Vice President Cheney recently gave a speech in which he described the administration’s multi-faceted approach to fighting terror. According to Mr. Cheney, anti-terror strategies include efforts to:
1) protect the homeland;2) dismantle financial networks of the terrorists;
3) go after terrorists wherever they are located;
4) work with intelligence agencies from around the world;
5) enhance our intelligence capabilities;
6) halt proliferation of WMD and WMD technologies;
7) apply the Bush doctrine (any person or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent, and will be held to account).
In Iraq, we took another essential step in the war on terror. Before using force, we tried every possible option to address the threat from Saddam Hussein. Despite 12 years of diplomacy, more than a dozen U.N. Security Council resolutions, hundreds of U.N. weapons inspectors, thousands of flights to enforce the no-fly zones, and even strikes against military targets in Iraq--Saddam Hussein refused to comply with the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire. All of these measures failed. In October of 2002, the United States Congress voted overwhelmingly to authorize the use of force in Iraq. The next month, the U.N. Security Council passed a unanimous resolution finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations, and vowing serious consequences in the event Saddam Hussein did not fully and immediately comply. When Saddam failed even then to comply, President Bush gave an ultimatum to the dictator--to leave Iraq or be forcibly removed from power.That ultimatum came one year ago today--twelve months in which Saddam went from palace, to bunker, to spider hole, to jail. A year ago, he was the all-powerful dictator of Iraq, controlling the lives and the future of almost 25 million people. Today, the people of Iraq know that the dictator and his sons will never torment them again. And we can be certain that they will never again threaten Iraq's neighbors or the United States of America.
There is a disconnect between what Cheney says are the strategies for winning the war on terror and his description of the war in Iraq. Let’s look at each of the strategies and try to determine whether or not the Iraq war has moved the ball down the field in the war on terror.
It seems clear that the war in Iraq has done nothing to help protect the US homeland. Not only did Iraq pose no threat to our shores but the $150+ billion spent in Iraq could have been used to upgrade our homeland defense systems.
The war in Iraq has had only a peripheral effect on dismantling the financial networks of the terrorists. It is true that Saddam paid money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers but there is no evidence that Iraq was providing significant funding to Al Qaeda or other terrorists networks. Saudi Arabia and Iran have been far more generous in funding international terrorism than Iraq.
With regard to going after terrorists wherever they may be, the war in Iraq has been an abject failure. First, resources were diverted from the hunt for Al Qaeda in order to pursue the Iraq war. Secondly, when the administration had the option to go after one particularly bad terrorist group at the expense of possibly undercutting its rationale for the war, it chose to support the war over the destruction of a terrorist group. Third, having cried wolf about terrorists in Iraq, our credibility is damaged when we seek to locate and destroy other terrorists assets.
It is difficult to see how the war in Iraq has helped us work with intelligence gathering groups from other countries given the way the run up to the war was handled.
The fifth strategy is to upgrade our intelligence capabilities. We may have done so but the Iraq war did not help. Indeed, regardless of the quality of the intelligence we now gather, the administration’s deceit in using intelligence to promote the war in Iraq has harmed the credibility of our intelligence.
The sixth strategy is to contain the proliferation of WMD and WMD technologies. The war in Iraq may have helped push Libya to a decision to renounce WMD and if so, that is a good thing. The war does not seem to have prevented WMD development programs in North Korea or Iran. In addition, the credibility of our intelligence agencies has been seriously eroded as a result of the WMD claims in the run up to the Iraq war. The next time we call for action against a country and cite its WMD programs as the reason, the response may be less than overwhelming.
The seventh strategy is implementation of the Bush doctrine of holding those who harbor or aide terrorists accountable. Afghanistan is a good example of the Bush Doctrine at work and it won near unanimous support. The Iraq war is not a good example as Iraq had few significant ties to Al Qaeda or other groups of global terror.
The war in Iraq may end up having a number of benefits (permanent links having trouble) including those mentioned by Cheney. Prosecution of the war on terror just is not one of them.