THE SPEECH

I confess that I didn't see President Bush's prime time speech and press conference tonight. I was out running audio for a music practice thingy, and wasn't near a TV. No matter, he already had me on board a long time ago. From what I've picked up about the reaction to the speech, those who were already on board will stay there, and those who weren't on board probably weren't pursuaded to hitch up.

Which makes me wonder what in the world it was all about. And what in the world the past year has been all about. Iraq is a direct threat to the US, or so we have been led to believe since 9-11. It's a belief I share, and in fact held even before 9-11. Iraq is an armed menace to regional stability, and to the oil markets, which in turn makes it a threat to our economy, or so we have been led to believe since 9-11. And it's objectively, obviously true. The first Gulf War centered on the fact that, in taking Kuwait as his 19th province, Saddam was positioning himself astride a gigantic chunk of the world's oil supply, and that by menacing Saudi Arabia he was essentially helping himself to de facto control over a still greater share of the world's oil. This situation was intolerable, not only to the US but to the world as a whole, and the Gulf War ensued for the purpose of liberating Kuwait and weakening Saddam's grip on the lion's share of Middle Eastern oil.

Fast forward to today, and little has really changed. Saddam no longer controls Kuwait and has no hope of doing so, thanks to the presence of thousands of US troops on Kuwaiti soil. Ditto Saudi Arabia. But left to his own devices, Saddam will in a matter of anywhere from a few months to a couple of years possess weapons capable of rendering our troop presence in the Middle East moot. He could essentially wave the big bomb at us on his way back to Kuwait City, and unless we were willing to respond with an actual pre-emptive nuclear strike of our own, Saddam would have the oil supply he wants, would be able to sell that oil with impunity to France, Russia and his other partners around the world and fill his coffers with hard cash. He would in turn use that money to procure still more WMDs, and likely find uses for those weapons either through proxy terror groups or by simply selling them to the highest bidder on the black market. The center cannot hold in that situation--it creates a zero-sum game in which either Saddam goes or the US recedes in large part from the world stage, or at least from the Middle East picture.

Then there's Saddam's human rights record. I won't go into detail here, as the press has been replete with horror stories from Iraqi prisons for years now. Saddam's a monster, capable of tremendous evil. Leaving that man in charge of his own country, let alone much of the Middle East if we leave him alone, is intolerable. We have the means to end his reign, and we should.

And then there are his connections to terrorism, which are obvious. I'll give you two words on the subject--Salman Pak. Google them. Salman Pak is reputed to be the Harvard of terrorism. It's south of Baghdad, and a place where Saddam has cultivated beasts and sharpened their skills. Salman Pak, our intelligence services discovered not long after 9-11, boasts a curious feature--a plane fuselage, permanently installed. Iraqi defectors have reported some interesting instruction taking place on that fuselage at Salman Pak--small groups of men armed only with short knives, practicing the art of hijacking aircraft. True, they didn't progress to any sort of simulator training where they could learn to fly planes without the hassle of landings and launches. But Salman Pak's students learned a set of skills critical to Mohammed Atta's 9-11 squads, lessons used to grim precision on that awful day. Coincidence? It's a little hard to buy.

Which brings me back to what tonight's speech was all about, and what the 15 or 16 month "rush" to war has been all about. Given the circumstantial case that Iraq had a hand in 9-11, and given Saddam's proclivity to develop and then use WMDs, and given his stated intention to take over the entire Middle East and be the next Saladin, and given his intense hatred of the US and his demonstrated aggression against his neighbors, and given his abyssmal human rights record, why have we bothered dickering around with the UN for so long? What business have the French or the Chinese in the US taking out a threat to ourselves? What right has Cameroon to say whether we can act to protect our vital interests by removing real threats, be they rogues with banned weapons or the intent to control the world's economic lifeblood, or both? If this war against Iraq is for the purpose of self-defense, what have we been waiting for all this time?

I keep thinking back to 1989. Sensing a growing threat to our south, the first President Bush ordered one of the most pre-emptive, most unilateral wars in US history. He invaded Panama, in the dead of night, for the purpose of toppling its military regime and capturing its dictator, General Manuel Noriega. Noriega was a notorious drug trafficker, and had openly declared war on the US. Panama's position as the canal state made its hostile posture a clear and present danger to the US. President Bush didn't take the issue to the UN, didn't consult the French or the Russians or even the British--he just sent in the troops, and in a matter of weeks the whole thing was over. Today Noriega rots away in a US jail, claiming to have found religion, and Panama is a democracy. The USSR condemned our actions, and if I recall maybe Cuba and a few others made lots of noise, but we didn't care back then. Our president saw a threat and removed it.

Iraq is a threat. It has attacked its neighbors, it tried to assassinate a former US president, it develops weapons it pledged not to, it harbors and supports terrorists aimed at killing Americans, Israelis and citizens of several other states allied to us, and it has designs on the world's oil supply. All of these things make the current Iraqi regime a clear and present danger. By waiting as long as we have, we have done little more than embolden Saddam to defy us and left the anti-war movement here and elsewhere time to fester, sulk and then mobilize. Time is short, and we have gained nothing beyond a little extra time to build up our forces in theatre for all our diplomatic efforts.

The UN has failed us. Many of our allies have failed us, while others support us. In the end, we have bent over backwards and grabbed our ankles for the world's permission to defend ourselves. I can't help but think that no other nation in our position would be so accomodating, and I can't help but think that each minute we delay only makes us weaker on the world stage.

Time is short. We must act to remove the threat Saddam poses to us, with the UN or without. And we must act soon, or become a paper tiger.