Because We Could

June 4, 2003
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
www.nytimes.com

The failure of the Bush team to produce any weapons of mass
destruction (W.M.D.'s) in Iraq is becoming a big, big
story. But is it the real story we should be concerned
with? No. It was the wrong issue before the war, and it's
the wrong issue now.

Why? Because there were actually four reasons for this war:
the real reason, the right reason, the moral reason and the
stated reason.

The "real reason" for this war, which was never stated, was
that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the
Arab-Muslim world. Afghanistan wasn't enough because a
terrorism bubble had built up over there - a bubble that
posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and
needed to be punctured. This terrorism bubble said that
plowing airplanes into the World Trade Center was O.K.,
having Muslim preachers say it was O.K. was O.K., having
state-run newspapers call people who did such things
"martyrs" was O.K. and allowing Muslim charities to raise
money for such "martyrs" was O.K. Not only was all this
seen as O.K., there was a feeling among radical Muslims
that suicide bombing would level the balance of power
between the Arab world and the West, because we had gone
soft and their activists were ready to die.

The only way to puncture that bubble was for American
soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the
Arab-Muslim world, house to house, and make clear that we
are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society
from being undermined by this terrorism bubble. Smashing
Saudi Arabia or Syria would have been fine. But we hit
Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because
he deserved it and because he was right in the heart of
that world. And don't believe the nonsense that this had no
effect. Every neighboring government - and 98 percent of
terrorism is about what governments let happen - got the
message. If you talk to U.S. soldiers in Iraq they will
tell you this is what the war was about.

The "right reason" for this war was the need to partner
with Iraqis, post-Saddam, to build a progressive Arab
regime. Because the real weapons of mass destruction that
threaten us were never Saddam's missiles. The real weapons
that threaten us are the growing number of angry,
humiliated young Arabs and Muslims, who are produced by
failed or failing Arab states - young people who hate
America more than they love life. Helping to build a decent
Iraq as a model for others - and solving the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict - are the necessary steps for
defusing the ideas of mass destruction, which are what
really threaten us.

The "moral reason" for the war was that Saddam's regime was
an engine of mass destruction and genocide that had killed
thousands of his own people, and neighbors, and needed to
be stopped.

But because the Bush team never dared to spell out the real
reason for the war, and (wrongly) felt that it could never
win public or world support for the right reasons and the
moral reasons, it opted for the stated reason: the notion
that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that posed an
immediate threat to America. I argued before the war that
Saddam posed no such threat to America, and had no links
with Al Qaeda, and that we couldn't take the nation to war
"on the wings of a lie." I argued that Mr. Bush should
fight this war for the right reasons and the moral reasons.
But he stuck with this W.M.D. argument for P.R. reasons.

Once the war was over and I saw the mass graves and the
true extent of Saddam's genocidal evil, my view was that
Mr. Bush did not need to find any W.M.D.'s to justify the
war for me. I still feel that way. But I have to admit that
I've always been fighting my own war in Iraq. Mr. Bush took
the country into his war. And if it turns out that he
fabricated the evidence for his war (which I wouldn't
conclude yet), that would badly damage America and be a
very serious matter.

But my ultimate point is this: Finding Iraq's W.M.D.'s is
necessary to preserve the credibility of the Bush team, the
neocons, Tony Blair and the C.I.A. But rebuilding Iraq is
necessary to win the war. I won't feel one whit more secure
if we find Saddam's W.M.D.'s, because I never felt he would
use them on us. But I will feel terribly insecure if we
fail to put Iraq onto a progressive path. Because if that
doesn't happen, the terrorism bubble will reinflate and bad
things will follow. Mr. Bush's credibility rides on finding
W.M.D.'s, but America's future, and the future of the
Mideast, rides on our building a different Iraq. We must
not forget that.??


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/04/opinion/04FRIE.html?ex=1055855849&ei=1&en=ebf825d89abfa051