This statement assumes that the purpose of regime change in Iraq is to damage Al Qaeda. That's not what Bush says, and that's not what proponents like Ken Pollack say… The arguments for going into Iraq are not based on the idea that we will strike a blow against Al Qaeda; nor should the arguments against going into Iraq be based on this idea.
Naturally we need to determine with whom, exactly, we are we at war. Are we fighting a war on terrorism or a war on Bad People? The Bushes and the Pollacks seem to have chosen the latter option, which I am not sure is a good idea.
Even if we are going to declare war on Bad People, though, priorities are essential. We are talking about two enemies, call them enemy A and enemy B. Enemy A has repeatedly declared war on us and attacked our citizens and interests around the world. Barely a year ago they attacked two of our cities, killing thousands of our citizens. They have a dangerously deployed network of agents and sympathizers entrenched in our territory and the territories of our allies. They have the capacity to strike us again at any moment. Enemy B has spent the last decade on his face in the dirt with our knee on his back, unable to manage any gesture more threatening than a few ineffectual swats at the aircraft that we fly over his country on a daily basis.
So what have we done? We took one solid swing at enemy A, leaving him with a bloody nose but still fully capable of attacking us, and devoted our resources to preparation and justification for a massive attack on enemy B. I’m not convinced that this is smart.
Aside from the question of priorities, the regime change scenario is a perception nightmare. No matter what we do, people all over the Arab world, and in many other places as well, are going to conclude that Saddam has nothing to do with this. The most common view will be that the good ol’ boys from TexasOil Inc. are using 9/11 as an excuse to take over a major oil producer. I’d be the last to say that we should design foreign policy to gratify foreign perceptions of our actions, but in this case the perception involved is an al Qaeda recruitment wet dream, and that’s something we need to consider. Our move on enemy B is almost certainly going to provide the much more dangerous enemy A with a steady stream of motivated recruits, which happens to be the thing he most needs to keep attacking us. I’m not convinced that this is smart.
The most dangerous facet of the regime change plan, though, is something that is getting far too little attention. Installing a new government in Iraq, especially if we do it unilaterally, places us in a proxy/patron relationship with a highly vulnerable government, and that is one of the most dangerous places any superpower can go.
The advantage of a proxy government is that allows the superpower to exert control without direct exposure. The disadvantage is that it allows you to be defeated by proxy. A defeat for the proxy is a defeat for the patron, and that means, in this case, that we would be giving our enemies the opportunity to defeat us without actually fighting us. This is an opportunity they would not be likely to overlook. They know they can’t defeat us directly. They have every reason to believe that they could subvert and neutralize a proxy government, especially one as weak and vulnerable as any post-Saddam government is going to be. If they can undercut that government to the point where we have to step in and provide support, our enemies have us where they want us: in a passive role, defending instead of attacking, fighting on their territory and on their terms. We will, in essence, be giving up a battlefield that favors us and taking on one that favors our opponents. I’m not convinced that this is smart.
This analysis omits some major players - the radical Arab states, who support terrorism as a deniable tool of statecraft, whip up support for it (aimed externally of course), and need the US as an enemy to distract their populations from their own failures. Is it your position that this dynamic does not exist? Because if it does, walking softly in the Mideast won't help.
You take the Rubin position, it seems: that if radical Arab states are going to whip up support for terrorism and hate for the US, we can only accept that support and that hate as a given. I don’t think that’s true at all. One of the greatest potential vulnerabilities the radical states have is the relationship between their leaders and their repressed and unsatisfied populations. They are trying to whip up hate for us to keep their people from hating them, which, given the way their people live, is a quite natural thing for them to do. One of our most critical tasks is to exploit this vulnerability and put the hate back where it belongs, and the posture we take toward the Arab world is an important part of this. Personally, I think the best test case for regime change will be not Iraq but Iran, where the population’s restiveness is rapidly reaching the boiling point. If the Iranians themselves can dump their theocracy and put a better government in its place, we will have a really positive example – an example that does not depend on American military occupation - to display to the rest of the Arab world.
The radical Arab governments don't need public support, they have oil and guns, which suffice instead.
The Shah of Iran had oil and guns, and they didn’t keep him in power. What went around can come around, with a bit of encouragement.
A lot of people whose instincts are normally conservative have concluded that the US has nothing to gain by conserving the situtation, so we are going in to do slum clearance on the worst radical regime…
I’d say if a lot of people can see no option between conservation and slum clearance, a lot of people need to look a little harder. I’d also say that a fair number of people – maybe not a lot but a few located in key positions – had a real bias toward the slum clearance program from the beginning, and were not very keen to review other options.
Not only will it be viewed as weakness, but the conflict will be stirred up elsewhere
This is a point that’s been floating around for a long time without being addressed. The idea seems to be that any response to terrorism not involving vigorous military reprisal will be perceived as weakness and encourage more terrorism. Less often spoken is the implicit assumption that vigorous military reprisal will convince the enemy that we are strong and determined, and discourage further acts of terror. Like many political mantras, these ideas have achieved a semblance of validity purely by repetition. They are heard so often from some quarters that I sometimes suspect that they’ve been adopted as the Israeli National Anthem.
These thoughts have a definite emotional appeal. We all like to believe that our enemies are a bunch of sniveling little wimps that will flee in terror at the sight of the mailed fist. Precedents, however, raise certain doubts. Vigorous military action has been the reflexive Israeli response to terrorism ever since Israel was threatened by terrorists, and the terrorists have not exactly dried up and blown away. I don’t think anybody would have accused the Russians that occupied Afghanistan of being a bunch of conciliatory wimps, but their enemies – including many of the same people we are fighting now – were perfectly willing to stay the course despite repeated reprisals of the most brutal kind. The experience of others suggests that our enemies will not vanish if faced with a strong enemy. It suggests that they are quite willing to slug it out in a war of attrition, that they will use our reprisals as a device for recruiting support against us, and indeed that this is the way they prefer to fight. Our enemies are familiar with that kind of response and that kind of war. They’ve fought a superpower that way and they’ve won; they’ve maneuvered the dominant regional military power to a stalemate. I’d say we should think twice before deciding to engage on ground where our enemies are comfortable and confident. |
