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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rascal who wrote (109517)	8/3/2003 5:00:13 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 281500

Bait and Switch: The Neocon Case for War in Iraq __________________ Editorial The Minneapolis - St Paul Star Tribune Thursday 31 July 2003 In an appearance Tuesday before a skeptical Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz declared that "the peace in Iraq is now the central battle in the war on terror." That same refrain has begun to pop up in statements by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- as well as the neoconservative thinkers and writers who provide the intellectual framework for this administration's approach to foreign and defense policies. It begins to get down to the bedrock rationale for going to war in Iraq. Strands of that rationale have been around for years, but they weren't given public emphasis -- not in the 2000 presidential campaign and not in the prewar debate about whether to invade Iraq. If you piece together those strands, the rationale, prewar, went like this: Saddam Hussein is a brutal tyrant who routinely thumbs his nose at the United States. His interest in weapons of mass destruction -- if not his possession of them -- is well-established, meaning he may become a threat to the United States and its friends at some point. Moreover, he is in violation of numerous U.N. Security Council resolutions. The United States can make a case for ousting him by military force -- a case that can't be made for any other Middle East leader. So Saddam's the guy. Removing Saddam will do a number of positive things. In his place the United States and friends can build a peaceful, prosperous, democratic, secular state in Iraq. That in turn will be a powerful catalyst for promoting change and reform throughout the Islamic world. Oppressive, corrupt regimes will become vulnerable because people across the region will want what the Iraqi people now have. And Islamic reform is key to removing the conditions that breed terrorism. There's also what is called the "flypaper" or "magnet" effect, to which Bush spoke with his famous "Bring 'em on" statement. The idea is that the presence of tens of thousands of American military personnel on the ground in Iraq will make them a magnet for terrorists from around the world. It will pull terrorists away from Israel and the United States to Iraq, where U.S. forces can safely engage them in full-fledged combat and defeat them. Those American forces also are likely to embolden reformist elements next door in Iran, threatening the rule of the oppressive, America-hating mullahs. On the other side of Iraq, in Syria, terrorist groups such as Hezbollah are likely also to get the message that they'd best behave, lest they too get whacked by the Americans. That's the neocon theory, and there is evidence that pieces of it are indeed working. But pieces are not: Witness the warning that also came Tuesday of a new airliner hijacking threat in the United States and overseas. Note also that in his appearance before the Senate committee, Wolfowitz and others declined repeated efforts by frustrated Democrats and Republicans to estimate the cost of occupying Iraq, how long it might take or even how many troops it might require. "Oh, come on now," responded Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., the ranking Democrat. "Does anyone here at the table think we're going to be down below 100,000 forces in the next calendar year? When are you guys starting to be honest with us?" The larger question is why those guys weren't honest with Congress and the American people before the war started. Why did they focus almost exclusively on the supposedly imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction? Why not lay out their far more nuanced, ambitious neocon theory about projecting American values into the Middle East and thus beginning a regional transformation? Wolfowitz has said the WMD rationale was chosen for "bureaucratic" reasons; it was the one factor everyone could agree on. But other neocon writers hint it was for a different reason: They knew they couldn't sell their vision -- not to traditional conservatives, as George Will has made clear; not to most liberals, and not to the nonideological middle which would balk at the cost in dollars and human life. So they gussied up the "imminent threat" posed by Iraq's WMD programs and rode that argument into war. The neocon theory is interesting and complex. It's like a new theory for solving a scientific question. New theories need grueling examination by peers who try to knock holes in them before they are accepted as the basis for action. They also need to be explained, patiently and with precision, so the public can know what it is being asked to purchase with the lives if its kids and its money. The neocon foreign policy agenda got neither a thorough vetting nor public explication -- because its authors apparently thought the American people wouldn't understand it or wouldn't buy it. Instead, the neocons pulled a classic, and very arrogant, bait and switch. Sooner or later, they're going to pay for it. truthout.org