"Whether he is contained or not, that's a political question," Perle said. What to do about Iraq essentially boils down to how much risk the U.S. government is willing to take, he said, and "that's a political judgment that these guys aren't competent to make."
So Perle feels that the military is not equipped to assess threat, but that he is. If we leave the decision up to politicians and political appointees, though, how do we assure that political factors unrelated to national security don't creep into the debate?
I am not comfortable with the desire that some of these people, notably Perle and Wolfowitz, are showing for war. I am not privy to the intelligence reports, so I can't say for sure, but I have a strong gut feeling that the Iraqi WMD capability is being systematically and seriously exaggerated (through the time-honored tactic of unsubstantiated repetition) to create an expanded sense of imminent threat. This gut feeling is substantially reinforced by the knowledge that military professionals - who presumably ARE privy to the intelligence reports - are apparently not convinced that the threat is so desperate.
It seems to me that if Saddam had deployable WMD and the desire to provide them to terrorists, 9/11 would have been a chemical, biological, or nuclear attack. It wasn't. It seems to me that deterrence - the knowledge that a WMD attack would result in immediate and drastic retaliation - is and has always been our strongest protection against such attacks. It also seems that if we pursue a full-scale military assault, we forfeit the protection that deterrence gives. If he knows we're going to wipe him out anyway, what's to stop him from giving everything he has to terrorists?
The cracks about "perfumed princes" are very cute, but I don't hear the people who make the cracks presenting any answers to the very real points the military men are raising. It's also worth pointing out that men like Perle and Wolfowitz are not exactly battle-hardened warriors. They are as much in the perfumed prince class as anybody in the Pentagon, and more so than most.
sr@notimpressed.com |
