thankfully it still is. 

 

He did other good things.  Defense of marriage act which included the language that states should control who can get married in their state and that marriage was between one man and one woman.

 

Of course we all remember all the “scandals”.  Bill Clinton did much good.  But his administration is most remembered for all the sex scandals, Jennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willy, Paula Jones, Juanita Broddrick and of course Monica.  Democrats are much sexier than Republicans.

 

And there was Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, China Gate, Pardon Gate, Mike Espy and so forth.  Much of this was Gotcha Politics ratcheted up.  Even the impeachment was so much hot air while a world war was brewing under the surface. 

 

One thing the terrorists learned about Americans during the 25 years from Carter to Clinton is: If the USA takes casualties they will turn tail and run.

 

Next, George W Bush is “Elected”.  The USA Stops Running.