The real reason for war
: To repeat: The real reason for war was never WMD but was the moral imperative to rid Iraq of a murderous tyrant and the mistake Bush and Blair made was playing to the U.N. and the left by pushing WMD when they should have pushed their moral hand and justified the war based on morality and humanism.
Tom Friedman tomorrow says the best speech made about the war was made to a hallway by Tony Blair, as recounted in Peter Stothard’s book, “30 Days“:
`What amazes me,’ [Mr. Blair says,] `is how many people are happy for Saddam to stay. They ask why we don’t get rid of [the Zimbabwean leader Robert] Mugabe, why not the Burmese lot. Yes, let’s get rid of them all. I don’t because I can’t, but when you can you should.’ ”
Alas, Mr. Blair never really made this case to his public. Why not? Because the British public never would have gone to war for the good reasons alone. Why not? Because the British public had not gone through 9/11 and did not really feel threatened, because it demanded a U.N. legal cover for any war and because it didn’t like or trust George Bush.
Yes, it’s amazing that we had to make Saddam a threat to us. How self-centered of us. How selfish of us. He was clearly a threat to his own people. But to Europe and the antiwar left, Saddam’s people did not matter.
