What Hillary, Edwards should say: the Iraq resolution worked, Bush violated it
It seems to me the candidates who voted for the resolution that Bush used to go to war have a simple, simple explanation that they are all missing. It was October 2002, almost six months before Bush actually launched the war, and before the weight of news reports showing, one by one, that the confident declarations of this or that evidence of WMDs were shaky at best – with the final pieces being the real-time dismantling in February of the “knowledge” Colin Powell expounded in his UN speech, accompanied by the obviously Bush/Cheney-orchestrated trashing of Blix and the UN. At the point the resolution came to a vote, October 2002, the intelligence the Congress was being allowed to see said Saddam had WMDs. President Clinton’s administration had believed it, too. The Republicans had the control necessary to force the vote.
The declared purpose of the vote was to raise the threat level to force Saddam to accept the inspectors without restrictions. It worked. Saddam let in the Blix inspection team in December 2002, although with unsatisfactory restrictions, but Blix reported in February 2003, a month before the launch of the war, that those restrictions had finally been lifted and the team was receiving appropriate cooperation.
In other words, George Bush violated the resolution because he went to war anyway in March. Yes, those who voted to give Bush the power should have recognized, as did Russ Feingold, that the shifting justifications called the administration’s credibility into serious question. But the bottom line is, in October 2002, Saddam was in violation of his UN obligations (even if he did not actually have any WMDs) because he was not permitting the required inspections under the UN resolutions. The resolution was directed not at authorizing the war whenever Bush felt like it, but as a last resort only if Saddam refused to comply with Iraq’s obligations to permit inspections. The still-popular Bush gave his personal assurances that war would be used as a last resort, and only with genuine UN involvement unless unilateral action was absolutely necessary. When Blix reported Iraq’s cooperation in February 2003, it was Bush’s obligation under the resolution at the very least to stand down until that cooperation could be confirmed. He did not, but used the resolution as a pretext. Bush flat-out violated the resolution that Clinton, Edwards, Kerry et al voted for.
Progressives negative or lukewarm on Clinton describe her vote on the resolution as a “pro-war” vote, or as a “vote to go to war.” They are basically doing the Republicans’ job for them by putting her in the same camp with the ardent Bush-supporters, the rah-rah people. We can elide the facts with hindsight, but it was not a vote to go to war. I do not see any reason to challenge the assertion made by Clinton (or Kerry, or Edwards) that it was a vote intended to avoid war by forcing Saddam to comply with the inspections regime. Call it parsing, naïve or whatever – even Feingold and Byrd were unwilling to verbalize an accusation of bad faith against the administration -- it was a far cry from being the cheerleaders that the Republicans were. It may be a digital world, but we need to eliminate the binary categorization of all Senators and Representatives as either pro-war or anti-war. There were three distinct camps : (1) pro-war or oblivious to war – mostly Republican Bush flunkies; (2) anti-war, mostly Democrats, and (3) anti-war but pro-resolution in the belief it could avoid war – mostly or entirely Democrats. Yes, especially Democrats who expected someday to consider running for President.
So there is the simple narrative: at the time, Saddam was not letting in the inspectors. The sole purpose of the resolution was to force Saddam to comply. This would help avoid war. It worked, but Bush violated the resolution because he went to war anyway after Iraq started cooperating with the inspectors. The explanation certainly will not satisfy everyone on the left, but it's better than being pigeonholed with Bill Frist and Tom DeLay.
The declared purpose of the vote was to raise the threat level to force Saddam to accept the inspectors without restrictions. It worked. Saddam let in the Blix inspection team in December 2002, although with unsatisfactory restrictions, but Blix reported in February 2003, a month before the launch of the war, that those restrictions had finally been lifted and the team was receiving appropriate cooperation.
In other words, George Bush violated the resolution because he went to war anyway in March. Yes, those who voted to give Bush the power should have recognized, as did Russ Feingold, that the shifting justifications called the administration’s credibility into serious question. But the bottom line is, in October 2002, Saddam was in violation of his UN obligations (even if he did not actually have any WMDs) because he was not permitting the required inspections under the UN resolutions. The resolution was directed not at authorizing the war whenever Bush felt like it, but as a last resort only if Saddam refused to comply with Iraq’s obligations to permit inspections. The still-popular Bush gave his personal assurances that war would be used as a last resort, and only with genuine UN involvement unless unilateral action was absolutely necessary. When Blix reported Iraq’s cooperation in February 2003, it was Bush’s obligation under the resolution at the very least to stand down until that cooperation could be confirmed. He did not, but used the resolution as a pretext. Bush flat-out violated the resolution that Clinton, Edwards, Kerry et al voted for.
Progressives negative or lukewarm on Clinton describe her vote on the resolution as a “pro-war” vote, or as a “vote to go to war.” They are basically doing the Republicans’ job for them by putting her in the same camp with the ardent Bush-supporters, the rah-rah people. We can elide the facts with hindsight, but it was not a vote to go to war. I do not see any reason to challenge the assertion made by Clinton (or Kerry, or Edwards) that it was a vote intended to avoid war by forcing Saddam to comply with the inspections regime. Call it parsing, naïve or whatever – even Feingold and Byrd were unwilling to verbalize an accusation of bad faith against the administration -- it was a far cry from being the cheerleaders that the Republicans were. It may be a digital world, but we need to eliminate the binary categorization of all Senators and Representatives as either pro-war or anti-war. There were three distinct camps : (1) pro-war or oblivious to war – mostly Republican Bush flunkies; (2) anti-war, mostly Democrats, and (3) anti-war but pro-resolution in the belief it could avoid war – mostly or entirely Democrats. Yes, especially Democrats who expected someday to consider running for President.
So there is the simple narrative: at the time, Saddam was not letting in the inspectors. The sole purpose of the resolution was to force Saddam to comply. This would help avoid war. It worked, but Bush violated the resolution because he went to war anyway after Iraq started cooperating with the inspectors. The explanation certainly will not satisfy everyone on the left, but it's better than being pigeonholed with Bill Frist and Tom DeLay.
Labels: Hillary Clinton, Iraq War Resolution
posted by KISSWeb | 1:50 PM
2 Comments:
I agree in part, but even at the time of that resolution, it was pretty clear that Bush intended to go to war with Iraq. Cheney was out there beating the bushes about it in speech after speech. The neocons had been arguing for war since God knows when. There certainly wasn't much doubt in my mind that the Prez had every intention of using the vote in exactly the same way Johnson used the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
So, if Hillary, Edwards, Kerry truly voted only to give the Prez some credibility to force Saddam to comply with the inspections, they were pretty severely deluded. That may be better than being pro-war, but it's not great.
My own belief is that, while they may not have been pro-war, they knew full well Bush would use this to wage one and they simply wimped out because they were afraid the Dems would be labeled "weak." Guess what? They got that label anyway.
I don't think they knew "full well," but may well have thought various institutional restraints would work to prevent war. I don't think Brent Scowcroft knew "full well" either, or else he would not have bothered with a very long op ed against going to war without clear justification -- in the Wall Street Journal, no less. I was starting to have suspicions, but I did not know "full well" either at that point. It was in the following weeks when the talking points mantras came to dominate the language that it became clearer. Suddenly, no one said "nuclear weapons," only "WMDs," and they kept talking about "gasssing his own people" that was 15 years old. I think we get our time sequences a bit confused in order to preserve our own narratives. At any rate, it's an answer that is factual and simple -- better than dithering around on it, whether people consider it full satisfactory or not.
Post a Comment
<< Home