Excellent article by Stanley Kurtz wherein BOTH Hawks and Doves are right.
The Future Is Now
Listening to both sides of the Iraq debate.
nationalreview.com
hat if both sides in the debate over an invasion of Iraq are right? Those who favor an invasion say that we cannot trust Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction — particularly nuclear weapons. On the one hand, Saddam could secretly pass his weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda, thus leading to a disastrous attack on America. In addition (or alternatively) once in possession of WMD, Saddam could invade his neighbors with impunity — and keep the United States at bay by holding the threat of a nuclear attack over our heads. These dangers are all too real, and are more than enough to justify an invasion of Iraq before Saddam manages to get his hands on a nuclear device.
But what if the critics of an invasion are correct as well? What if an invasion will unite the Arab populace against us, thereby destabilizing Middle Eastern regimes that are (relatively) friendly to the United States? What if a war forces us into massive budget cuts and/or tax increases? What if a war ties down tens of thousands of American troops for years in an effort to pacify Iraq, install a favorable regime, and protect the new nation against its enemies in the region? And what if the war stretches our already over-stretched military past the breaking point, just as a region-wide crisis erupts?
Proponents of the war argue, against all this, that the military campaign will be quick and easy; that relatively few troops will be needed; that Saddam's forces will surrender to the inevitable, as they did in the Gulf War; and that a democratic Iraq will be quickly and successfully established, thus serving as an attractive model for other states in the region. All of this is possible, but it seems more sensible than the hawks concede to hedge these several bets.
Opponents of the war, on the other hand, are alive to every potential danger of an attack, yet surprisingly complacent about what can — and will — happen when Saddam has had time to build up his arsenal of mass destruction. Opponents of the war don't seem to think that Saddam will act aggressively, yet never ask why Saddam has been so intent on developing WMD in the first place. Opponents of the war are also reluctant to acknowledge that the events of September 11 have fundamentally changed things — that the combination of international terrorism and any sympathetic state with weapons of mass destruction adds up to the all too real likelihood of mass death in America's cities.
In several earlier pieces, the possibility that both sides in this debate have some truth on their side has led me to advocate a significant expansion of our military forces — be that by paying for a much larger volunteer army, or if necessary, by a draft. With more forces, we would be protected against unexpected military resistance in Iraq, and positioned to field a substantial occupying force, even in the face of the need to deal with destabilization elsewhere in the region. My case for this expansion of our forces rested on a series of reports that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had been privately advising the president against an invasion of Iraq — on grounds of our limited troop strength.
I want to make three new points about all this: First, the claim that we currently have too few troops to invade Iraq has now been made publicly (to the best of my knowledge, for the first time). Second, I suspect that the real reason for the military's desire for a larger invasion force — and for their more fundamental reluctance to attack Iraq at all — is their fear that Saddam will use the chemical and biological weapons that he already possesses against our invading forces. Third, all of this means that both sides in the Iraq debate are correct — and that the worst fears of each side are already playing out.
Retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, the administration's Middle East trouble shooter, as part of a larger argument against an invasion of Iraq, has just said publicly what, up to now, the Joint Chiefs of Staff have only said privately — that our military forces are stretched too thin for us to invade Iraq. Of course, we are entitled to view General Zinni's assertion with some skepticism. Certainly, Zinni may be hyping an alleged troop deficit as a way of discouraging an invasion he opposes for other reasons. It's also true that, as we learned in Afghanistan, our new military technologies may now allow us to do significantly more, with significantly less military manpower. Yet I believe, and have argued in "Our Readiness Problem," nationalreview.com that our current forces are indeed stretched thin. In other words, if General Zinni is wrong about our not having enough troops to invade Iraq, it is not because our manpower isn't stretched thin, but because we may well be able to defeat Saddam with a relatively modest force. That, in fact, is exactly what the hawks at the Pentagon are banking on.
But if the military is artificially inflating the number of forces we need to invade Iraq as an excuse for not acting, then why is the military reluctant to invade in the first place? The tendency of generals to be risk averse is often floated as a reason. But in this case, I think something else is at work as well. The generals are reluctant to invade Iraq because of a risk that is real and significant, even if it may be surmountable.
Saddam may not yet have a nuclear weapon, or the means to launch his chemical and biological weapons against United States territory. But he clearly does have the capacity to use his weapons of mass destruction against invading American troops. This possibility is well understood by our military, and considerable effort is being expended by our planners to protect against this possibility. I think the prospect of a successful WMD attack against U.S. forces by Saddam is the most important reason for the military's reluctance to take on Iraq — and is also the reason why they have been insisting on substantial troop reserves to protect against the possibility that something big may go wrong with an attack.
What has not been recognized, in other words, is the extent to which Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction has already changed the power equation in the Middle East — to the point where the American military itself is reluctant to take on Iraq. In fact, even if America's allies in the region give us the basing to accommodate a Gulf War style build up of a vast invading force (and in truth, we can no longer count on such basing), a slow massing of forces may no longer be a secure way to proceed — simply because our forces would be vulnerable to chemical and biological attack. And that is the real reason, I suspect, why the Pentagon hawks are so intent on moving in quickly, with as small a force as possible. A quick strike by a small force greatly reduces our vulnerability to WMD attack.
How, otherwise, are we to account for the fact that the Joint Chiefs and the Pentagon hawks have been arguing so intensely behind the scenes over the size of an invasion force which, even at the high-end estimate of 250,000 troops, is far smaller than we fielded in the Gulf War? Why don't the hawks simply say, "Alright generals, if you feel you need more troops held in reserve for safety's sake, then we'll give them to you." One reason the hawks don't say this may well be that our overall military forces, now significantly smaller than during the Gulf War, are stretched too thin. This is a point I've made before. But it now seems to me that another key factor in this behind-the-scenes debate — maybe even the predominant factor — is that the build up of a larger invasion force is now considered unworkable, given its vulnerability to Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.
If this line of argument has merit (and I have reason to think that it does), then it would be something of real significance — something that would strengthen the case of both sides in the debate over an invasion of Iraq. The doves point out that it's the invasion itself which is most likely to provoke a WMD strike by Saddam. With nothing left to lose, Saddam has no reason not to try to take down as many American troops as he can, with whatever weapons he can.
But this scenario also validates the worst fears of the hawks. We don't need to wait for the future to discover that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction might enable him to neutralize all of our military might and leave him free to act in the region with impunity. Even now, Saddam's weapons of mass destruction are serving to get him off the hook. Indeed, if the administration backs down now, and refuses to invade Iraq after all it has said, then Saddam will know that his weapons of mass destruction have succeeded in scaring us off. If that happens, then not only Saddam, but every tin-pot dictator in the world, will be in a race to obtain WMD sufficient to neutralize the vast might of America's military machine. It won't even be necessary to have intercontinental missiles — only the wherewithal to deliver chemical and biological weapons against a local American force.
So the future has arrived. At this very moment, we are in a test to see whether the acquisition of even a modest stockpile of chemical and biological weapons will suffice to deter the United States from attack. If the answer is yes, then in the long run, we face even more global chaos than we do from a popular explosion in the Arab world following an attack on Iraq. This, in effect, is the beginning of a new age, in which the proliferation of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will change everything. If we don't establish the ground rules at the beginning, we shall surely be undone.
I believe that the administration understands all this very well. That, indeed, is why they want to attack. But to make these points, it is necessary to concede a lot about the current vulnerability of our invading forces to a WMD attack. That concession would play into the hands of the doves, so the administration refrains from spelling out its case in detail. But this is the unspoken truth: Even now, our troops face the possibility of serious casualties and disruption from a weapons of mass destruction attack by Saddam Hussein. Yet that prospect, frightening as it is, cannot compare to the consequences of allowing an invasion to be called off by the fear of a WMD attack on our troops. It's better to have our forces facing chemical and biological attack now, than to subject our troops, and the country itself, to WMD attacks when Saddam is even stronger.
So in a sense, Saddam has already won a real victory. Because of his weapons of mass destruction, we have probably been forced to take a key military option — a large and gradually built up invasion force — entirely off the table. So it may well be that the military's floating of a high-end invasion force estimate is a backhanded way of opposing a war, but that is only true because Saddam's WMD's have succeeded in making such a large invasion impractical.
That means both sides are right. This war is a lot more dangerous than the public may yet realize. Yet failing to go to war at this critical juncture of history will land us in much deeper danger — with the power equation between nations in danger of shifting radically through the proliferating technology of mass terror. And the danger will come sooner than we think. If the public understood all this, they might see the need for a larger military. We simply have to risk regional destabilization and a lengthy occupation of Iraq by many troops. If we can't take action in Iraq, and keep sufficient troops on hand to deal with the consequences, we shall shortly enter a deeply dangerous new era in which proliferating weapons of mass destruction essentially neutralize America's military dominance, freeing up rogue regimes to act with impunity throughout the globe. More than we know, this may already be happening. |
