By Jim Gendron
Buffalo, NY – Lately, there's been a lot of talk about the failure so far of the U.S. to locate the Weapons of Mass Destruction that served as part of the rationale for the mission to liberate Iraq.
Critics of the Administration have apparently concluded that after only nine weeks of searching a country the size of California for weapons the size of beer cans, the verdict is in. The Administration lied!
America today has plenty of adversaries. We've got Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Iran, Syria, North Korea. It's a rude awakening. It's like we're the king of the hill, and everybody want to knock us off.
But I think it's the wrong thing to do right now to pander for partisan political purposes to those who always "blame America first." Instead, I think this is a really good time to give our country and our president the benefit of the doubt. If things don't go too well for us in the war on terror, let's just say that we shouldn't be counting on the French to help us fight.
This WMD controversy looks to me much more like partisan politics than fair-minded criticism.
First of all, the President never said that weapons of mass destruction were the only reason for the war. In his speech to the U.N. on September 12, 2002, and again in his address of March 17, 2003, he also spoke of Saddam's support of terrorists, oppression of the Kurds and Shiites, failure to comply with sixteen U.N. resolutions, failure to make war reparations and failure to release and account for POWs. Face it, there were hundreds of legitimate reasons to take Saddam out. Now that we've done it, what purpose does it serve to second guess? Do you think we are going to put Saddam back in?
Second, what is not in doubt is that Saddam once had vast amounts of illegal weapons. We know that he used them against his own people. We know that the U.N. mandated that Saddam get rid of those weapons as a condition of his surrender in the first Gulf War, and verify that he had done so. We know that he never did that.
This Administration patiently, responsibly made its case against Iraq over a period of more than a year. The President made speeches, went to Congress, went to the U.N. and then went to the American people by campaigning for candidates who supported him and winning.
It's been nine weeks, people. Saddam might have seen us coming. He had 15 months to sell, remove, destroy or simply hide the weapons somewhere very difficult to find in his very big country.
For those Monday morning quarterbacks now second-guessing, let me ask you this.
If it is your sworn duty to look out for the national security of our country, is it wiser to assume that Saddam has gotten rid of his WMD, even though he has offered no proof? And even though offering that proof to the U.N. would have resulted in the lifting of sanctions against his country?
Is it wiser to assume that Saddam was not collaborating with terrorists, even though they clearly share an anti-U.S., anti-Israel agenda?
Is it wiser to sit back and get attacked again because we cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that we face an imminent threat?
Do you seriously think that America or Iraq would be better off if Saddam were still in power?
Put it to bed, already. We didn't attack Iraq for the oil. Our country is not being run by a bunch of diabolical megalomaniacs bent on global empire.
We've been attacked. We're in a fight for our survival. Let's continue to take the fight to our enemies, not among ourselves.
Listener-Commentator Jim Gendron lives with his family in North Buffalo.