Interesting point on the Iraq War
Sebastian Holsclaw made a statement justifying the war in Iraq, in response to Orin Kerr;s questions, that I had not heard before:
Saddam had become an enduring hero and symbol of the West’s inability to follow through when met with the slightest resistance. This dangerous idea is what allowed Al Qaeda to believe that it could strike in New York City and be safe in Afghanistan.
I wonder how true that is. Given Osama’s most consistant demand was for U.S. forces to leave the Gulf Region (and Saudi Arabia in particular) I can certainly imagine a level of admiration on his part for Saddam, even though Saddam was not properly religious and was the cause of the U.S. forces being there in the first place.
I expect that Mogadishu had a more signifigant impact on Osama’s belief that he would be safe (assuming he did believe that) but Iraq’s defiance of the U.N. certainly is similar in some ways to what happened in Somalia.
I don’t know if Saddam keeping power despite doing everything in the world to justify being tossed inspired Osama, since Osama doesn’t have a state of his own. But I’m pretty sure that every other tinpot dictator who never takes his army uniform off watched that and reached the conclusion that there was nothing they could do that would convince the world to remove them. Compare Qadaffi’s behavior before Bush changed the rules with after. Whatever one thinks of the costs and benefits of the war, surely most of us can agree that it’s a good thing when dictators understand there’s a line that will get them nailed if they cross it.