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Everyone Now Agrees It Was Right to Attack Iraq Preemptively

(Wall Street Journal) L. Gordon Crovitz - A hard-line government uses its powerful military to launch a unilateral pre-emptive strike. The UN and Europe are horrified, along with most of the American media. They condemn the strike and brush off claims that it was justified as an act of self-defense against an unpredictable tyrant. So was it a terrible mistake? Not at all. History now smiles on Israel's elimination of Saddam's nearly completed weapon of mass destruction more than 20 years ago. The full story of the raid is told by Rodger Claire in Raid on the Sun, focusing on Gen. David Ivry, commander of the Israeli Air Force, and on the eight mission pilots including Ilan Ramon, who would later die in the Columbia space-shuttle explosion. While world opinion was all but unanimous in its outrage, and American opinion too, President Reagan, upon seeing photos of the reactor site, said, "What a terrific piece of bombing." In one exception to the media's chorus of denunciation, the Wall Street Journal's lead editorial said: "It's nice to know that in Israel we have at least one nation left that still lives in the world of reality....We all ought to get together and send the Israelis a vote of thanks." The writer is senior vice president of Dow Jones & Co., which publishes the Wall Street Journal.
2004-06-01 00:00:00
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