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July 08, 2005
What is the point again?
John Nichols of The Nation was Ron Reagan's phone-a-friend after Ron was unable to hold his own against John Fund and Christopher Hitchens on MSNBC a few minutes ago. Mr. Nichols was unwilling to concede that Saddam's Iraq was a terrorist regime. When pushed on this point, he replied that he would rely on the "commission's report" which had the benefit of containing statements from the President and Vice President, he said.
Well, okay. Hitchens rightly pointed out that on any ordinary day Mr. Nichols wouldn't really care what Pres. Bush and VP Cheney had to say about anything. Moreover, if we can agree to assume that Nichols is talking about the 9/11 Commission Report, then he is implying that saying Iraq was a Terrorist regime presupposes that it was involved in 9/11.
I'm willing to say that Iraq wasn't directly involved in 9/11. What I cannot let go of is the fact that Iraq was indeed a terrorist regime.
Saddam's fingerprints (in the form of pay checks) are all over suicide bombings in the middle east, some of which have killed Americans in the past. Additionally, I would say that I don't think we should have had to wait for 9/11 to fight the war on terror. We should have been fighting it during the time of all the other terror attacks on Americans, here and abroad - [USS Cole, Beirut, the first attack on the Twin Towers - for those who forget]. I am not willing to say that Iraq cannot be connected to any of those attacks.
The war on terror is about fighting against terrorism. It sounds redundant to even define it that way, but I say it as such to try a distinction between a "war on terror" and a "war-against-only-those-exact-people-who-happened-to-attack-us-on-9/11"
Two. Different. Things.
We are fighting a War on Terror for our protection and the protection of freedom and free peoples around the world. We are not fighting this war as a knee-jerk reaction or revenge for the deaths on 9/11. It is a bigger goal with a wider scope and a far more important purpose.
Posted by Abigail at July 8, 2005 05:33 PM