RETHINKING IRAQ, YET AGAIN

July 19, 2007

Michael Smerconish

TV PUNDITS, radio commentators, newspaper columnists and Internet bloggers all proclaim their views on what to do in Iraq. On different days, I play each of those roles. But the only thing I know for sure is what I don't know.

It's not from lack of interest or effort. No amount of reading and thinking has given me a clear answer as what we should do, and just when I think I'm getting close, things change.

I was ambivalent about whether we should invade. Colin Powell's presentation to the Security Council was my tipping point. I hold the man in high regard, and when he said that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, I believed our pre-emption was warranted. Ex-Sen. Bob Kerrey, Democrat, Vietnam vet, Medal of Honor winner and member of the 9/11 Commission, recently wrote a terrific piece in the Wall Street Journal reminding us of our mindset in those days.

"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," Kerrey wrote.

Based on that "demonstration," there seemed to be a consensus in this country after 9/11, a cohesion that hasn't existed since - namely, that if confronted in the future by a bin Laden-like threat, the United States would take action.

Never again would we tolerate the missed opportunities to thwart an attack that in retrospect were present in the summer of 2001. Remember our dismay over the revelation of the President's Daily Briefing of Aug. 6, 2001: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.?" Never again, we agreed.

And so, when intelligence experts, buttressed by the credibility of men like Colin Powell, offered the view that Saddam was a bin Laden in the making, we gave the administration our support. Now, of course, we know the predicate for war was false.

Some believe the president lied. I don't. That's just not the core of the man. Nor do I believe Colin Powell to be capable of knowingly misleading the United Nations. Do I think the president had it in for Hussein? Sure. Do I think the neo-cons skewed the data. Probably. Was a false assertion made about a causal connection between Iraq and 9/11? Sadly, yes.

Two years ago, I joined the ranks of those - then almost entirely Democrats - believing we needed a timetable to get out. Hussein was gone, but there were no WMDs. And the war was already civil in nature.

But now, just as the country has shifted to where I stood, I'm having second thoughts.

Now, I'm thinking, it's looking likely that the administration's one-time canard about fighting them "over there" so that we don't have to fight them "over here" may turn out to be correct. Not by design, but more like the broken clock that tells the right time twice a day.

We've unintentionally created a magnet for those who wish to wreak havoc on Americans, orchestrating a sandbox fight with the school bully so far from home that it takes 16 hours to fly there.

Last Sunday, the L.A. Times reported that the greatest number of would-be suicide bombers are traveling to Iraq from Saudi Arabia, the one-time home of 15 of the 19 hijackers. Forty-five percent of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia, it was reported. A full 50 percent of all Saudi fighters in Iraq are believed to come as suicide bombers.

Among the many things I don't know: Where would those individuals be if we were not in Iraq? An estimated 60-80 are crossing into Iraq each month. Said differently, how far would they be willing to travel to inflict harm on the United States?

As Kerrey wrote: "The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the U.S. in the 1990s and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically 'yes.' "

There is a view I respect that says our presence in the "Arabian Peninsula" is what motivates these fundamentalists. They don't hate us because we shop at the Gap. Or hang out at Starbucks. It's not our strip clubs. Michael Scheuer, former head of the bin Laden unit at the CIA, makes the case that they are motivated by U.S. foreign policy. That is what bin Laden himself has written time and again.

This theory suggests base closures as a means of dissipating hostility toward America in the Arab world. (But how could we do that and stay supportive of Israel?) This too would seem to argue for leaving Iraq now.

But maybe things have already gone too far. Maybe no matter what our foreign policy, we've created a generation of would-be martyrs who will not be deterred by our departure. Many of them are now in Iraq. And if we don't stay and eliminate them there, they will follow us home.

The sand on which I stand is still shifting. *

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5:30-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.mastalk.com