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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group
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To: Win Smith who wrote (53163)10/19/2002 12:52:03 PM
From: JohnM  Read Replies (7) of 281500
 
'The Threatening Storm' Warns That an Attack on Iraq Is Dangerous and Necessary nytimes.com;

Thanks for posting this, Win. The arguments make a great deal of sense. I thought these points were particularly telling.

1. As I was reading Pollack's dismissal of deterrence as a viable strategy, I could not help reflecting that in 1947 a stronger case than his could have been made that the least risky course for dealing with Stalin following World War II would have been to invade the Soviet Union and depose the tyrant before he could acquire nuclear weapons. Yet deterrence worked, even though the danger to the United States from a nuclear-armed Soviet Union was incomparably greater than the one that could be posed by a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein.

2. Pollack offers a compelling argument that the United States must meet all these conditions if an invasion is to succeed without creating equal or greater dangers. He has set the bar very high, and it is doubtful that any United States administration could clear it. The idea that Congress would be willing to finance a long occupation of Iraq and appropriate billions of dollars for Iraq's reconstruction at a time of recession and rising budget deficits seems irresponsibly optimistic. So is the idea that the United States and its allies would be capable of creating a prosperous, free, democratic nation out of Iraq's fractured and critically injured society.

3. ''The Threatening Storm'' is a timely and important contribution to the current debate. It deserves a wide readership, if only (but not only) because it demolishes certain myths that some proponents of invasion have cultivated. If the Bush administration proceeds to mount an invasion to remove Saddam Hussein without meeting all of the conditions Pollack specifies, only an improbable streak of luck will stave off a more serious terrorist threat to American lives and property. And even if Pollack's conditions are met, the risks of invasion may be greater than he believes.
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