The U.S. attack on Iraq will begin in a matter of weeks, if not days, and it is time to remember how we got here, and why.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the central threat to American security, and indeed to world peace, has been the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction – notably (but not exclusively) nuclear weapons. If relatively small but hostile nations are allowed to develop or otherwise obtain these weapons, the world, and especially the United States, will be forced to forever live under the threat of wholly unacceptable damage at the hands of such nations. The fact that we are "the world's only superpower" will do us no good at all. If a nuclear bomb is smuggled into one of our cities and detonated, killing hundreds of thousands, we may not even be able to find out which nation was behind the attack.
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When George W. Bush became president, three rogue states – Iraq, North Korea and Iran – were well on their way to acquiring such weapons. Bush recognized this, but mobilizing American opinion to confront the danger, by force if necessary, seemed an insuperable task.
The Sept. 11 attacks solved that problem. The overwhelming impulse of the American people was to retaliate – or, putting it colloquially, to "kick some butt." Bush responded fast and furiously, sending American forces halfway around the world to oust the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and compel Osama bin Laden to flee for his life.
Then Bush shifted the focus of attention to Iraq, identifying it as a friend and sponsor of terrorists. Noting its efforts to develop nuclear weapons, and its known possession of chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, he declared that Iraq must obey the repeated orders of the United Nations to disarm, or face forcible disarmament at the hands of the United States. He clearly expected that the example of Iraq would not be lost on other nations tempted to follow a similar path.
The danger to the United States from Iraq is technically not "imminent." But if Bush waits until it is, the danger will have multiplied manyfold. As he said last week, the threat to America's security is "grave and gathering," and he decided to act while it can still be forestalled. The American people, still smarting from the lessons of Sept. 11, have overwhelmingly backed him.
The build-up of U.S. forces in the Middle East would clearly take time, so Bush agreed to spend that time seeking the support of the United Nations. At first, this seemed to go well, producing a resolution (1441) supported by all 15 members of the Security Council, ordering Saddam Hussein to disarm fully and immediately. Soon, however, various nations that do not share America's sense of urgency (Sept. 11, after all, didn't happen to them), and who have political reasons for clipping the wings of the American superpower anyway, seized the opportunity to entangle the whole issue in diplomatic delays that threaten to stretch out the process indefinitely. As the weeks went by, hostility toward the United States – always endemic on the left – swept around the globe.
Here at home, support for Bush's position has held quite firm, though pollsters report that it is often conditioned on our having allies, or a U.N. endorsement. That is natural enough. What you have not seen, however, and will not see (because our liberal media wouldn't like the result), is the public response to this question: "Should France (or Russia, or Germany or the United Nations as a whole) be given a veto over America's decisions concerning its own security?"
That is what is at issue here. Iraq must be disarmed before – not when, or after, but before – it is able to inflict unacceptable damage on the United States. And then the same result must be achieved, through diplomacy or whatever else it takes, in the case of other like-minded nations. If some American president, flinching at that prospect, would rather condemn this country to living in a world containing multiple hostile sources of nuclear, chemical and biological terror, so be it. But his name isn't George W. Bush.