Now with an agreement between the U.S. and Russia over the Syrian impasse on chemical weapons, we appear to have dodged the bullet, temporarily at least.
What a relief. Now we can return to what’s really important: Miley Cyrus, football, Justin Beiber, and the vendor who was fired for hating ketchup. As well as the personal tragedies (mostly American) served up to us on our news feeds as entertainment.
I watched Colin Powell’s presentation before the UN Security Council in 2003 as he tried to persuade members to follow the U.S. lead into Iraq. Many members of the Security Council were unconvinced, as well they might be. The charge that Iraq harbored chemical or other weapons of mass destructions proved unfounded. We learned the truth only after the deaths of Americans, Iraqis, and those allies who, believing us, followed us into war.
Critics later charged that American officials molded U.S. intelligence to fit a desire to attack Iraq, though Iraq at the time posed no direct threat to us. The intelligence was flawed, deliberately “cherry picked” to suit our purposes. We are now paying for that choice.
As America lays out intelligence about the use of chemical weapons in Syria, where the evidence is much stronger, our past deception haunts us. No nation is unswervingly honest, but the United States before Iraq was trusted more than most. After the misuse of intelligence in the runup to Iraq, we lost our valuable credibility. Indeed, our right to lead in foreign policy anywhere in the world is now questioned.
Trust, once lost, is not easily regained.
To attack Syria or not to attack Syria with missile strikes has divided everyone, it seems, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives. Rather than give my own opinion (which is still evolving), I’m enclosing links to two thoughtful pieces. One is a general question-and-answer piece about Syria. The other is a colunn by Nicholas Kristof, a journalist for The New York Times whom I have always admired: