Threatening Saddam
William Pfaff International Herald Tribune/Los Angeles
Times Syndicate International
Monday, August 12, 2002
PARIS George W. Bush is talking himself into a
position where he will have to go to war, even
though there is no convincing argument that war
would be good for the United States, or even good
for Bush.
The military are certainly not convinced that war
is a good idea. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff have
made that clear through a series of leaks to the
press. They are wary of a war whose objectives -
beyond Saddam Hussein's overthrow - remain
murky, and for whose aftermath no serious policy
exists.
Generals are against war, but amateurs are for it.
Who among the neo-conservative polemicists and
op-ed writers baying for war against Saddam has
personally spilled blood, or seen it spilled, or even
heard shots fired in anger?
The president himself, thanks to his father's
friends, was flying a National Guard fighter to
defend the State of Texas against the Viet Cong.
The leading hawks in the administration made
their records as Defense Department bureaucrats.
Donald Rumsfeld was a peacetime naval flyer, but
the only administration heavyweight who has
actually fought in a war is Colin Powell, and he is
the Bush administration's leading dove.
The Defense Department's Policy Board, presided
over by Richard Perle, last week was briefed by the
hitherto unknown Laurent Murawiec of the Rand
Corporation. He told them that Saudi Arabia is
America's enemy, fosters terrorism "at every level
in the terror chain," is "the kernel of evil, the
prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" of
the U.S. in the Middle East.
He recommended that the U.S. issue an
ultimatum to the Saudi government to "stop all
anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli statements in the
country" - a preposterous demand - or see its oil
fields and overseas financial assets "targeted,"
which would seem to mean seized by the United
States.
Henry Kissinger, the intelligent member of the
Policy Board, was the only one to demur, refusing
to speak of the Saudi Arabians as strategic
adversaries.
Law doesn't come much into amateur discussions
since it is taken for granted that the United States
is justified in doing pretty much as it pleases. This
administration has consistently insisted on
exemption from international law and refuses the
inconvenient constraints of treaties signed under
previous administrations. In internal security
affairs, it claims an equivalent exemption from
constitutional restraint.
This administration seems to regard the United
States as exempt from the laws of war and from
the traditional norms governing just and unjust
war. These have only philosophical or moral
authority, but were taken serious in American
government as recently as the 1950s and 1960s in
policy debates over nuclear war.
Is there an alternative to this war? Have all of the
alternative courses for achieving the goal been
exhausted? Is war the sole and necessary means
to a just goal? What is the disposition of those
conducting the war: to do good with a minimum of
harm? Or to aggrandize their own and the
nation's power and standing at the expense of the
lives or legitimate claims of others?
The Rand Corporation used to wonder about such
things. It would be much better for Rand's
reputation as an intellectually responsible
organization to send briefers on just war to
Washington, rather than promoters of aggressive
war and international illegality.
However, a measure of consolation for what the
Bush people are up to can be sought in what
Walter Lippmann once wrote: "A policy is bound to
fail which deliberately violates our pledges and
our principles, our treaties and our laws. The
American conscience is a reality."
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