Rummy before the commission

Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld said some rather interesting things before the 911 commission. Here's a key excerpt:

"But imagine for a moment that we were back before September 11, 2001. Imagine that a U.S. President had looked at the information then available, and gone before the Congress and the world, and said: We need to invade Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and destroy the al-Qaeda terrorist network, based on what little was known before September 11th. How many countries would have joined in a coalition? Many? Any? Not likely.

"We likely would have heard objections to pre-emption similar to those voiced before the Coalition launched Operation Iraqi Freedom. We would have been asked: Where is the smoking gun? How can we attack Afghanistan when it was al-Qaeda that attacked us? Aren't North Korea, Iran, Iraq, or Libya more immediate threats than Afghanistan? Shouldn't overthrowing the Taliban regime be the last step, not the first? Why can't we just take out terrorist training camps?

"If we go to war in Afghanistan, does it mean the U.S. will now go to war with every state that harbors terrorists before they have threatened us? Should we go to war when there is no international consensus behind ousting the Taliban regime by force?

"wouldn't U.S. intervention enrage the Muslim world and increase support for the terrorists? How can we go to war when not one country in the region publicly supports us, and many seem to be opposed? Wouldn't the U.S. get bogged down in an expensive, dangerous long-term military occupation?

"wouldn't we open ourselves to the risk that other rogue regimes might take advantage of the fact that the U.S. is tied up in Afghanistan to invade neighbors or cause other mischief? Wont launching a pre-emptive strike simply provoke more terrorist attacks against the U.S.?"

He's correct, of course, to point out that not many countries would have joined the coalition. But since when does the Bush administration feel skittish about unilateral action? At any rate, action would not have been unilateral. The effort would have had one key partner, unmentioned by Rumsfeld: The Northern Alliance. Richard Clarke had proposed regime change in Afghanistan before 911 by giving aid to the alliance, and such assistance probably would not have outraged world opinion.

Most of Rumsfeld's other points apply just as well to the war in Iraq. Where was the smoking gun there? Where is the international consensus? How many countries in the region supported our actions?

By contrast, the Cole incident had in and of itself given the United States all the cause for war necessary to justify action against the Taliban. That government had offered material aid to the criminal force that had attacked our ship -- and international opinion would have understood that fact as a legitimate rationale for military action.

As for support from other nations in the region: I doubt Iran, which despised the Taliban regime, would have offered any complaints -- perhaps they would have muttered a few pro forma protests, but not much more. Most of the Arab world disliked the Taliban, whose ultra-fundamentalist ideology threatened to spread and undermine regional stability. India would have seen an attack on the Taliban as a welcome gesture against Pakistan.

A United States attack on Afghanistan before September 11, 2001 was justifiable and would not have provoked an unmanageable degree of protest. Substantial U.S. assistance to the Northern Alliance would have been better still.