Revisionist History
Antiwar myths about Iraq, debunked.
BY PETER WEHNER, deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House’s Office of Strategic Initiatives
Iraqis can participate in three historic elections, pass the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and form a unity government despite terrorist attacks and provocations. Yet for some critics of the president, these are minor matters. Like swallows to Capistrano, they keep returning to the same allegations–the president misled the country in order to justify the Iraq war; his administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments; Saddam Hussein turned out to be no threat since he didn’t possess weapons of mass destruction; and helping democracy take root in the Middle East was a postwar rationalization. The problem with these charges is that they are false and can be shown to be so–and yet people continue to believe, and spread, them. Let me examine each in turn:
The president misled Americans to convince them to go to war.
The Bush administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments
Because weapons of mass destruction stockpiles weren’t found, Saddam posed no threat.
Promoting democracy in the Middle East is a postwar rationalization.These, then, are the urban legends we must counter, else falsehoods become conventional wisdom. And what a strange world it is: For many antiwar critics, the president is faulted for the war, and he, not the former dictator of Iraq, inspires rage. The liberator rather than the oppressor provokes hatred. It is as if we have stepped through the political looking glass, into a world turned upside down and inside out.
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DEFEATING TERROR
DESPITE THE POLS, WE’RE WINNING
By Ralph Peters
Plenty remains to be done. We must see our Iraq mission through to the end – unless the Iraqis fail themselves. We must restore integrity and common sense to our foreign policy by ceasing to pretend that the Saudis are our friends and by living up to our rhetoric about support for democracy. And we need to take a very hard line on China’s currency manipulation and cheating on trade.
Still, any fair-minded review of the last several years of American engagement abroad would conclude that, despite painful mistakes, we’ve changed the world for the better. The results have been imperfect, as such results always will be. But the bewildering sense of gloom and doom fostered my many in the media is as unjustified as it is corrosive.
Our global report card right now? A for effort. B for results. C for consistency. D for media integrity. And F for domestic political responsibility.
Read the whole article here.
UPDATE: Go visit Dean Esmay for the latest Carnival of the Liberated