Public should know: Case for war is weak
Iraq strike would threaten security, bring bloodshed
By Doug Cassel
Editorial
The Chicago Tribune
Published October 13, 2002
Last Monday's address to the nation by President Bush not only fails to justify war, it reinforces the case that an invasion of Iraq would be unwarranted, unwise and unworthy of a peace-loving nation.
An invasion is not needed to meet any imminent threat. On the contrary, it would trigger imminent threats to our national security. And it probably would end in a bloodbath in Baghdad.
If launched without UN Security Council authorization, a pre-emptive invasion also would violate the United Nations Charter and could amount to a crime against peace as defined at Nuremberg, Germany.
Nothing short of a clear and present danger could justify an invasion. Yet the president's public appeal--like British Prime Minister Tony Blair's dossier on Saddam Hussein--offers no more than speculation about unspecified Iraqi aggression in some unknown future.
Despite the resolution rushed through Congress, the American public as yet has little appreciation for what war would mean. Understandably so. Not since Vietnam have Americans seen body bags come home in bulk. We have become accustomed instead to wars nearly free of American casualties, in which our bombs and missiles rain down from high altitudes on Kosovo or Afghanistan.
Even in such wars, foreign civilians die by the hundreds. As former President Bill Clinton reminded the British Labor Party earlier this month, "I have ordered this kind of action--I don't care how precise your bombs and weapons are, when you set them off, innocent people die."
This war promises to be far worse. Bombs alone cannot win it. The Pentagon reportedly plans an invasion force of no fewer than 100,000 troops. Iraqi leader Hussein likely will concentrate his loyal Republican Guard troops in and around Baghdad, with orders to fight block by block, house by house. Iraqi civilians likely will die by the thousands.
Even with conventional weapons, an invasion would risk significant American casualties on the ground. But it would not be confined to conventional weapons. Cornered and desperate, Hussein can be expected to use what Bush and Blair tell us are his considerable stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
During the gulf war, Hussein refrained from using them because he understood that putting chemical or biological warheads on his Scud missiles fired into Israel, or against allied troops in Kuwait, risked U.S. or Israeli nuclear retaliation.
Not this time. An American troop presence on Iraqi soil would effectively disable our nuclear deterrents. No threat to nuke Baghdad would be credible, because it would mean bombing our own soldiers.
With nothing to lose, Hussein would have motive and opportunity to use his weapons of mass destruction against our troops and Israeli civilians, just as he used them to kill thousands of Iranian troops and Kurdish civilians in the 1980s. As Bush recognized in his address, "An Iraqi regime faced with its own demise may attempt cruel and desperate measures."
The president's warning that Iraqi generals who carry out such orders will face prosecution is welcome, but not reassuring. Iraqi generals--even those in Hussein's family--know that to defy him means torture and death for themselves and their children. They fear Hussein far more than the uncertain prospect of prosecution.
An invasion could also push Hussein to do what he is otherwise unlikely to do--supply chemical and biological weapons to Al Qaeda. Ordinarily the secular Iraqi leader would decline to share his most precious weapons with the religious zealots of Al Qaeda for fear they would turn the weapons against him. But with his survival on the line, he may feel he has no other choice.
This sobering reality is confirmed by the CIA. An Oct. 7 letter from Director George Tenet, quoted last week in a congressional hearing, states that Hussein "for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or chemical or biological weapons against the United States." However, "should Saddam conclude that a U.S. attack could no longer be deterred he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions."
This is not the only reason an invasion would trigger increased terrorism. Al Qaeda could hardly wish for a better recruitment video than televised images of a slaughter of innocents in Baghdad.
While enhancing the terrorist threat, an invasion would simultaneously weaken our defenses. Popular protests would make it hard for Arab and Muslim governments to cooperate with Washington in arrests, extraditions and intelligence sharing. Worse, some cooperative governments could find themselves in jeopardy of being overthrown and replaced by Islamic extremists sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
Perhaps these risks will not come to pass. Maybe a smart bomb will find Hussein before things get out of hand. But war plans cannot be based on hopes for lucky breaks. Once we start a war, events will not be within our control. If the risks in the most probable scenarios are great--and they are--nothing less than an overwhelming case can justify war.
Neither Bush nor Blair makes any such case. Neither offers the slightest evidence of any imminent or specific threat of Iraqi aggression. In fact, on Oct. 2 the CIA advised Congress that the likelihood of an Iraqi attack in the foreseeable future is low.
In his address Bush was reduced to serial conjecture: Hussein "could" decide to give weapons to terrorists. That "could" lead to a terrorist attack. If Hussein obtains enriched uranium, he "could" have nuclear weapons within a year. Then he would be "in a position" to threaten us.
These are not matters to be taken lightly. Sanctions on Iraqi imports of military material must continue. Inspections should be resumed, made tougher and backed by force.
But neither sanctions nor inspections will work perfectly. The real answers are deterrence and containment--the same techniques that held Russia and China in check during the Cold War. Hussein is not suicidal. He was deterred from using chemical weapons during the gulf war, and he has been contained ever since.
Sheer speculation that in some hypothetical future he might not be deterred is no cause--in law, morality or self-interest--for us to attack him now, at great cost in Iraqi lives and American security.
Postwar problems could be even worse than the war. Iraq is sharply divided and has no democratic tradition or prospects. Unlike Hussein, a member of the Sunni Muslim minority, two-thirds of Iraqis are Shiites--like their neighbors in Iran. Already they have armed groups based in Iran. Will we be more secure if Iraq were to go the way of Iran?
A fifth of Iraqis are Kurds who long for independence in the northern region bordering Turkey. If they attempt to break away, Turkey--facing its own Kurdish separatist movement--threatens to intervene militarily.
If Hussein were toppled, separatist strife and increased terrorism could make life in Iraq and global and regional security worse, not better. The U.S. would have no choice but to occupy Iraq. Yet our record in Afghanistan and elsewhere suggests that we would resist the need, however great, for a prolonged, dangerous and expensive occupation.
War--unless public protest gives the president pause--is imminent. Weather conditions in Iraq call for an invasion no later than January or February. Hussein can still avoid it, Bush says, but only if he complies fully with tough new UN inspections, which no one in Washington expects.
The case for war is so weak that some critics suspect ulterior motives--such as wresting Iraqi oil contracts away from the French and Russians, or finishing the elder Bush's business--to explain why the president seems so hellbent on an invasion. But no ulterior motives are needed. The president and his top advisers see Iraq as a test run for their new national security strategy. Released last month, that strategy centers on the novel pretension that America, as self-appointed gendarme of the planet, is uniquely licensed to launch pre-emptive wars of its own choosing.
Iraq is indeed a test case, but one that reveals the new strategy as a prescription not for security, but for insecurity and bloodshed. Empires in the past have attempted to maintain their dominion by aggressive militarism.
None has lasted.
The United States of America should not follow in their footsteps.
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune
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Doug Cassel is the director of the Center for International Human Rights in Northwestern University's law school
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