[casi] We Went Into Iraq Because We Knew We Could

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http://www.theday.com/eng/web/mktplace/re.aspx?reIDx=3115465B-AD86-49AD-8852
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We Went Into Iraq Because We Knew We Could

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published on 6/5/2003

The failure of the Bush team to produce any weapons of mass destruction
(WMDs) in Iraq is becoming a big, big story. But is it the real story we
should be concerned with? No. It was the wrong issue before the war, and
it's the wrong issue now.

Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war: the real reason,
the right reason, the moral reason and the stated reason.

The “real reason” for this war, which was never stated, was that after 9/11
America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't
enough. Because a terrorism bubble had built up over there, one that posed a
real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured.
This terrorism bubble said that plowing airplanes into the World Trade
Center was OK, having Muslim preachers say it was OK was OK, having
state-run newspapers call people who did such things “martyrs” was OK and
allowing Muslim charities to raise money for such “martyrs” was OK. Not only
was all this seen as OK, there was a feeling among radical Muslims that
suicide bombing would level the balance of power between the Arab world and
the West, because we had gone soft and their activists were ready to die.

The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and
women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and
make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open
society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing Saudi
Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit Saddam for one simple
reason: because we could, and because he deserved it and because he was
right in the heart of that world. And don't believe the nonsense that this
had no effect. Every neighboring government — and 98 percent of terrorism is
about what governments let happen — got the message. If you talk to U.S. sol
diers in Iraq they will tell you this is what the war was about.

The “right reason” for this war was the need to partner with Iraqis,
post-Saddam, to build a progressive Arab regime. Because the real weapons of
mass destruction that threaten us were never Saddam's missiles. The real
weapons that threaten us are the growing number of angry, humiliated young
Arabs and Muslims, who are produced by failed or failing Arab states — young
people who hate America more than they love life. Helping to build a decent
Iraq as a model for others and solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are
the necessary steps for defusing the ideas of mass destruction, which are
what really threaten us.

The “moral reason” for the war was that Saddam's regime was an engine of
mass destruction and genocide that had killed thousands of his own people,
and neighbors, and needed to be stopped.

But because the Bush team never dared to spell out the real reason for the
war, and (wrongly) felt that it could never win public or world support for
the right reasons and the moral reasons, it opted for the “stated reason”:
the notion that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that posed an
immediate threat to America. I argued before the war that Saddam posed no
such threat to America, and had no links with al-Qaida, and that we couldn't
take the nation to war “on the wings of a lie.” I argued that Bush should
fight this war for the right reasons and the moral reasons. But he stuck
with this WMD argument for P.R. reasons.

Once the war was over and I saw the mass graves and the true extent of
Saddam's genocidal evil, my view was that Bush did not need to find any WMDs
to justify the war for me. I still feel that way. But I have to admit that
I've always been fighting my own war in Iraq. Bush took the country into his
war. And if it turns out that he fabricated the evidence for his war (which
I wouldn't conclude yet), that would badly damage America and be a very
serious matter.

Finding Iraq's WMDs is necessary to preserve the credibility of the Bush
team, the neocons, Tony Blair and the CIA. But rebuilding Iraq is necessary
to win the war. I won't feel one whit more secure if we find Saddam's WMDs,
because I never felt he would use them on us. But I will feel terribly
insecure if we fail to put Iraq onto a progressive path. If that doesn't
happen, the terrorism bubble will reinflate and bad things will follow.
America's future, and the future of the Mideast, rides on our building a
different Iraq.

Thomas Friedman writes for The New York Times.



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