An accidentally good question

June 15, 2005

It was, predictably, soft-ball city when Dick Cheney sat down with Fox News’ Sean Hannity this week, but I have to admit, there was actually a good question in there. Hannity probably didn’t mean it to be, and the merit behind the question was purely accidental, but it’s a good question that deserves a good answer.

Here’s what Hannity said:

“You keep, in the administration, coming under fire for Iraq. We just had elections in Iraq. The security forces are growing in Iraq. There’s still an insurgency, but there’s a lot of progress. What do you make of how that war has been politicized? Where would we be today if we didn’t go to Iraq?”

Putting aside the hilarious notion that Sean Hannity disapproves of how the war has been “politicized,” the second question there actually raises a fascinating point. Where would we be today had Bush not launched an invasion of Iraq under false pretenses?

Cheney probably wasn’t expecting a real question, so his answer didn’t make a lot of sense.

“Well, I think if Saddam Hussein were still in power, if Iraq were still a safe-haven for terrorists, if in fact he’d been able to continue the pattern of activity he’d undertaken in the past — remember, he’s the guy who did produce weapons of mass destruction, did use them against his own people and against the Iranians.”

It’s kind of sad to hear Cheney even try to argue — two years after the fact — that we really ought to be grateful that we stopped Hussein’s non-existent WMD program. It’s enough to almost make me feel sorry for the poor vice president.

Nevertheless, Hannity’s question is absolutely legitimate and should be posed frequently to other supporters of the war. Where would we be today if we didn’t go to Iraq?

And who supplied Saddam with the gas he used “against his own people”? And would either the Kurds or Saddam agree that they are or were “his own people”.

Sorry to re-hash very old stuff, but Cheney makes it so easy.

  • I don’t know where we’d be exactly, but I can think of thousands of troops who are stuck in a quagmire who’d probably like to hear Bush answer the question.

  • “…if Iraq were still a safe-haven for terrorists…”

    Do I need to state the obvious?

  • We’d very likely be half way through the first year of Kerry’s first term as president.

  • It’s a great question, really. I have to agree with smiley, that, in the absence of an Iraq invasion, the Bush plan to use the GWoT for all political ends possible would have fallen short, and he would have had trouble getting re-elected.

    But seriously, what would we have done instead? Toppled the Taliban and then gone on with our lives? I can’t imagine that’s true.

    In my ideal world, after 9/11, we would have topple the Taliban, of course, but then moved on to a much more aggressive and focused campaign on Nuclear Nonproliferation.

  • “I don’t know where we’d be exactly, but I can think of thousands of troops who are stuck in a quagmire who’d probably like to hear Bush answer the question.”

    More importantly, the families of the 1,700+ soldiers killed so far deserve an answer.

  • Imagine if we had poured these resources into Afghanistan. If, after promising that we would rebuild the place, we had actually followed through. Muslims and Middle East states would have to reevaluate their distrust of Americans. We could have used that progress to make further strides region-wide, backing up our talk of freedom and democracy with tangible deeds. It would not have been easy, of course, but we could have made Afghanistan a positive example and gained goodwill from trying.

    Instead we have not followed up on our promises, confirming the distrust of Americans in the region, and adding to the belief that we are only interested in the oil. We have given terrorists back the safe-haven we took away when the Taliban fell, and we have given them an endless bounty of recruits. We took a crippled Iraq that was no threat – and was mostly worried about being over-run by Iran – and turned it into a threat to all its neighbors and to American troops, and gutted our military in the process.

    Funny how Saddam’s crimes weren’t so important to Heinous Dick when he was making fat cash from Halliburton deals with Iraq.

  • cowering in fear of those WMD-filled drones hovering off of our coast… waiting impotently for the mushroom clouds to blossom… having a collective breakdown waiting for Saddam to handoff his weapons of terror to terrorists… it was all so IMMINENT

  • One American analyst from the State Department’s Future of Iraq team recently noted that, given that one key element of Saddam’s oppression of the Shi’a majority was the threat of chemical weapons, if the UN inspection program had continued to discover that they didn’t exist, well, the Shi’a might have revolted. Either a new government with popular and religious support, or another authoritarian leader, would have emerged or we might be observing the beginnings of civil war in Iraq.

    Just like now, only, not from within the cross-fire. Shrewd, Dick, shrewd.

  • We’d probably be licking our wounds after a nuclear exchange with North Korea.

    The one thing Iraq has successfully done is bog this administration down and keep it from launching even grander endeavors. It’s costing over 100 billion per year, we’ve lost 1700+ American lives, and killed somewhere between 22,000 and 100,000+ Iraqis, but never forget that it could actually be much worse.

    It’s an expensive lesson, but Iraq debunked this administrations omnipotent view of itself.

  • On the day GWB and TB invaded Iraq, I turned my head and commented to my flatmate that 1. there won’t be any WMD found, 2. SH has been playing the US and Brit govts for fools, 3. SH will never be allowed to testify (so far muted video only – why?) 4. GWB and his cronies and TB and his will be sent to the Hague. So far 2.5 out of four. I’m waiting for SH’s testimony and the results of the DSM blowout.

    • Comments are closed.