Exceptional (15 page)

• In 2000, a National Intelligence Estimate judged, “Despite a decade-long international effort to disarm Iraq, new information suggests that Baghdad has continued and expanded its offensive BW [biological weapons] program by establishing large scale, redundant and concealed BW agent production capability. We judge that Iraq maintains the capability to produce previously declared agents and probably is pursuing development of additional bacterial and toxin agents. Moreover, we judge that Iraq has BW delivery systems available that could be used to threaten U.S. and Allied forces in
the Persian Gulf region.”

• In late 2000, one of the first intelligence reports that the newly elected president and vice president received was titled “Iraq: Steadily Pursuing WMD Capabilities.”

The Bush administration wasn't alone in reading the intelligence reports. Others who did, going back to 1998, recognized the danger Saddam posed and urged action—though they later changed their views when it seemed politically expedient to do so. Some of these individuals include:

JOHN KERRY:
“When I vote to give the President of the United States the authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a
grave threat to our security.”

HILLARY CLINTON:
“Saddam Hussein is a tyrant who has tortured and killed his own people” and “used chemical weapons on Iraqi Kurds and Iranians. . . . Intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program.” Saddam “has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists,
including al Qaeda members.”

JOE BIDEN:
“Ultimately, as long as Saddam Hussein is at the helm, no inspectors can guarantee that they have rooted out the entirety of [his] weapons program,” and “the only way to remove Saddam is a massive military
effort led by the United States.”

JAY ROCKEFELLER:
There is “unmistakeable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. . . . Saddam's government has contact with many international terrorist organizations that likely have cells here in the United States. . . . September 11 changed
our world forever. We may not like it, but it is the world in which we live. When there is a grave threat to Americans' lives, we have a responsibility to take
action to prevent it.”

NANCY PELOSI:
“Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region,” and “he has made a mockery of the
weapons inspections process.”

BILL CLINTON:
“Heavy as they are, the costs of action must be weighed against the price of inaction. If Saddam defies the world, and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. . . . Mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and
he will use them.”

In 1998, Congress had passed and Bill Clinton had signed into law the “Iraq Liberation Act,” making regime change in Iraq the policy of the United States. A few months later, President Clinton had launched air strikes against Saddam's WMD capabilities.

Saddam's support for terrorists; his willingness to use the world's worst weapons; his intent to reconstitute his own programs, including nuclear ones, using scientists, technology, equipment, and facilities that he kept on hand; and his thwarting of the international community for more than a decade by repeatedly defying UN Security Council resolutions all combined to form the toxic mix that made Saddam a grave threat to the United States. We were right to invade and remove him from power.

America's liberation of Iraq also sent a clear message to others in the region that we would take military action if necessary. Within a few days of our capture of Saddam, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi announced he would like to turn over his nuclear program. He feared
he would suffer the same fate as Saddam. Shortly after that, we were able to dismantle the nuclear proliferation network established by A. Q. Khan, Qaddafi's supplier of nuclear technology. Khan was put out of business and placed under house arrest in Pakistan. Those who say we should not have taken action in Iraq should spend a moment contemplating what the so-called Arab Spring might have looked like with a nuclear-armed Qaddafi in power in Tripoli, or what we might be facing today if Libya's weapons were in the hands of militant Islamists.

The war to liberate Iraq was indisputably difficult. It included tragedy and challenges we did not foresee. Every war does, but these tragedies and challenges do not detract from the rightness of our cause. The question is what to do in the face of setbacks. History has proved that President Bush's decision to surge forces into Iraq and adopt a counterinsurgency strategy under the command of Generals David Petraeus and Ray Odierno worked.

Success in Iraq was also secured by the skill of people like Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General Stanley McChrystal. The methods McChrystal and our special operators developed in Iraq—taking down a terrorist target, exploiting the information found at the site, moving immediately to act on the leads and take down other terrorists—were honed over a number of years. In April 2004, McChrystal has written, special operators ran a total of ten operations in Iraq. That August they conducted eighteen. By 2006, his teams had improved their methods to the point where they could average more than three hundred operations per month, “against a faster, smarter enemy and with greater precision and
intelligence yield.”

Such operations, a critical tool in the war on terror, stand in stark contrast to the Obama administration's actions in Benghazi, Libya, for example. The administration did not move quickly in the aftermath
of the attack on our facility and the murder of our people to uncover critical intelligence and capture or kill those responsible. Instead they spent eighteen months building a legal case before they moved to capture Ahmed Abu Khattala. Once they had him in hand, they read him the Miranda warnings.

When President Obama took office in January 2009, al Qaeda in Iraq had been defeated. Iraq was a stable nation moving toward true democracy, allied with America in the heart of the Middle East. The real proof that things were in good shape as President Obama took over is that his administration immediately set about trying to claim credit for the situation. Vice President Joe Biden memorably predicted in 2010 that Iraq “will be one of the great achievements of this administration.” President Obama repeatedly claimed, “We are leaving behind a sovereign, stable, self-reliant Iraq,” as he set about withdrawing all U.S. forces.

President Obama failed to understand that Iraq's security, sovereignty, and stability were fragile. It is a tragedy that he abandoned Iraq, sacrificing the gains secured by American blood and treasure. We have not yet begun to see the full cost of that decision.

AT THE DAWN OF the age of terror, the United States was once again faced with an enemy committed to the destruction of freedom and the worldwide spread of a deadly ideology. We dedicated ourselves, for seven and a half years after the attacks of 9/11, to preventing further attacks on the homeland. We built up our defenses, improved our intelligence capabilities, put programs in place to detain and effectively interrogate the enemy, and took the fight to them. The United States recognized that this was not a fight that could be won on defense.

Few suggested, in the days when the attack was fresh in our minds, that we would be safe if we just withdrew from the conflicts of the
world. The feebleness of that line of thinking was obvious against the backdrop of the smoldering ruins of the twin towers, the smoke rising from the Pentagon, and the burning wreckage in a field in Pennsylvania. Comforting as isolationism might seem to some now, all these years later, it is no more serious an option than it was then. Neither America, nor our allies, nor the cause of freedom will be safe if we retreat within our borders, ignore rising threats, and hope for the best.

Nine days after the attacks, when President George W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress, he talked of the grief and loss we all felt, and the memories we would forever carry with us of that September day. He said, “Even grief recedes with time and grace. But our resolve must not pass.” In words as true now as they were then, he described our obligation:

Freedom and fear are at war. The advance of human freedom—the great achievement of our time, and the great hope of every time—now depends on us. Our nation—this generation—will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future. We will rally the world to this cause by our efforts, by our courage. We will not tire, we will not falter, and we
will not fail.

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and
secured our nation.

—SENATOR BARACK OBAMA, JUNE 3, 2008

T
he claims made by Senator Obama the night he declared victory in the Democratic presidential primary were extraordinary. His election as president would not only end a war and ensure the nation's security, it would affect the rise of the oceans and the health of the planet. The new nominee's level of self-regard was apparent, as was his underlying belief that America had played a malign role in the world. If the election of a new American president could alleviate all these problems, then America must have been largely responsible for creating them.

In Senator Obama's view, America's sins were both of omission and commission. Explaining the rise of radical Islam, for example, he said in an interview on July 13, 2008, “There has been a shift in Islam
that I believe is connected to the failures of governments and the failures of the West to work with many of these countries in order to make sure opportunities are there, that there's
bottom-up economic growth.”

Previously, in his 2006 book,
The Audacity of Hope
, Senator Obama had taken a longer look back. He assessed the last fifty years of American foreign policy through the lens of Indonesia, a nation he called “the
land of my childhood.” With a nod to “our role in liberating former colonies” and establishing international institutions to “help manage the post World War II order,” the broad outline of America's effect on the world consisted, he said, of

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ur tendency to view nations and conflicts through the prism of the Cold War; our tireless promotion of American-style capitalism and multinational corporations; the tolerance and occasional encouragement of tyranny, corruption, and environmental degradation when it served our interests; our optimism once the Cold War ended that Big Macs and the Internet would lead to the end of historical conflicts; the growing economic power of Asia and the growing resentment of the United States as the
world's sole superpower.

Where some see an exceptional nation, unmatched in the history of the world in our goodness and our greatness, in our contributions to global freedom, justice, and peace, Barack Obama sees a nation with at best a “mixed” record. Yes, there was a successful outcome to the Cold War, but it brought us, he writes, “the distortions of politics, the sins of hubris, the
corrupting effects of fear,” not to mention “an
enormous military buildup” that has, in his view, warped the way U.S.
leaders view the world. That buildup, of course, was essential to our winning the Cold War.

In the early months of the Obama administration, the president embarked upon a world tour, during which he made sure that people in foreign capitals knew he believed that much was wrong with America. In Strasbourg, France, on April 3, 2009, he said, “America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” Noting that generations of Americans and Frenchmen had “fought and bled to uphold [our] values,” President Obama then explained that the detention facility at Guantánamo was a “sacrifice of [our values] for expedience sake” and announced that that was his reason for
closing it. Returning to the topic later at the same event, Obama said:

In dealing with terrorism, we can't lose sight of our values and who we are. That's why I closed Guantánamo. That's why I made very clear that we will not engage in certain interrogation practices. . . . When you start sacrificing your values, when you lose yourself, then over the long term that will make you less secure. When we saw what happened at Abu Ghraib, that wasn't good for our security—that was a recruitment tool for terrorism. Humiliating people is never a good strategy
to battle terrorism.