War Folklore
Don’t listen to the latest groupspeak.
July 25, 2003, 8:45 a.m.
nationalreview.com
Just as we migrate from Scott Peterson to Kobe Bryant and back to Jessica
Lynch, so too did the snowy peaks of Afghanistan bow out to the
sandstorm-induced pause in Iraq and that in turn to 16 words of the
president's speech. But amid all these expressions of fleeting American
madness, we need to carefully separate larger truths from the folklore that
our elite mob for the moment is mouthing. Here are a random five examples of
the current groupspeak that defy common sense.
1. Tens of thousands of troops deployed in Iraq represent an unacceptable
escalating and open-ended commitment of American blood and treasure.
It was never so simple as staying or leaving — inasmuch as we already had
been in Iraq for over a decade in a manner that had saved thousands of Kurds
and Shiites. Against the present cost of pacifying Iraq must be set a
half-generation and the $20-30 billion already spent to secure two-thirds of
the airspace of Iraq. Then there was the costly naval enforcement of the
U.N. embargo from the Gulf to the Indian Ocean — as well as years of prior
shootings and bombings along the way.
Add another decade's outlay of keeping 10,000 troops in Saudi Arabia — with
all the political risks of putting Americans in such a strange place.
Consider further the thousands of Americans stationed elsewhere in the Gulf
since 1991 to thwart Saddam Hussein. This three-week conflict, in other
words, marked the start of the denouement — not the first act — of a long,
costly engagement that began in 1991.
If, with the demise of Saddam Hussein — who was the original reason for our
aid to his weak and vulnerable neighbors — we can withdraw or at least
downsize from places like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, and the Gulf
sheikdoms, then a great deal of the present investment will represent a
transfer of expenses rather than an entirely new commitment. Unless we are
activating entirely new National Guard units or creating ex nihilo
divisions, some percentage of our costs for troops is static and previously
budgeted anyway — whether American soldiers are to be fed and housed in
Texas or in Baghdad.
The present task has a definable goal — leave with consensual government
established in Iraq — whereas the last twelve years really were open-ended
and led nowhere.
2. Iraq was a complete distraction from the war against terror.
This is a tired allegation made by a number of Democratic presidential
hopefuls, especially Senator Graham.
First, none of the oft-repeated and dire predictions — increased terror, an
inflamed Arab street, the fall of "moderate" governments in Jordan and
Egypt, a ruined Turkish economy, millions of refugees, thousands dead,
endless sectarian fighting, and other horsemen of the Apocalypse — have
followed from Saddam's ouster. Indeed, the end of Saddam Hussein has already
brought dividends in other areas.
Consider the following collateral developments in little over 100 days.
There is some movement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Soon an American
military presence in Saudi Arabia will end. We already see a cessation of
cash rewards for suicide murderers; the death or arrests of terrorists like
Abu Nidal, Abu Abbas, and al Qaedists in Kurdistan; probable disruption of
Iraqi cash flows to terrorist groups based in Lebanon; Hamas worried in
Syria; democratic foment in Iran; and a growing sense that the United States
is not something terrorists wish to arouse.
The Democratic leadership needs to cease its embarrassing rants before its
last shred of credibility is lost. The pause was not a setback; the museum
attack was not a 170,000-icon heist because Americans were off in the
oilfields; Jessica Lynch really did go through hell and her comrades really
did die shooting. Despite the recent rants from some out-of-touch Democratic
congressmen, it is not wrong to kill mass murderers in a firefight. Indeed,
those Democrats should be reminding Americans that they are proud that the
Senate voted long ago to go into Iraq and to eliminate a fascist Baathist
state that had murdered tens of thousands.
3. The lack of tangible evidence of weapons of mass destruction undermines
the success of the war — and gives powerful ammunition to the Democrats'
criticism of Mr. Bush.
This would be true if there had not been ample reasons presented for going
to war — from Saddam's violation of the 1991 accords, his expulsion of U.N.
inspectors, his past history of invading and attacking his neighbors, his
connection with terrorists, and prior confirmation by the U.N. and the
Clinton administration of a continued Iraq WMD program.
There are also political problems on the horizon. If senators — who had
access to classified intelligence — voted to authorize the president to take
measures against Iraq and now object to the circumstances of our
(successful) intervention, then either their prior sanction or their present
objection is wrong: and they need to tell us which it is and why.
If President Clinton once authorized a four-day war because of Saddam's
non-compliance with past promises, and no subsequent evidence was adduced
that those stockpiles of WMD were in fact recovered or destroyed, then were
the Clinton administration and the U.N. wrong, or disingenuous, in their
belief that such weapons ever really existed?
And — putting all put aside WMD, curbing terrorism, and concerns over our
own security — is saving thousands of Iraqis any less humanitarian than
intervening in Liberia?
It will also be difficult for Democrats to say much about proliferation
elsewhere since they now allege that there was no real prewar evidence of
WMD in Iraq. So their current harangues will have the pernicious effect of
convincing us in the future to ignore accepted reports of enriched uranium
in Iran or undiscovered reactors in Korea. Why hassle sifting through tricky
intelligence reports when you will only be ankle-bitten later for acting on
purportedly fabricated evidence? Most Americans will instead shrug and say,
"No way: let the Europeans or the Japanese — not us — worry about Iranian or
Korean nukes."
The current conundrum is also predicated on two other shaky premises: that
evidence of WMD won't be found and that things in Iraq will get worse.
Neither is likely. American aid and oil revenue will bring more, not less
money, to the Iraq economy in the months ahead. Freedom grows sweeter, not
more bitter, to its new beneficiaries.
A year from now it is also probable that millions of unsavory Baathist
documents will have been cataloged and translated. The fate of the Hussein
tribe is becoming clear. Consensual government will be stronger. Those in
the know about Saddam's past crimes will become more talkative.
Finally, note that the purported communiqués from Saddam's guerrillas
repeatedly insist that America's intervention was based on lies and
falsehoods about WMD. In contrast, 25 million Iraqis are mostly silent on
the issue. Are Saddam's murderers, or his victims, the better allies in the
present debate?
The discovery of a single cache of weapons or the arrest or corpse of any
Hussein will, of course, soon put an end the entire pseudo-controversy — as
we are now just witnessing with late-breaking news of the dead epigones.
4. We have done lasting damage to international alliances and institutions.
Careful scrutiny reveals just the opposite: the U.N., NATO, the EU, South
Korea, and other bodies and nations are reexamining their own, not our,
behavior.
The U.N. is not debating leaving the United States or expelling us from the
Security Council, but in fact is reviewing its entire constitution: from the
exclusion of powerful nations like Japan, Germany, and India from the
Security Council to the nature of odious regimes that participate on
important commissions — such as that paragon of human rights, Libya.
The Belgians are worried about curtailing, not empowering their lunatic
courts. They want NATO headquarters to remain, not be moved to Warsaw.
Except for the temporary rise of the euro, the news from the EU is of
confusion, not lockstep anger at the United States. North versus South, East
versus West, Britain versus the Continent — all that reveals intrinsic
European fault lines not of our own making.
For all the present calumny, Mr. Blair still enjoys far more prestige and
admiration abroad than do Messrs. Chirac, Schroeder, Villepin, or Fischer.
And among the English-speaking nations, it is just as likely that Canada
will move closer to the Australian position vis-à-vis the United States than
vice versa. South Korea is keeping silent about its "sunshine policy" — and
suddenly quite worried about its anti-American demonstrations — as we ponder
our evolving new relationship.
In short, a new honesty and maturity are the real dividends of American
actions.
5. In a drive for global hegemony, America is crafting a new imperialism to
rule the world.
The trendy notion of America as a "hyperpower" is largely an artifact of the
aftermath of the Cold War. True, we enjoy unmatched military strength. Sure,
we spend more on defense than do the next ten or so nations collectively.
But that imbalance is not a reflection of a wish to dominate the globe, but
mostly due to the abject collapse of an empire that failed to do precisely
that — and the cleanup of the resulting detritus of Soviet interventions and
clients, from Serbia to Afghanistan to Iraq.
In terms of percentages of GNP, we are spending no more on our military
budget than we did through most years of the Cold War. Both at home and
abroad, the real story is just as often the abandonment, not the
construction, of military bases.
Our sin was mostly that we won the Cold War, kept active in NATO, and did
not disarm after the fall of the Berlin Wall. When one of two superpowers is
still standing, then ipso facto the survivor usually enjoys twice its former
relative power. |
