Residual Forces

We all know Al Franken has waffled a bit on his Iraq stance, ok, he did a 180. He was for it, before he was against it. He’s flipped to the progressive side of the line now that he’s running for the US Senate.

Well on November 10th, former Senator and 9-11 Commission member Bob Kerrey will be stumping for him in the Twin Cities. What is rather interesting is some of Kerrey’s discoveries during his time on the Commission.

CAIRO, Egypt - A former Democratic senator and 9/11 commissioner says a recently declassified Iraqi account of a 1995 meeting between Osama bin Laden and a senior Iraqi envoy presents a “significant set of facts,” and shows a more detailed collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

In an interview yesterday, the current president of the New School University, Bob Kerrey, was careful to say that new documents translated last night by ABC News did not prove Saddam Hussein played a role in any way in plotting the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Nonetheless, the former senator from Nebraska said that the new document shows that “Saddam was a significant enemy of the United States.” Mr. Kerrey said he believed America’s understanding of the deposed tyrant’s relationship with Al Qaeda would become much deeper as more captured Iraqi documents and audiotapes are disclosed…

“This is a very significant set of facts,” former 9/11 commissioner, Mr. Kerry said yesterday. “I personally and strongly believe you don’t have to prove that Iraq was collaborating against Osama bin Laden on the September 11 attacks to prove he was an enemy and that he would collaborate with people who would do our country harm. This presents facts should not be used to tie Saddam to attacks on September 11. It does tie him into a circle that meant to damage the United States.”

It is the liberal meme now that Saddam was no threat to the US, and that this was an unnecessary war, but one of their own did shed light on the ties to terror Saddam and Iraq had. And as we have found out following the fall of Saddam’s regime, terror networks are truly a world wide global enemy that is adapting to our every move.

The enemy in Iraq has had many faces. The mission has evolved as the threats changed, but I do not believe that one can honestly overlook the facts presented by Democrat Bob Kerrey on Saddam’s ties to terror organizations.

Democrats want a premature end to the war in Iraq, and Franken is trying to win their support, so he does now too. It seems some what odd that he would have a man come to campaign for him that helped defend the reasons for going to war with Saddam in Iraq.

If you think Kerrey has changed his mind, just like Franken on Iraq in the years since his time on the 9-11 Commission, think again.

Let me restate the case for this Iraq war from the U.S. point of view. The U.S. led an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein because Iraq was rightly seen as a threat following Sept. 11, 2001. For two decades we had suffered attacks by radical Islamic groups but were lulled into a false sense of complacency because all previous attacks were “over there.” It was our nation and our people who had been identified by Osama bin Laden as the “head of the snake.” But suddenly Middle Eastern radicals had demonstrated extraordinary capacity to reach our shores.

As for Saddam, he had refused to comply with numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions outlining specific requirements related to disclosure of his weapons programs. He could have complied with the Security Council resolutions with the greatest of ease. He chose not to because he was stealing and extorting billions of dollars from the U.N. Oil for Food program.

No matter how incompetent the Bush administration and no matter how poorly they chose their words to describe themselves and their political opponents, Iraq was a larger national security risk after Sept. 11 than it was before. And no matter how much we might want to turn the clock back and either avoid the invasion itself or the blunders that followed, we cannot. The war to overthrow Saddam Hussein is over. What remains is a war to overthrow the government of Iraq.

Some who have been critical of this effort from the beginning have consistently based their opposition on their preference for a dictator we can control or contain at a much lower cost. From the start they said the price tag for creating an environment where democracy could take root in Iraq would be high. Those critics can go to sleep at night knowing they were right.

The critics who bother me the most are those who ordinarily would not be on the side of supporting dictatorships, who are arguing today that only military intervention can prevent the genocide of Darfur, or who argued yesterday for military intervention in Bosnia, Somalia and Rwanda to ease the sectarian violence that was tearing those places apart.

Suppose we had not invaded Iraq and Hussein had been overthrown by Shiite and Kurdish insurgents. Suppose al Qaeda then undermined their new democracy and inflamed sectarian tensions to the same level of violence we are seeing today. Wouldn’t you expect the same people who are urging a unilateral and immediate withdrawal to be urging military intervention to end this carnage? I would.

That’s from an Op Ed in May 2007.

Democrats like Franken want to have it both ways as Kerrey points out. They want to stake out populist positions, and remain the consummate critics of policies, but rarely have the stomach for following through. Kerrey, despite being a partisan Democrat, does make very valid points, and has the courage to stand up to the fringe leftwing power brokers of the Democratic party.

The fact is Saddam and Iraq were a threat. Things didn’t go as planned, and the you-know-what hit the fan, numerous times since the war began. Saddam is gone, and a new enemy has emerged. It is the one Saddam was linked to, terrorists. Leaving Iraq, as Franken and Democrats demand, is not going to lessen the threat to America that terror poses.

War sucks, violence is an unfortunate human condition, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid it at all costs, especially for political motives. The defense of this nation and liberty around the globe is far too serious to leave to men who made their millions making fun of serious people and issues.

Hypocrisy? Or satire? Who cares. Franken is unfit for any public office.