Iraq: The Unapologetic Tony Blair

And with good reason. The logic he and President Bush used to invade Iraq and take down Saddam was sound and based on the best available information.

In the wake of his testimony before yet another UK inquisition, the WSJ cribbed a few of his best quotes and reminded us all of what we knew, what we didn't know, and why Iraq was and remains important.

[...]

Mr. Blair offered a ringing defense of the decision to invade Iraq, and a very different set of lessons for the present. "This isn't about a lie, or a conspiracy, or a deceit, or a deception. It is a decision," Mr. Blair told a packed room that included relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq. "And the decision I had to take was, given [Saddam's] history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over one million people whose deaths he had caused, given 10 years of breaking U.N. resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons program?"

That's a point worth remembering over all the Monday-morning recriminations about "dodgy dossiers" and missing WMD. We have never for a moment believed that the British or U.S. governments deliberately misled their publics over what they thought they knew about Saddam's weapons. Every Western country, including those opposed to the war, believed Saddam had WMD.

But the important point was never so much about what Saddam did or did not possess so much as it was about what he intended. And as Mr. Blair pointed out Friday, "What we now know is that he [Saddam] retained the intent and the intellectual know-how to restart a nuclear and a chemical weapons program when the inspectors were out and the sanctions changed, which they were going to do. . . .

"Today we would be facing a situation where Iraq was competing with Iran, competing both on nuclear weapons capability and competing more importantly perhaps than anything else . . . in respect of support of terrorist groups. . . . If I am asked whether I believe we are safer, more secure, that Iraq is better, that our own security is better, with Saddam and his two sons out of office and out of power, I believe indeed we are."

Mr. Blair was no less clear-eyed about the threat posed today by Iran and its nuclear program, against which he counseled that the international community had to take a "very hard, tough line." Iranian interference was a large reason why the Iraq war "very nearly" failed. Iran remains a sponsor of terrorism and a cause of instability from Afghanistan to Lebanon. The lesson from the Iraq war isn't to avoid action for fear of unanticipated consequences, which are inevitable in any war. It is to take action to prevent the most foreseeable of disasters, namely the combination, in a single regime, of fanaticism, links to terrorism and nuclear weapons.

"The decision I took—and frankly would take again—was, if there was any possibility that he [Saddam] could develop weapons of mass destruction, we would stop him," Mr. Blair told the commission. Listening to him, we are reminded why he ranks with Margaret Thatcher as a pre-eminent statesman of postwar British politics, an achievement unlikely to be matched by the Lilliputians who seek to embarrass him.

Polite British academic company (including my supervisors, etc.) requires that I keep my admiration of Blair (at least on this point) to myself. The shroud of semi-anonymity (at least enough that I can plausibly deny and they can plausibly ignore) allows my full confession of guilt here: I reluctantly endorsed the decision to invade all the way back when (when all the Democrats voted for it and the public heavily supported it) and stand by that decision now.

Things could and would be a heck of a lot worse.

(h/t Scott L.)

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Bret Stephens: 'Beggar Thy Neighbor, Bankrupt Thy Country, Appease Thy Foe...Pretty Much Sums Up President Obama's Global Agenda'

Foreign policy 'change you can believe in':

In 1943, Walter Lippmann observed that the disarmament movement had been "tragically successful in disarming the nations that believed in disarmament." That ought to have been the final word on the subject.

So what should Mr. Obama, who this week becomes the first American president to chair a session of the U.N. Security Council, choose to make the centerpiece of the Council's agenda? What else but nonproliferation and disarmament. And lest anyone suspect that this has something to do with North Korea and Iran, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice insists otherwise: The meeting, she says, "will focus on nuclear nonproliferation and nuclear disarmament broadly, and not on any particular countries."

But the problem with this euphemistic approach to disarmament, as Lippmann noticed, is that it shifts the onus from the countries that can't be trusted with nuclear weapons to those that can. Is Nicolas Sarkozy, with his force de frappe, about to start World War III? Probably not, though he has the means to do so. Should Mr. Obama join hands with Iran and the Arab world in pushing for Israel's nuclear disarmament, on the view that if only the Jewish state would set the right example its enemies would no longer want to wipe it off the map? If that's what the president believes, he should say so publicly, especially since he's offering the same general prescription for America's nuclear deterrent.

Of course what the administration wants is to set the right mood music for its upcoming talks with Iran. Mr. Obama would be better served having a chat with Moammar Gadhafi, who will be seated just a few chairs away at the Security Council: The mood music for his disarmament was set by the 4th Infantry Division when it yanked Saddam Hussein from his spider hole in December 2003. Col. Gadhafi gave up his WMD a week later.

Then again, it's not as if the administration doesn't know how to play hardball when it has a real villain in its sights. Like Chinese tire makers, for instance, who last week were slapped with a 35% tariff because Mr. Obama owed political favors to his friends in Big Labor. Quite something for a president who last year sounded off on the dangers of "trade policy [being] dictated by special interests."

In an op-ed in this newspaper, Brookings Institution economist Chad Bown noted that "the count of newly imposed protectionist policies like antidumping duties and other 'safeguard' measures increased by 31% in the first half of 2009 relative to the same period one year ago."

[...]

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama is earning kudos from the Russian government for his decision to pull missile defense from central Europe, even as Poland marked the 70th anniversary of its invasion by the Soviet Union. Moscow is still offering no concessions on sanctioning Iran in the event negotiations fail, but might graciously agree to an arms-control deal that cements its four-to-one advantages in tactical nuclear weapons.

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Nostalgic For Saddam OR Shoe Throwing Idiots

To the Bush-hating left, the shoe-throwing idiot in Baghdad is a hero--a hero that prompted more than 200 lawyers to offer their services, for free.

Imagine if the man had thrown his shoe at Saddam. If you've forgotten about Hussein's reign of terror, consider this short anecdote that relates what happened to a couple of young men who "competed" with Saddam's son, Uday, for the affections of some unfortunate young woman.

A chief executioner to one of Saddam's sons has revealed how he helped drag two victims into a cage to be devoured by lions.

The executioner said that he was ordered to seize two 19-year-old students and take them to a farm of Uday Hussein, Saddam's oldest son who was killed by American forces last week.

As soon as they arrived the students were dragged to a cage containing the lions and forced inside. "I saw the head of the first student literally come off his body with the first bite," he said. He then had to stand and watch the animals devour the two young men: "By the time they were finished there was little left but for the bones and bits and pieces of unwanted flesh."

He was told later that the two young men "had competed with Uday where some young ladies were concerned."

Yeah, things were a lot better back in the good ol' days.

The shoe-throwing idiot should be glad that instead of being fed to lions, he'll have America's best trial lawyers defending him in court.

(h/t James Taranto)


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Francis Fukuyama Shouldn't Bet Against The U.S.

In a fantastic article at the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens reports on a bet he made with Francis Fukuyama.

The bet?

Whether or not Iraq would be "a mess" 5 years after the invasion. Fukuyama said yes, Stephens no.

Last week Fukuyama sent Stephens a check for $100.

From Stephens article, a list of the accomplishments to date in Iraq:

Saddam is dead. Had he remained in power, we would likely still believe he had WMD. He would have been sitting on an oil bonanza priced at $140 a barrel. He would almost certainly have broken free from an already crumbling sanctions regime. The U.S. would be faced with not one, but two, major adversaries in the Persian Gulf. Iraqis would be living under a regime that, in an average year, was at least as murderous as the sectarian violence that followed its collapse. And the U.S. would have seemed powerless to shape events.

Instead, we now have a government that does not threaten its neighbors, does not sponsor terrorism, and is unlikely to again seek WMD. We have a democratic government, a first for the Arab world, and one that is increasingly capable of defending its people and asserting its interests.

We have a defeat for al Qaeda. Critics carp that had there been no invasion, there never would have been al Qaeda in Iraq. Maybe. As it is, thousands of jihadists are dead, al Qaeda has been defeated on its self-declared "central battlefield," and the movement is largely discredited on the Arab street and even within Islamist circles.

We also have -- if still only prospectively -- an Arab bulwark against Iran's encroachments in the region. But that depends on whether we simply withdraw from Iraq, or join it in a lasting security partnership.

At the conclusion, Stephens proposed a another bet with Fukuyama: that on the 10 year anniversary of Iraq's liberation, Fukuyama will concede the broader case for war in Iraq.

Here's to hoping that this time, Fukuyama will know a losing bet when he sees it.


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