Just the facts

There is a colossal effort afoot to discredit any fact that might vindicate regime change in Baghdad. Many fallacious and fatuous statements have followed in the wake of this racket to the effect that jihadists wouldn't be in Iraq were it not for America's presence. Such unscrupulous and credulous critics must be as dumb as they sound, regurgitating the prevailing wisdom that Saddam Hussein was hardly even an enemy of America's, and if he was, at least he provided "stability." But facts are stubborn things. I hope and trust that they will put this low groupthink to rest once and for all. \nMany have argued (with comical understatement) that the "connection" described in the pages of the 9-11 commission report between al-Qaida and Iraq was tenuous at best. They are especially weak on this point, unable to imagine a 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, in which Stalin and Hitler put aside ideology to confront a common enemy. Nor do they address how it could be that a "secular" regime formed the "Fedayeen Saddam," ("Saddam's Men of Sacrifice") which launched "martyrdom" operations against Western targets and now do so against Iraq's fledgling democracy. \nOthers fling the cheap charge that the absence of weapon stockpiles conclusively proves that President Bush manufactured pre-war intelligence. (First things first: Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, chief of what Baathist propaganda labeled "our nuclear mujahideen," buried centrifuge components for uranium enrichment in his garden on the orders of Qusai Hussein.) \nBut no one in the "liar, liar, pants on fire" crowd wants to follow their juvenile argument to its logical end. \nFollow me closely here. If it is true that the president possessed knowledge that Saddam had no active arsenal but only an elaborate concealment program (which has been confirmed by the Duelfer Report), why would he have made the arsenal part of the case, knowing that it didn't exist? The question answers itself, of course. \nAnother attribute of second-rate thinkers is to protest civilian death. I agree, with Abraham Lincoln, that this is part of the "terrible arithmetic of war." I save my moral outrage, however, for those who target them -- the truly indiscriminate bombers who curiously escape unscathed by "conscientious objectors." Only a moral cretin (which must include those who always deemed as tolerable Saddam's terrifying rule) would fail to see that the high human cost should intensify our commitment rather than weaken it. \nWhat all of these critics have in common is that they are in effect laying a wager against victory in Iraq. We are, so to speak, back where we started. If war critics have convinced themselves that America warrants more criticism than its enemies in Iraq, they are delusional. If they are just disgruntled that the confrontation with jihadism and dictatorship began in the first place, they are dogmatic in the face of unpleasant facts. They make a sad spectacle of themselves in either case.\nAt least now that the price tag in Iraq has topped a quarter of a trillion dollars, few are still blathering about "blood for oil." It is only a matter of time before the other banal and bland arguments against regime change fall just as effortlessly.