Quote:
Originally Posted by gstelmack
FWIW, I think this is a fundamental dividing line in American politics today. To me, 9/11 did change everything, including how we view threats that have nothing to do with terrorism. We thought he had WMDs, the Clintons thought he had WMDs, the main objectors were those making money off him and so were voting their own personal gain, he'd shown a tendency to use them, he was stonewalling everyone, and 9/11 meant we no longer take chances, period, as we were being attacked on our own soil.
So I agree 100% with that change in direction from Cheney. Those of you that don't think 9/11 changed everything will disagree. Whatever. |
The problem with this, is that even if you accept the idea that 9/11 changed the equation about whether we go to war with Iraq (which is a big assumption), it changed the benefit side (protecting ourselves from terrorism), not the cost side (involving ourselves in a quagmire). Cheney's statement from 1994 about the difficulty of invading Iraq were not in any respect altered by the events of 9/11. Yet when Cheney and the rest of the administration hit the interview circuit to promote the war they continuously asserted that it would be a cakewalk, in and out in a few months, paid for by oil revenue, flowering democracy in the Middle East and all that other now famous bullshit.
If they really thought that 9/11 changed our evaluation of the threat level such that invading Iraq was worth the cost, when we didn't think it was worth the cost in 1994, then why didn't they make that case to the American people? Why did they have to lie about it? Jon Stewart got this exactly right in this
interview last week with Cheney biographer Stephen Hayes, maybe the best interview I've seen Stewart do...
If we could have had an honest discussion of what it would cost and whether that cost was justified, maybe we could have made the proper military preparations to succeed (if that was ever possible), and maybe the American people, having gone to war fully informed, would be more supportive of the time and effort required. Of course, if there had been an honest discussion maybe we would have concluded that this war would be counterproductive and it wouldn't have happened at all. That's what the administration was not willing to risk, and why Cheney pretended the things he said in 1994 never existed. And that's why we were lied to, and why we went into this war half-baked without any real chance of success from the first.