Actually, Conor, I think Giuliani’s on the right track with this one. Let’s try to piece together what might be his worldview. Giuliani:
It’s unthinkable that you would leave Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq and be able to fight the war on terror.
Your first point, Conor, is that
It’s plainly wrong. Isn’t it obvious that we could’ve left Saddam Hussein in power, contained him a bit more aggressively than before, and focused the bulk of our military attention elsewhere?
I don’t think it’s obvious. Indeed, leaving Saddam Hussein in power after the first Gulf war was a mistake because it gave other terrorists the idea that it was possible to defy the United States and get away with it. This mistake was compounded in Somalia, in the first WTC bombing, in the Khobar Towers bombing, in the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, etc. In the Arab world, Saddam was nearly deified because, though he didn’t stay in control of Kuwait, he had defied America and survived in luxury. (The Iraqi people suffered greatly, but the masses don’t concern terrorists who sacrifice children in the name of terror.) Containing a problem is what we tried during the Clinton years. Containment hasn’t gotten rid of Castro yet.
It made sense to go after Saddam first because he was the most flagrant example of our failed containment policy. To make clear to terrorists that the game had changed, we needed to destory him. Whether we needed to stick around afterwards, however, is a different story.
Conor’s second point:
It’s exactly this doctrinaire world view and lack of imagination that has helped to get us into our current foreign policy problems.
Actually, our foreign policy problems came to us. A significant chunk of Americans keep asking themselves, “Why do they hate us?” It’s the wrong question to ask—after all, quite a few British, French, Chinese, Mexicans, etc. loathe America, but they don’t launch terrorist attacks against us.
A better question to ask is this: “Why do terrorist states hold us in contempt?” They’ve seen our culture, and they want to cherry pick what they want out of it and destroy the rest. They were confident that they could do so because of our previous, desultory responses to terrorist attacks.
Suddenly, we were hit with 9/11. Terrorist probably expected an FBI investigation, perhaps a few cruise missiles here and there. Instead, we first flattened the Taliban. Next, and more surprisingly, we squashed Saddam. The emphasis on tying him to 9/11 that some on the right have strikes me as misguided. The lesson that we want to teach terrorist states is simple: sponsor terrorism, and we’ll use any attack to justify wiping you from the face of the earth.
Giuliani, thanks to his relentless assault on the little crimes in NYC, understands that stopping petty thieves prevents them from becoming master criminals. I hope he applies the same lesson to geopolitics.
Posted by Hubbard in Philosophy, Global War on Terror, Audacity of Hype