Posted by Tina
Events from days gone by are rarely remembered with clarity and as weve discovered, the press is often more interested in distorting past events than in keeping the historical record. Its useful, therefore, to be reminded of past events in order to keep an accurate perspective in the present. Arthur Herman, history professor at Georgetown University, has written a great piece for Commentary Magazine outlining the realities and challenges of Saddams Iraq during the last years of Bill Clintons term as president and the democrat support of Clintons policies. I urge you to read the entire article
In a February 17, 1998 speech at the Pentagon, Clinton focused on what in his State of the Union address a few weeks earlier he had called an unholy axis of rogue states and predatory powers threatening the worlds security. There is no more clear example of this threat, he asserted, than Saddam Husseins Iraq, and he added that the danger would grow many times worse if Saddam were able to realize his thoroughly documented ambition, going back decades and at one point close to accomplishment, of acquiring an arsenal of nuclear as well as chemical and biological weapons. The United States, Clinton said, simply cannot allow this to happen. ** On December 15, UNSCOMs director, Richard Butler, reported that Iraq was engaged in systematic obstruction and deception of the internationally mandated inspection regime. Although the UN hesitated to invoke the technical term material breach, which would almost certainly have triggered a demand for a response with force by the world body, Clinton himself was determined to act. He had already received a letter from a formidable list of U.S. Senators, including fellow Democrats Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry, urging him to respond effectivelywith air strikes if necessaryto the threat posed by Iraqs refusal to end its WMD programs. After consulting with Great Britain and other allies, Clinton ordered Butler to pull out the remaining inspectors. On December 16, he launched Operation Desert Fox. ** the attacks did virtually nothing to destroy facilities suspected of housing weapons, most of which were in unknown locations. The only way to find out where they might be was by reintroducing UN inspectors, something Saddam now adamantly refused to permit. ** Thus, in the end, Desert Fox proved a failure, not because of insufficient American firepower but because of Saddams defianceand because of a lack of forceful follow-up. True, passage of the Iraq Liberation Act meant that the United States now had a regime-change resolution on the books and was providing a certain amount of money and aid for covert internal action against Saddam. True, too, Vice President Al Gore was a particularly strong supporter of these initiatives. But in the wake of Desert Fox, Saddam had conducted his own violent crackdown on potential opposition figures, which meant there was no hope for Iraqis to retake their country without massive outside help. ** Convincing Congress that the United States enjoyed a right of anticipatory self-defense against Saddam was hardly a difficult task. On the contrary, in September 2002 the Senate virtually arm-twisted Bush into giving it time to pass a new and more specific resolution than the Clinton-era one authorizing regime change in Iraq. In ringing the tocsin, moreover, leading Democrats spoke at least as assertively as leading Republicans. One of them was Charles Schumer: Husseins vigorous pursuit of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, and his present and potential future support for terrorist acts and organizations . . . make him a terrible danger to the people of the United States. ** Another was Hillary Clinton: My position is very clear. The time has come for decisive action to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Husseins WMDs. ** John Edwards was still another: Every day [Saddam] gets closer to his long-term goal of nuclear capability. ** Howard Dean, then the governor of Vermont, was of a similar mind: Theres no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the U.S. and our allies. ** More than half of Senate Democrats, including John Kerry and Joseph Biden, joined with Republicans in authorizing the President to defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq, and in so doing to enforce all the relevant but ineffectual resolutions passed by the UN Security Councilthe vote reflected nothing more than an affirmation of the old Clinton-era position, now urgently reinforced by the experience of 9/11.