Strategy: Iran (and N. Korea) May Explain Iraq

Rev. Joseph Lowery's WMD comment at the Coretta Scott King's funeral -- and the audience's applause at it -- bring up a question we keep coming back to: why Iraq?

Here's a possibility:

In the 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush identified Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as part of an "axis of evil." Of these, which of the three was weakest militarily? Which of these three could the U.S. attack with the least cost to our military and the in-country civilian population?

The answer to both is Iraq. Add to these Iraq's own role in fighting its way to the front of the line by

• defying numerous UN resolutions, leading up to November 2002's Resolution 1441.
• shooting at coalition planes over the no-fly zones
• subverting UN sanctions
• maniplulating the Oil-for-Food program, and
• loudly rattling its own sabers.

All this, plus the President's repeated assertions that the US had to "take the fight to the enemy," suggest that the larger strategic reason for attacking Iraq, whatever the short-term, tactical reasons given at the time (and they were not just WMDs, as is so often claimed), was in part to serve as a warning to the two larger threats, Iran and North Korea.

The peace-at-any-cost mob's cynical argument that the US should not have gone into Iraq because North Korea and Iran pose far greater threats only underscores the point: attacking either of these states, at least from the inevitably flawed vantage point the US had in 2003, would have had (and may yet have) far higher human, military, and political costs than overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

In short, perhaps the US calculated that a relatively easy victory in Iraq could remove Saddam AND accomplish two other key goals: (a) show rogue regimes worldwide that it meant business; and (b) avoid having to invade Iran and North Korea.

True, the victory has not come as easily as hoped. And Iran nor North Korea keep shaking their fists at the world, and especially the US. Still, from a strategic standpoint, given the information at hand at the time, the decision to go into Iraq -- assuming my speculation is right -- may not look all bad.

Ah, C'Mon Hillary!

AP reports the following on Hillary R. Clinton:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday accused Republicans of "playing the fear card" of terrorism to win elections and said Democrats cannot keep quiet if they want to win in November. (http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/02/08/D8FL4DNO6.html)

Ah, c'mon Mrs. C. -- since when have the Democrats EVER been able to "keep quiet"?

The real problem is that they don't keep quiet enough. It's all the squawking that gets them into trouble. Maybe all the exhortation to keep speaking up -- most likely born of the left's nostalgia for the 60s and the fantasy that their protests improved America by forcing it to abandon Vietnam -- explains the rise of the far left's rising hegemony within the party.

As extremists so often are, they are quite simply the loudest shriekers at the table.

Shaming Coretta

The funeral for Coretta Scott King yesterday was in many ways dignified and worthy of the woman whose life it celebrated. But some of the speakers and the guests -- at certain points -- shamed themselves and soiled the occasion they came to celebrate.

The worst was Rev. Joseph Lowery, who tried to embarrass President Bush by claiming, "We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there." We know no such thing. All anyone can claim is that we haven't found any. In fact, all who actually know anything about it agree that there were indeed WMDs "over there" at one point. The question is, where are they now?

And even if he was right, how about exhibiting a little of Mrs. King's famous class instead of using the woman's own funeral to make such a cheap, cliched point?

And then there was former President and current Panderer-in-Chief James Earl Carter, whose knack for embarrassing himself without apparently realizing it is getting hard to watch. He said that the ceremony was not only to commemorate Coretta and Martin's lives, but to "remind us that the struggle for equal rights is not over." For proof, says he, "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi... Those who were most devastated by Katrina know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans."

Does he mean that if only these people would have been white, Mayor Naggin would have fired up the idle school buses and evacuated them? Although it was indeed heart-breaking to see such suffering, must Carter and Company continue to humiliate the poor by suggesting that they are too inept--or too black--to work their way out of poverty, despite plenty of evidence (e.g., the city's own mayor) to the contrary?

Besides, their poverty doesn't prove anything about the state of equal opportunity in the U.S. -- but it does testify to the lack of guaranteed equal outcomes, a state of affairs that apparently annoys Carter to no end.

Equally disgraceful was the crowd's reaction -- sustained applause -- to both of these stunts. It made them look rude and misinformed, if not brainwashed.

Pettiest yet saddest of all, and I hate to say this, was the Reverend Bernice King's claim that sexism is still a problem because the audience didn't sufficiently cheer her comparison of her mother to the biblical Joshua. Maybe they were too dazed by Bernice's barely concealed grab for her parents' legacy to respond.