October 2, 2002 Iraq Resolution

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AFP: File Photo

The third and final Presidential Debate starts in about half an hour. Although current major concerns of this presidential election year deal primarily with economic issues because of the credit and stock market meltdown (the market lost more than 700 points again today) — from the beginning of the campaign several years ago, there has been disagreement over the war in Iraq and whether it was correct or wise to start the war in the first place. Republicans by in large contend that how we got in isn’t important now— the question is where do we go from here. The problem is: if we don’t examine how we got involved in the first place, we may find ourselves making the same mistakes in the future.

 

It’s unfortunate that Jim Jones adopted as his motto George Santayana’s pithy remark:

 

 Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

                  George Santayana, 

The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905

 

Just because Santayana’s quotation was used inappropriately, with spiked cool-aid at Jones-town, doesn’t diminish its validity.

 

Conventional Wisdom holds that every member of Congress and the Senate who voted for the October 2, 2002 authorization, in fact voted “for the war” against Iraq. So Senators Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have been labeled as originally supporting the war. But it’s much more complex and nuanced.

 

An important question to ask is: What did President Bush say the authorization meant—before the vote?

 

On September 19, 2002, on CNN, President George W. Bush stated:

 

“I am sending a suggested language for a resolution, that I've asked for Congress to support, to enable the administration to keep the peace, and we look forward to a good constructive debate in Congress………

 

That'll be part of the resolution – authorization to use force. If you want to keep the peace, you've got to have the authorization to use force. This will be –it's a chance for Congress to indicate support. It's a chance for Congress to say, ‘We support the administration's ability to keep the peace.’ That's what this is all about.” (My italics)

 

Reports and memoirs of several members of Bush’s cabinet reveal that President George W. Bush stated his intent to overthrow Saddam Hussein at the very first cabinet meeting in January 2001. 9/11 had nothing to do with it— nor even did weapons of mass destruction.

 

If you read the wording of the resolution, it is clear that it was not a declaration of war. It was an intermediate step subject to further review. And remember that the war actually began almost half a year after the resolution.

 

So who was it who changed his position –or misrepresented it in the first place? Now I’ll admit, that anybody who took President Bush at his word was a fool – but isn’t that a sad state of affairs!