Europeans are familiar with terrorism and violence. We have not experienced a true conflict on our soil in a hundred years, and especially not one that involved 3,000 dead.
To sum up, the position we took was that since we didn’t know the internal situation in Iraq nor Saddam Hussein, that our best bet was to take counsel from the people who did know him and who did deal with him.
If you look back at the first Gulf war, the Arabs sent forces, they sent money. So their interests in Iraq are clear, but they’re nowhere to be seen now. Why? Because right now, it’s dangerous to be seen as supporting the United States.
After the ’30s, we said, “no more Munichs.” And it got us in a lot of problems. Then we said, “No more Vietnams.” Now if we say, “No more Iraqs,” the next one won’t be an Iraq. It will be something different. You can’t learn lessons.
But, if you believe we should go around the world overturning regimes to make little United States, I don’t agree with that, because I don’t think we’re capable of doing that.
