Hi Hawkmoon; I fail to see your logic. First you say that Saddam will "extend his power from behind that nuclear shield", but then you say that "He, like Stalin and Hitler, only understand counter-force ..."
The historical fact is that Stalin had nuclear weapons, but did not "extend his power from behind that nuclear shield".
Furthermore, it more than strains credulity to compare Iraq to Germany or the USSR, or to compare the world situation in 2002 to that of 1938.
Saddam can't use nuclear weapons without killing himself (in the counter-attack), and so he can't use nuclear weapons to "extend his power". There is no nuclear shield possible for him to hide behind.
Even though the USSR had nukes we still would have fought them at the Fulda gap. There was no battle there because it was clear that we would fight. This is what containment means. Containment means that you draw a line, and make it very clear that you will fight if the other guy crosses it.
Saddam's attack on Iran was supported by the other Gulf states, and everyone was surprised that Iran was able to put up much of a fight. It was not that Saddam was insane to attack. All he wanted was a few square miles of land around the Shatt Al Arab, land that had been the subject of various wars and peaces between the Ottoman Empire and Persia for thousands of years.
Saddam's attack on Kuwait was undertaken in the apparent belief that the United States didn't care. It was not Saddam was insane when he attacked, it was that he didn't realize that he would get his butt kicked by the international community for invading another country without provocation. This is not a matter of insanity. The Bush administration is at least pretending to be suffering from the same delusion.
What got Saddam into the Gulf war was a US ambassador who didn't read him the riot act as soon as intelligence indicated that Saddam had designs on Kuwait. (Didn't South Korea got invaded for a similar reason, a US official didn't make it clear that the US go to war to defend it?) Can you realistically imagine a similar situation repeating itself with regard to Iraq? Isn't it clear as a bell that if Saddam invades anyone we're going to take him out?
The Kuwaiti blunder is is a region of diplomatic mistake that has been fully explored by both Saddam and the United States, and neither party is ever going to go back and make that particular mistake again. It's too late to change the past, but that's no reason to sit there and fixate on it. There is no way in hell that Saddam is going to invade any of his neighbors again. This is a fact because Iraqi containment, which didn't exist before Kuwait was invaded now exists.
Suppose I'm wrong, and suppose that Saddam does invade (fill in name of unimportant 3rd world country that few Americans can find on a map here). If that happens, the UN will support another war similar to the Kuwaiti liberation, but this time they won't stop until Saddam is gone. It's as simple as that. We would go in with allied support from the neighbors. We would avoid pissing off the whole rest of the world by attacking a sovereign state without (in the eyes of the whole rest of the world) sufficient provocation. We would get to keep our name as a country of "liberators" rather than as a country of "guys who tell you how to run your country".
Your whole assumption that if Saddam had nukes he'd have a "nuclear shield" is hilarious in the face of the past 50 years of history. Where is the nuclear shield that allowed China to capture Taiwan? Where is the nuclear shield that allowed Pakistan to take Kashmir from India? Where is the nuclear shield that allowed India to push Pakistan out of Kashmir? Where was the nuclear shield that allowed the Soviet Union to force West Germany to become Communist? (Hell, where was the nuclear shield that allowed them to keep Poland Communist?) Where is the nuclear shield that kept Algeria a part of France? Why didn't Britain threaten to nuke Argentina? Where is the nuclear shield that has allowed the Israelis to eliminate the Intifada? Where's the nuclear shield that let the US keep the Communists from taking over in China or even Eastern Europe?
There are no nuclear shields.
No nation is an island.
Every nation has its decisions ratified in the court of world public opinion. If you use nuclear weapons, you're guilty, in that court. The other nations will come after you, and they will kill you. All those silly movies where the bad guy steals a nuclear weapon and threatens to blow it up are just silly movies. Maybe a bad guy could do that, but if he had a mailing address (i.e. "Baghdad, Iraq, Middle East, Planet Earth"), he'd be a hole in the ground.
That's why nuclear weapons haven't been used since 1945.
They're a waste of money.
Worrying about them is largely a waste of time.
The other "weapons of mass destruction" are exaggerations, and their use is not enough to destroy a state by world opprobrium. That's why Iraq was able to use poison gas without getting the whole rest of the world to come down on them. Some biological weapons could be as terrifying as nukes, but most are serious exaggerations, and note that none of the really effective ones have ever been used in combat. The reasons are similar to why nukes are not used.
It wouldn't bother me (or the rest of the world) if you went over to Iraq and got Saddam's blood all over yourself. Most of us would applaud. You'd be a hero.
But that is not what war is about. War is about killing young men, 17-year old conscripts with pimples and crushes on pin-ups. Boys whose mothers say "be careful" every time they come home on leave. Children who make their fathers feel proud, but worried.
To kill all those innocent people (both military and civilian) you have to have a damn good chain of logic.
I've read this thread reasonably carefully.
I design logic.
I see no "damn good chain of logic".
The facts on the ground are simply that Saddam Hussein is almost no threat to the United States at all. He is a more realistic threat to his neighbors, but every one of them has asked us not to attack. Why should we put the blood of all those boys on our hands when the people who have to live under the threat don't want it on their own?
Saddam is not a sufficient threat to any of his neighbors that they have asked for our help in defending themselves from him, beyond containment. That's what we're stuck with, until Saddam makes another militaristic move.
Morality matters.
The moral opinions of the Canadians, British and French, who've been our allies for hundreds of years, matters.
Morality is more important than politics, but in this case, international politics would also dictate that we not attack Iraq until we have sufficient provocation that other nations (a jury of our peers) support our attack.
The situation now is that even a jury of our best friends tells us not to attack.
The alleged victims tell us not to attack.
We'd have to be mad to attack.
We're not mad, and we're not going to attack.
-- Carl |
