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Lots of people are playing the “what if?” game.
“What if we attack Iraq?” they ask. “Won’t that result in more terrorist attacks on the U.S.? Are we really prepared for them?”
The “what if?” game went into overdrive last week when FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley copied the New York Times on her latest advice to FBI Director Robert Mueller. She warns that her agency is still not equipped to handle the increased terrorist threat everyone expects with the advent of a war on Iraq.
She seemed to be suggesting that President Bush should be warned to call off the war on Iraq because we might be attacked here in the U.S.
Now, I have much respect for agent Rowley. I agree with her that the FBI has not been up to the job of protecting Americans at home. I go even further. I think the FBI has been involved in a systematic cover-up of terrorism in the U.S. for a decade leading up to Sept. 11.
Nevertheless, I am not prepared to nominate Rowley for secretary of defense.
While she’s right about the FBI, she’s dead wrong on the effects of a campaign on Iraq. There’s no question that, for the short term, the terrorist threat will increase with an invasion of Iraq. But, in the long term, we will be far better off for having destroyed the terrorist infrastructure in Iraq.
But let me play the “what if?” game. What if we don’t attack Iraq now after this long buildup in the Persian Gulf? What if we blink because we’re scared of the increased threat of terrorism? What if we back down now after all the threats and demands have been ignored by Saddam Hussein? What would be the effect of such a capitulation?
I’ll tell you what it would be – a disaster.
If such a decision is made now, Saddam Hussein and his terrorist allies will be emboldened. They will be more certain than ever that the U.S. is weak and vulnerable. And the terrorist attacks on the U.S. will increase dramatically in frequency and intensity.
Remember that Sept. 11 was not the first terrorist attack on the U.S., it is simply the most recent dramatic attack. In 1993, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the man we just arrested in Pakistan for his role in planning the Sept. 11 attacks, helped coordinate the first big terror attack on America – the World Trade Center bombing.
There was no response to that attack – even though Iraq’s fingerprints were all over it. A dozen Americans died and more than 1,000 were injured. When the U.S. failed to attack Iraq or anyone else in response, did the terrorism go away? Absolutely not. It got more dramatic. Mohammed deliberately began planning something more spectacular – an attack that would actually bring down the World Trade Center.
Appeasement didn’t work. Looking the other way didn’t work. Turning the other cheek didn’t work. We got hit again and harder.
I would also like you to note that in the last two weeks, Saddam Hussein offered to turn over to the United States a top suspect in the first World Trade Center bombing – a perpetrator he has been protecting and hiding for the last 10 years. He did this, of course, in an effort to avoid the imminent invasion and the overthrow of his government. He didn’t do it before. He did it only in response to force.
In other words, he virtually admitted his complicity in the attack on the World Trade Center – an attack planned by Mohammed, who also planned Sept. 11. Are you beginning to connect the dots with me?
Some people still suggest there is no evidence linking Hussein with al-Qaida. These people have their heads in the sand – or somewhere darker perhaps.
Saddam Hussein’s support of al-Qaida for more than a decade is well-chronicled by terrorist expert Yossef Bodansky in his book “Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America,” published a year before Sept. 11. Bodansky names names, dates, times, places. He proves unequivocally this support was ongoing leading up to Sept. 11.
We also know Hussein is the only leader in the world to have provided terrorists with the fuselage of a Boeing 707 airliner so they could practice hijackings.
By the way, for those who fear an increase in terrorism coinciding with an attack on Iraq: Aren’t you conceding that Iraq is behind terrorism by expressing such concerns? And, if you are so sure he doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction in his arsenal, why are you so afraid of the terror attacks to come?
