On September 23, 2002, Al Gore gave a brilliant speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in which he talked about Iraq. I've reposted most of it while commenting briefly on pertinent parts since the speech speaks for itself. Gore is so brilliant that he's apparently one-upped NostraDamus. To be proven so right five years later well, simply says that Al Gore should be President. Keep in mind that at the time, very few people had this courage.
For the full speech click here http://www.commonwealthclub.org/... but let's look at what Gore said on Iraq.
Gore begins:
I want to talk about the relationship between America's war against terrorism and America's proposed war against Iraq. Like most Americans I've been wrestling with the question of what our country needs to do to defend itself from the kind of focused, intense and evil attack that we suffered a year ago, September 11. We ought to assume that the forces responsible for that attack are even now attempting to plan another attack against us.
Right off the bat Gore annunciates the problem. Gore continues:
I'm speaking today in an effort to recommend a specific course of action for our country, which I sincerely believe would be better for our country than the policy that is now being pursued by President Bush. Specifically, I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.
Boy do I love this man! (The post 2000 Gore) In a time where Bush and Cheney are scaring Americans, Gore correctly stands up to the problem by pointing out that the war in Iraq weakens us and hurts our ability to fight the real terrorists. Gore says it first, even when the entire news media was cheerleading Bush.
The Course of Action: The War on Terrorism, First
To begin with - to put first things first - I believe we should focus our efforts first and foremost against those who attacked us on September 11th and who have thus far gotten away with it. The vast majority of those who sponsored, planned and implemented the cold-blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are still at large, still neither located nor apprehended, much less punished and neutralized. I do not believe that we should allow ourselves to be distracted from this urgent task simply because it is proving to be more difficult and lengthy than was predicted. Great nations persevere and then prevail. They do not jump from one unfinished task to another. We should remain focused on the war against terrorism.
Wow and who says Democrats don't have a plan? Here's a plan, laid out simply. Go kill Osama Bin Laden. Much different from the Bush/Limbaugh/Hannity/Lieberman plan of cut and run on Osama Bin Laden.
I believe that we are perfectly capable of staying the course in our war against Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist network, while simultaneously taking those steps necessary to build an international coalition to join us in taking on Saddam Hussein in a timely fashion. If you're going after Jesse James, you ought to organize the posse first. Especially if you're in the middle of a gunfight with somebody who's out after you.
Bingo! Gore recognizes that you can remove Saddam Hussein from power but do it smartly, with allies, and get the terrorists. Boy this man should be President.
I don't think we should allow anything to diminish our focus on the necessity for avenging the 3,000 Americans who were murdered and dismantling the network of terrorists that we know were responsible for it. The fact that we don't know where they are should not cause us to focus instead on some other enemy whose location may be easier to identify. We have other enemies, but we should focus first and foremost as our top priority on winning the war against terrorism.
Again Gore annunciates a plan. Get the terrorists. Apparently the GOP never got this memo.
Nevertheless, President Bush is telling us that America's most urgent requirement of the moment - right now - is not to redouble our efforts against Al Qaeda, not to stabilize the nation of Afghanistan after driving its host government from power, even as Al Qaeda members slip back across the border to set up in Afghanistan again; rather, he is telling us that our most urgent task right now is to shift our focus and concentrate on immediately launching a new war against Saddam Hussein. And the president is proclaiming a new, uniquely American right to preemptively attack whomsoever he may deem represents a potential future threat.
This is leadership. Gore is warning us of empire tendencies while making the simple point that you need to get Bin Laden. Boy this man should be President.
Moreover, President Bush is demanding in this high political season that Congress speedily affirm that he has the necessary authority to proceed immediately against Iraq and, for that matter, under the language of his resolution, against any other nation in the region, regardless of subsequent developments or emerging circumstances. Now, the timing of this sudden burst of urgency to immediately take up this new cause as America's new top priority, displacing our former top priority, the war against Osama Bin Laden, was explained innocently by the White House chief of staff in his now well-known statement that "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."
This is brilliant. Gore recognizes the dangers of the wording of the resolution (any other nation in the region) and the idiocy of putting a cart before a horse. Gore further recognizes that the WH is full of crap and that it is all marketing. But our media remained silent.
Nevertheless, all Americans should acknowledge that Iraq does indeed pose a serious threat to the stability of the Persian Gulf region, and we should be about the business of organizing an international coalition to eliminate his access to weapons of mass destruction. Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power. Now, let's be clear, there's no international law that can prevent the United States from taking action to protect our vital interests when it is manifestly clear that there is a choice to be made between law and our survival. Indeed, international law itself recognizes that such choices stay within the purview of all nations. I believe, however, that such a choice is not presented in the case of Iraq. Indeed, should we decide to proceed, our action can be justified within the framework of international law rather than requiring us to go outside the framework of international law. In fact, even though a new United Nations resolution might be helpful in the effort to forge an international consensus, I think it's abundantly clear that the existing U.N. resolutions passed 11 years ago are completely sufficient from a legal standpoint so long as it is clear that Saddam Hussein is in breach of the agreements made at the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War.
Well Gore wasn't entirely correct about WMDs, Gore shows us exactly how to solve the problem. If Saddam had WMDs, he offers a way to remove them without invading Iraq. Boy this man should be President.
Now one of the central points I want to make here today is that we have an obligation to look at the relationship between our war against terrorism and this proposed war against Iraq. We have a goal of regime change in Iraq, we have had for a number of years. We also have a clear goal of victory in the war against terror. In the case of Iraq, it would be difficult to go it alone, but it's theoretically possible to achieve our goals in Iraq unilaterally. Nevertheless, by contrast, the war against terrorism manifestly requires a multilateral approach. It is impossible to succeed against terrorism unless we have secured the continuing, sustained cooperation of many nations. And here's one of my central points; our ability to secure that kind of multilateral cooperation in the war against terrorism can be severely damaged in the way we go about undertaking unilateral action against Iraq. If the administration has reason to believe otherwise, it ought to share those reasons with the Congress, since it is asking Congress to endorse action that might well impair a much more urgent task - that is, continuing to disrupt and destroy the international terror network.
Brilliant! Gore makes it clear. YOu invade Iraq, you undermine the war against terrorism by alienating your allies. How right he was!
Back in 1991, I was one of a handful of Democrats in the United States Senate to vote in favor of the resolution endorsing the Persian Gulf War. And I felt betrayed by the first Bush administration's hasty departure from the battlefield, even as Saddam began to renew his persecution of the Kurds in the North and the Shiites in the south - groups that we had after all encouraged to rise up against Saddam. But look at the differences between the resolution that was voted on in 1991 and the one this administration is proposing that the Congress vote on in 2002. The circumstances are really completely different. To review a few of them briefly: in 1991, Iraq had crossed an international border, invaded a neighboring sovereign nation and annexed its territory. Now by contrast in 2002, there has been no such invasion. We are proposing to cross an international border and, however justified it may be, we have to recognize that the difference in the circumstances now compared to what existed in 1991 has profound implications for the way the rest of the world views what we are doing. And that in turn will have implications for our ability to succeed in our war against terrorism.
Here Gore lays out the difference between 1991 and 2002. Times changed. What Saddam was in 1991 he was NOT in 2002.
What makes Saddam dangerous is his effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction. What makes terrorists so much more dangerous than they have ever been is the prospect that they may get access to weapons of mass destruction. There isn't just one country that is attempting to get access, nor is there just one terrorist group. We have to recognize that this is a whole new era and the advances in the technology of destruction require us to think anew.
Again, Gore gets it.
Gore then cites the coalition of 1991 which had the support of Arab nations, most of Europe, and most of Asia. But Bush did have his poodle (Blair) and his puppy (Howard).
Gore then tells Congress what to do.
I believe this proposed foreshortening of deliberation in the Congress robs the country of the time it needs for careful analysis of exactly what may lie before us. Such consideration is all the more important because the administration has failed thus far to lay out an assessment of how it thinks the course of a war will run - even while it has given free run to persons both within and close to the administration to suggest at every opportunity that this will be a pretty easy matter. And it may well be, but the administration has not said much of anything to clarify its idea of what would follow regime change or the degree of engagement that it is prepared to accept for the United States in Iraq in the months and years after a regime change has taken place.
I wish the Democrats in the Senate filibustered this and listened to Gore. Gore showed leadership when many of our elected leaders failed us.
I believe that this is unfortunate, because in the immediate aftermath of September 11, more than a year ago, we had an enormous reservoir of goodwill and sympathy and shared resolve all over the world. That has been squandered in a year's time and replaced with great anxiety all around the world, not primarily about what the terrorist networks are going to do, but about what we're going to do. My point is not that they are right to feel that way, but that they do feel that way. And that has consequences for us. Squandering all that goodwill and replacing it with anxiety in a year's time is similar to what was done by turning a hundred-billion-dollar surplus into a two-hundred-billion-dollar deficit in a year's time.
Again Gore gets it. Gore recognizes that if Bush invades Iraq, we go from the most beloved nation in the world to the most hated. Try winning a fight on the playground with no allies to back you up.
Now we have seen the assertion of a brand new doctrine called "preemption," based on the idea that in the era of proliferating weapons of mass destruction, and against the background of a sophisticated terrorist threat, the United States cannot wait for proof of a fully established mortal threat, but should rather act at any point to cut that short. The problem with preemption is that in the first instance it is not needed in order to give the United States the means to act in our own defense, either against terrorism in general or against Iraq in particular. But that is a relatively minor issue compared to the longer-term consequences that I think can be foreseen for this doctrine. To begin with, the doctrine is presented in open-ended terms, which means that if Iraq is the first point of application, it is not necessarily the last. In fact, the very logic of the concept suggests a string of military engagements against a succession of sovereign states: Syria, Libya, North Korea, Iran - none of them very popular in the United States, of course - but the implication is that wherever the combination exists of an interest in weapons of mass destruction together with an ongoing role as host to or participant in terrorist operations, the doctrine will apply. It also means that if the Congress approves the Iraq resolution just proposed by the administration, it would be simultaneously creating the precedent for preemptive action anywhere, anytime this or any future president as a single individual, albeit head of state, decides that it is time.
Absolutely brilliant. And Gore recognizes, long before the rest of us, that Bush would use this doctrine to go well beyond Iraq. That's leadership.
Vice President Cheney said after the war against terrorism began, "This war may last for the rest of our lives." I kind of think I know what he meant by that, but the apprehensions in the world that I spoke of earlier are not calmed down any by this doctrine of preemption that they are now asserting. By now the Bush Administration may now be beginning realizing that national and international cohesion are indeed strategic assets. But it is a lesson long delayed and clearly not uniformly and consistently accepted by senior members of the cabinet. From the outset, the administration has operated in a manner calculated to please the portion of its base that occupies the far right, at the expense of solidarity among all of us as Americans and solidarity between our country and our allies.
AGain, Gore gets it. Is there a man more qualified to be President?
On the domestic front, the administration, having delayed for many months before conceding the need to pass Joe Lieberman's bill and create an institution outside the White House to manage homeland defense, has actually been willing to see this legislation held up for the sake of an effort to coerce the Congress into stripping civil service protections from tens of thousands of federal employees. Now which is more important: passing the Homeland Security Act, or satisfying a relatively small yet powerful member of the right-wing coalition that has as its number-one priority dismantling labor unions? If that's the most important priority in that legislation, that explains why they're refusing to let the bipartisan consensus in favor of it go forward.
Again Gore gets it and this is one time I agreed with a bill Joe Lieberman proposed. Wow a 2fer.
Far more damaging is the administration's attack on fundamental constitutional rights that we ought to have and do have as American citizens. The very idea that an American citizen can be imprisoned without recourse to judicial process or remedies, and that this can be done on the sole say-so of the president of the United States or those acting in his name, is beyond the pale and un-American and it ought to be stopped.
Bam! Gore just gets it.
Regarding other countries, the administration's disdain for the views of others is well documented and need not be reviewed here. It is more important to note the consequences of an emerging national strategy that not only celebrates American strengths, but actually appears to glorify the notion of dominance; the word itself has been used in the councils of the administration. If what America represents to the world is leadership in a commonwealth of equals, then our friends are legion. If what we represent to the world is empire, then it is our enemies who will be legion.
Truly brilliant!
At this fateful juncture in our history it is vital that we see clearly who are our enemies, and that we intend deal with them. It is also important, however, that in the process we preserve not only ourselves as individuals, but our nature as a people dedicated to the rule of law.
Wow!
Here's another of the main points I want to make. If we quickly succeed in a war against the weakened and depleted fourth-rate military of Iraq and then quickly abandon that nation, as President Bush has quickly abandoned almost all of Afghanistan after quickly defeating a fifth-rate military power there, then the resulting chaos in the aftermath of a military victory in Iraq could easily pose a far greater danger to the United States than we presently face from Saddam. Here's why I say that; we know that he has stored away secret supplies of biological weapons and chemical weapons throughout his country. As yet, we have no evidence, however, that he has shared any of those weapons with terrorist groups. If the administration has evidence that he has, please present it, because that would change the way we all look at this thing.
Gore continues:
But if Iraq came to resemble Afghanistan, in its current depleted state, with no central authority - well, they have a central authority, but their central authority, because the administration's insistence that the international community not be allowed to assemble a peace keeping force large enough to pacify the countryside, that new government in Afghanistan controls a few precincts in one city and the warlords or drug lords control the whole rest of the countryside. What if in the aftermath of a war against Iraq, we face a situation like that because we washed our hands of it? What would then happen to all of those stored reserves of biological weapons all around the country? What if the Al Qaeda members infiltrated across the borders of Iraq the way they are in Afghanistan? Then the question wouldn't be, Is Saddam Hussein going to share these weapons with the terrorist group? The terrorist groups would have an enhanced ability to just walk in there and get them.
Again, Gore shows foresight and an understanding of foreign policy.
Here we are in the city where the United Nations was established. Even before the U.N. was established, you look back over the last 85 to 100 years, there is lots and lots of evidence about why it's almost as important to win the peace following a war as it is to win the war itself. A couple of examples: The absence of any enlightened nation building after World War I led directly to the conditions which made Germany vulnerable to fascism and the rise of Adolph Hitler and made all of Europe vulnerable to his evil designs. By contrast, when the world's leaders met here in San Francisco after WWII, there was an enlightened vision embodied in the Marshall Plan, the U.N., NATO, and all of the other nation-building efforts after World War II, and that in turn led directly to the conditions that fostered prosperity and American leadership throughout the world.
Again Gore gets it.
Two decades ago, the Soviet Union claimed the right to launch a preemptive war in Afghanistan, we properly encouraged and then supported the resistance movement, which a decade later succeeded in defeating the Soviet army's efforts. Unfortunately, however, when the Russians left, we abandoned the Afghans, and the lack of any coherent nation-building program led directly to the conditions which allowed the Taliban to take control and to bring in Al Qaeda and give them a home and a base for their worldwide terrorist operations. That's where they planned the attack on us a year ago September 11. Incredibly, in spite of that vivid lesson, after defeating the Taliban rather easily, and despite pledges from President Bush that we would never again abandon Afghanistan, we have done precisely that. And now the Taliban and Al Qaeda are quickly moving back in.
This is substantive on many fronts. Gore recognizes the failures of the past and how the Taliban was moving back into Afghanistan because Bush cut and run.
A mere two years later after we abandoned Afghanistan the first time, Saddam Hussein launched his invasion of Kuwait. And our decision following a brilliant military campaign to abandon the effort prematurely to destroy Saddam's military allowed him to remain in power. This needs to be debated and discussed by the Congress. What this tells me is the Congress should require, as part of any resolution that it considers, some explicit guarantees on whether we're proposing to simply abandon the Iraqi people in the aftermath of a military victory there or whether or not we're going to demand as a nation that this doctrine of "wash your hands and walk away" be changed so that we can engage in some nation building again, and build the kind of peace for the future that our people have a right expect.
Again, Gore shows leadership. We should have debated Iraq prior to invading. Instead Bush was handed a blank check.
Specifically, the Congress should establish why the president believes that unilateral action would not severely damage the fight against terrorist networks. The resolution that the president has asked Congress to pass is much too broad in the authority it grants and needs to be narrowed severely. The president should be authorized to take action to deal with Saddam Hussein as being in material breach of the terms of the truce and, therefore, a continuing threat to the security of the region. To this should be added that his continued pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is potentially a threat to the vital interests of the United States. But Congress should also urge the president to make every effort to obtain a fresh demand from the Security Council for prompt, unconditional compliance by Iraq within a definite period of time. If the Council will not provide such language, then other choices remain open. In any event, the president should be urged to take the time to assemble the broadest possible international support for his course of action. Anticipating that the president will probably still move toward unilateral action, the Congress should establish now what the administration's thinking is regarding the aftermath of a U.S. attack for the purpose of regime change. I believe that the congressional resolution should also make explicitly clear that authorities for taking these actions are to be presented as derivatives from existing Security Council resolutions and from international law, not requiring any formal new doctrine of preemption, which remains to be discussed subsequently in view of its great gravity.
Once again Gore offers concrete proposals and solutions. He was right.
One final word on this proposed doctrine of preemption; this goes far beyond the situation in Iraq. It would affect the basic relationship between the United States and the rest of the world community. Article 51 of the United Nations charter approved here recognizes the right of any nation to defend itself, including the right to take preemptive actions in order to deal with imminent threats. President Bush now asserts that we will take preemptive action even if the threat we perceive is not imminent. If other nations assert that same right, then the rule of law will quickly be replaced by the reign of fear. Any nation that perceives circumstances that could eventually lead to an imminent threat would be justified under this approach in taking military action against another nation. In other words, President Bush is presenting our country with a proposition that contains within itself one of the most fateful decisions in our history; a decision to abandon what we have thought was America's mission in the world - a world in which nations are guided by a common ethic codified in the form of international law, if we want to survive.
Gore's genius speaks for itself.
Gore goes on:
The issue before us is whether we now face circumstances so dire and so novel that we must choose one objective over another. It is reasonable to conclude that we face a very serious problem in Iraq. But is a general doctrine of preemption based on a theory that would overturn the international law and the structure that has existed since our victory in WWII? Is that necessary? No. I believe not. Does Saddam Hussein present an imminent threat to the United States? And if he did, would the United States be free to act without international permission? If he presents an imminent threat we would be free to act under generally accepted understandings of Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, which reserves to states the right to act in self-defense. If he does not present an imminent threat, then is it justifiable for the administration to be seeking by every means to precipitate an immediate confrontation, to find a cause for war and to launch an attack? There is a case to be made that further delay only works to Saddam Hussein's advantage, and the clock should be seen to have been running on the issue of compliance for a decade, therefore not needing to be reset again to the starting point. But to the extent that we have any concern about international support, whether for its political or material value or for its necessity in winning the war against terrorism, hurrying the process could be costly. Even those who now agree that Saddam Hussein must go may divide deeply over the wisdom of presenting the United States as impatient for war.
Gore concludes:
I believe that we can effectively defend ourselves abroad and at home without dimming our core principles. Indeed, I believe that our success in defending ourselves depends precisely on not giving up what we stand for. We should have as our top priority preserving what America represents and stands for in the world and winning the war against terrorism first.