SLATE has been running an interesting colloquy on, and with, a bunch of well-known liberal (or formerly liberal) supporters of our war in Iraq. On Monday, in explaining why he supported and still supports the decision to go to war, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times said the following, in explaining why WMD had never been that important to him:
The stated reason for the war was that Saddam Hussein had developed weapons of mass destruction that posed a long-term threat to America. I never bought this argument. I didn’t have any inside information. I simply assumed that whatever WMD Saddam possessed had to be, after a decade of sanctions, so limited that it was easily deterable. There was absolutely nothing in Saddam’s history to suggest that he was suicidal—that he had the capability or will to attack the United States directly and pay the price.
He was always deterable and containable. This was always a war of choice.
….
The right reason for the war, and this was the core of my own argument, was that the real weapons of mass destruction that threaten our open society were not the hidden WMD of Saddam. Those, as I said, were always deterable because Saddam and his sons loved life more than they hated us.
Saddam and sons, in short, were not crazy. The WMD threat was not imminent because they, being reasonable and not suicidal, were deterable.
But if Saddam was so reasonable, why did he bring down this war, and his ouster, on himself? If Saddam’s sons loved war more than they hated us, why are they dead? Friedman’s view seems much less compelling than it was before the war.
And it also seems much less persuasive than President Bush’s widely disregarded comment in his State of Union Address in January 2003:
Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option. (Applause.)
