This guy clearly picked a bad week to quit sniffing glue. You see, if President Obama signs what appears to be a flawed agreement with Iran, Iran will go nuclear--just a little slower than it otherwise would--and that would be President George W. Bush's fault:
If Mr. Bush had decided to display American leadership and exercise American power by launching a diplomatic campaign against Iran rather than a military one against Iraq 10 years ago, the United States’ international standing would be far greater today.
The Bush administration’s decision to go after Iraq rather than Iran was a fatal one, and the long-term consequences are only now becoming clear, namely a devastating American failure in the battle to prevent a nuclear Iran, reflected in Washington’s willingness to sign a deeply flawed agreement.
Mr. Bush’s responsibility for the disaster now unfolding is twofold: He failed to target Iran a decade ago, and created a climate that made it very difficult to target Iran today. The Bush administration didn’t initiate a political-economic siege on Iran when it was weak, and Mr. Bush weakened America by exhausting its economic power and military might in a futile war. By the time American resolve was needed to fend off a genuine global threat, the necessary determination was no longer there. It had been wasted on the wrong cause.
The correct way to confront the Iranian threat would have been to establish a broad coalition including Russia, the European Union, Sunni Arab countries, Israel and the United States. This would have placed Iran’s leaders in a real stranglehold and forced them to abandon their nuclear project — just as Libya did in 2003.
If President Obama signs a deeply flawed agreement it will be George W. Bush's fault? The BDS is strong in this one.
This argument is utter, complete, and award-winning nonsense. On steroids.
Let's see, in early 2001, without the Iraq War to alienate the world, with Saddam's clear aggression on record (Kuwait 1990), with Iraq clearly weak after a stunning military collapse and with the Kurdish region effectively separating from Iraq and the Shia south seething in opposition, and with the United Nations formally on board in containing Saddam, sanctions on Iraq were weakening and we were scrambling to implement "smart sanctions" (narrowly targeted at the regime) as an alternative to seeing sanctions disappear altogether under an onslaught of Saddam's propaganda that portrayed sanctions as responsible for dying babies.
This ignores that Khadaffi agreed to get rid of his WMD--including a nuclear program we did not know about until he offered to turn it over!--in 2003 because we invaded Iraq and then later pulled Saddam from a hole in 2003. Fear was the beginning of wisdom in that case.
And remember that in 2011 after the Libya War, we discovered that Khadaffi still retained chemical weapons capabilities despite that agreement.
You must also neglect that the world seems pretty much with us now in putting sanctions on Iran. So the Iraq War really didn't alienate the world, now did it?
Even if you want to believe that President Obama uniquely restored what President Bush wrecked, we do have harmful sanctions on Iran right now.
And yet Iran will not even admit to having a nuclear weapons program, and the deal on the table--as the author admits--will not stop Iran.
Further, despite sanctions, Iran spends lots of money to prop up Assad in Syria.
In the author's magical alternative world, we would have brought Russia and China on board this project to isolate Iran. Really? When Russia and China continue to back Iran now?
When Russia and China continue to back Syria even after Assad murdered nearly 1,500 civilians with a nerve gas bombardment? Really? These countries would have supported this magical coalition in 2001 against a country that we now know was at least 12 years from having a nuclear weapon?
The notion that we were misguided in attacking Iraq despite the 19 attackers having no linkage to Iraq is simply pointless in the author's context of defending action against Iran instead. I won't be distracted by re-arguing the Iraq War here. So let's accept his statement for the point of argument.
How many of those 9/11 attackers were Iranian, pray tell? By the author's logic, we should have acted against Saudi Arabia. Or maybe Yemen. In what alternate world would the international community have rallied around us to confront a non-Arab, Shia-led Iran when Sunni Arab--mostly Saudi--terrorists attacked us on 9/11?
Anyone? Bueller?
This is what led me to start this blog back in July 2002. Completely idiotic opinion and news pieces in the New York Times that defy reality and that should be laughed out of the editor's office when submitted.
Let's be clear.
If President Obama signs a deeply flawed agreement that let's Iran go nuclear, it will be his fault. Of course, President Bush (43) will share some responsibility, but don't forget that he wanted to stop Iran, and that our left railed against any direct effort. If Bush had tried to mobilize the world to strike Iran, Bush would have been impeached and removed from office by Congress.
If President Obama refuses to sign a flawed agreement, continues to pressure Iran, and Iran goes nuclear anyway, it will still be mostly President Obama's fault. President Bush (43) will bear a larger portion of the supporting blame, but President Obama will be the president who refused to use military force when Iran's nuclear capability was "imminent"--that magical state that has long been described (well, it was from about 2004 to very early in 2009, anyway) by Democrats as the only acceptable time to strike a WMD-seeking tyranny. Face it, when you are sitting at the big desk when the shinola hits the fan, it's your responsibility.
Or did I miss the widespread media condemnation of President Clinton for failing to stop Osama bin Laden during his time in office rather than questioning Bush for failing to "connect the dots" and prevent the 9/11 attacks?
I've always preferred regime change in Iran to striking Iran (in a weeks-long campaign, I should be clear--not some "unbelievably small" strike completed overnight). But my guiding principle is that Iran must not have nuclear weapons. I'd rather change the regime than attack, but I'd rather attack even if it only buys years of time rather than permanently (what does that mean, anyway?) stops Iran's programs.
And I don't assume we can't do serious damage to Iran's programs. After all, President Clinton's limited Desert Fox strikes on Saddam's WMD facilities in 1998 apparently did far more damage than we thought. We figured we delayed him a year but in many areas it seems to have halted progress completely.
But President Obama stiff-armed Iran's Green Revolution in 2009 with one hand while he reached the other open hand out in a futile gesture to Iran's bloody and completely nutball leadership. So we lost that possibly best chance to go that regime change route.
Sanctions can buy time and weaken Iran, but I have little hope that anything other than a blockade of Iran could break Iran enough to get them to accept the humiliation of an enforcable agreement to end and dismantle their nuclear weapons programs and dual-use civilian programs.
Notions that we missed a golden chance in 2001 to halt Iran are just nonsense.
