I am two segments behind in posting the Reason debate on Iraq. Here are segments three and four.
Avoid Tenuous Reasoning
Arm-waving and dubious propositions
By John Mueller
It may be useful to parse the argument for a preventive war against Iraq as developed by Brink Lindsey into two considerations: the military threat Iraq presents or is likely to present, and the connection of the regime to international terrorism.
The notion that Iraq presents an international military threat seems to be based on three propositions. 1. Iraq will have a small supply of atomic arms in a few years. 2. Once it gets these arms, Saddam Hussein will be incapable of preventing himself from engaging in extremely provocative acts such as ordering a military invasion against a neighbor or lobbing weaponry against nuclear-armed Israel, acts which are extremely likely to trigger a concerted multi-lateral military attack upon him and his regime. 3. If Saddam issues such a patently suicidal order, his military, which he himself distrusts?will dutifully carry it out, presumably with more efficiency, effectiveness, and élan than it demonstrated in the Gulf War.
I will leave it to those more expert in the field to assess the first proposition. At worst we have a window of a few years before the regime is able to acquire atomic arms. Some experts, however, seem to think it could be much longer while others question whether Saddam's regime will ever be able to gather or make the required fissile material. Obviously, if effective weapons inspections are instituted in Iraq, they will reduce this concern.
The second proposition rests on an enormous respect for what I have called Saddam's "daffiness" in decision-making. I share at least part of this respect. Saddam does sometimes act on caprice, and he often appears to be out of touch, messengers bringing him bad news rarely, it seems, get the opportunity to do so twice. At the same time, however, he has shown himself capable of pragmatism. When his invasion of Iran went awry, he called for retreat to the prewar status quo; it was the Iranian regime that kept the war going. After he invaded Kuwait in 1990, he quickly moved to settle residual issues left over from the Iran-Iraq War so that he had only one enemy to deal with.
Above all, he seems to be entirely non-suicidal and is primarily devoted to preserving his regime and his own personal existence. His brutal killing (and gassing) of Kurds was carried out because they were in open rebellion against him and in effective or actual complicity with invading Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War. Much of his obstruction of arms inspectors seems to arise from his fear that agents among them will be used fatally to triangulate his whereabouts?a suspicion that press reports suggest was not exaggerated. If Saddam does acquire nuclear arms, accordingly, it seems most likely that he will use them as all others have since 1945-to deter an invasion rather than to trigger one.
The third proposition is rarely considered in discussions of the war, but it is important. One can't at once maintain, it seems to me, that Iraq's military forces will readily defect and can easily be walked over?something of a premise for our war-makers, and also that this same pathetic military presents a coherent international threat.
The argument connecting Iraq to terrorism is mostly based on arm-waving. As Lindsey notes, international terrorists are based all over the world, in fact just about everywhere except Iraq. Their efforts are hardly likely to be deflated if Iraq's regime is defeated. Indeed, it seems likely that an attack will supply them with new recruits, inspire them to even more effort, and provide them with inviting new targets in the foreign military and civilian forces that occupy a defeated, chaotic Iraq. He suggests that a war is required in order make it "extremely clear that the United States means business in dealing with terrorism." I would have thought that this was already extremely clear.
Terrorism, like crime, has always existed and always will. It cannot be "crushed," but its incidence and impact can be reduced, and some of its perpetrators can be put out of business. But this is likely to come about through patient, diligent, and persistent international police work rather than through costly wars based on tenuous reasoning.
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Nasty Realities
Evading them won't make us safe
By Brink Lindsey
John Mueller sees correctly that the Iraq problem has two aspects: (1) regional security and (2) global terrorism. Unfortunately, he fails to grasp the nasty realities of either.
Mueller's assessment of the regional threat posed by a nuclear Iraq is nothing short of fantastic. He pooh-poohs the possibility that Iraq might invade one or more of its neighbors and argues that Saddam Hussein "is primarily devoted to preserving his regime and his own personal existence." Huh? Try telling that to Iran and Kuwait.
Mueller needs to read Mark Bowden's superb, and chilling, profile of Saddam in the May 2002 issue of The Atlantic. Bowden makes clear that Saddam sees himself as a world-historical figure, a man destined to lead pan-Arabia back to greatness. Perversely, every brush with disaster and death "has strengthened his conviction that his path is divinely inspired and that greatness is his destiny." Why on earth should we suppose that a nuclear arsenal?built in reckless defiance of the United States and the world?would temper rather than inflame Saddam's raging megalomania?
Mueller blithely assumes that any future Iraqi aggression would be "extremely likely to trigger a concerted multilateral military attack upon him and his regime" and thus "patently suicidal." Excuse me, but there was no multilateral response to Iraq's attack on Iran, and the world would have been all too happy to acquiesce in Kuwait's disappearance had President Bush 41 not stepped in and forced the issue. What makes Mueller think that the world would rush in to confront a nuclear-armed Iraq? That task, inevitably, would fall to the United States. Mueller's counsel boils down to this: The United States should avoid war with a relatively weak Iraq today so that it can tangle with a nuclear adversary tomorrow.
What about the nexus between Iraq and terrorism, which Mueller dismisses as so much "arm-waving", Allow me to quote Bowden's article once more, this time from a scene in which Saddam is addressing Iraqi military leaders who run terrorist training camps:
He told [them] that they were the best men in the nation, the most trusted and able. That was why they had been selected to meet with him, and to work at the terrorist camps where warriors were being trained to strike back at America. The United States, he said, because of its reckless treatment of Arab nations and the Arab people, was a necessary target for revenge and destruction. American aggression must be stopped in order for Iraq to rebuild and to resume leadership of the Arab world.
This meeting occurred back in 1996, before the recent heating up of the conflict. So much for Saddam's live-and-let-live foreign policy.
Bellicose rhetoric is one thing; the ability to back it up is something altogether more serious. Here is the ultimate threat, the one that Mueller can't even bring himself to discuss: Iraqi biological or nuclear weapons might someday be put in the hands of terrorist groups. If that were to happen, America could experience horrors that would dwarf those unleashed on September 11.
Opponents of action against Iraq argue that we can rely on deterrence to protect us from such atrocities. No country, not even one as rash as Iraq, would dare to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States because of the threat of overwhelming retaliation. That argument has considerable force with respect to a direct attack by Iraq, but it fails completely to confront the possibility that Iraq could use terrorist intermediaries to do its dirty work while masking its own involvement. How is deterrence supposed to work when WMDs lack a return address?
Recall, again, last year's anthrax attacks. We still don't know who was responsible, or whether there was any foreign state involvement. Just this week, a Washington Post article cast considerable doubt on the FBI's favored theory that the murders were the work of a disgruntled American scientist?and suggested that an Iraqi role remains a live possibility.
Go back a few more years, to the 1993 plot to assassinate former President Bush in Kuwait. It appears that the attack was an Iraqi operation, but the fact is we're not really sure. Read this 1993 New Yorker piece by Seymour Hersh for an in-depth review of the less-than-airtight case.
Welcome to the shadowy world in which we now live. A world in which deterrence no longer suffices. A world in which the judicious use of American power to preempt looming threats may be all that stands between us and catastrophe.
Here is what we know about the current Iraqi regime. It has weapons of mass destruction and is actively seeking to add to its arsenal. It is rabidly hostile to the United States. It has an established track record of predatory conduct and a demonstrated willingness to take extreme risks in pursuing its predatory ambitions. There is not another country on earth that matches Iraq's combination of destructive capacity, anti-American animus, and recklessness in projecting power. In a shadowy world, this much is clear: We are not safe while the present regime rules Iraq. |
