The
Path
to the Wrong War
It is an interesting sensation for a country to be persuaded into an armed conflict that it feels is unwise. The Congress has reservations, the people don't think it's necessary, the experts warn it will be disastrous, and even hardcore conservatives are arguing against it. Yet George Bush Jr. is defying the people, is claiming constitutional powers he does not have, and is ignoring the advice of even those in his own party, not to mention common sense as well, and is steadfastly driving an unwilling nation into a war it doesn't want.
The arguments for getting Saddam out of power are easy: he's a dangerous madman, and we could overwhelm the Iraqi military. But the question is not should Saddam go, or could we win in a limited conflict: the question is, how can we do this without bringing about catastrophe? Imagine that rats have infested your home. There is no question that they must go; but do you exterminate them by taking a flamethrower to the building? Method is crucial.
But method seems completely unimportant to Bush Jr., who seems to want this war at any cost, under any terms, so long as it is war on Saddam that he gets.
Let's take a look at the argument against, shall we?
First is international support. There is none. A coalition is vital to carrying out an armed conflict in the Middle East, and not only is there no coalition, but it appears that at this point, a coalition would be impossible to form. This is primarily due to Bush Jr.'s poisoning of the well; from the start, he has disrespected world opinion, breaking treaties left and right, and has pushed forth self-serving agendas without any concern that it was generating outrage around the globe. Add to this the fact that Bush started promising war on Iraq without any consultation with our allies, and you have an atmosphere in which no one would want to support us.
The immediately obvious repercussion of the go-it-alone strategy is cost: This war could easily cost $80 billion, probably much more than that. Bush Jr. has already snatched a huge deficit from the jaws of a surplus, and the country can ill-afford to pay for a costly war all by itself. We're already in big budget trouble, helping to push us into deeper into recession, but a war paid for by the U.S. alone could aggravate the national debt substantially; Bush Jr., in just the course of a few years, could erase more than a decade of red-ink recovery and send us into deficits that would dwarf those of the 80's.
But the cost would not simply be financial: we would also pay in terms of lost reputation, international respect and influence in world affairs. This is hard and vital currency for the United States, and its value would be decimated if Bush Jr. started a conflict in the Middle East that everyone, even his own people, disagreed with. Future presidents would be saddled by the body blow to our prestige, likely needing decades to repair the damage and to rebuild worldwide confidence and trust. This kind of irresponsible action could remove us from our already precarious seat of world leadership.
It would also shred our own values and long-held respected policies, most importantly the policy not to strike first without provocation. And sorry, but an alleged meeting between a terrorist and an Iraqi agent coupled with completely unsubstantiated reports that Saddam could develop nukes "any time now" does not qualify as "provocation." We do not, as a nation, attack other nations simply because we think that maybe, at some future time, they could attack us in some way. Bush Jr. and Cheney warn about the penalty of waiting for someone to hurt us first, but the reason why we have held exactly that policy for so long is because it is the right thing to do. Would you teach your children to sucker-punch other kids based on the suspicion that the other kid might have started a fight later? Do you go around town shooting people you suspect might at some point break into your home? Sure, the children your kid punches out might be mean, and the people you gun down might be criminals\but it is not how we do things. Believe it or not, we wait for provocation, and then we fight. Not a moment before. We pay a price, as we always do, for our principles, but the price of abandoning those principles would be far higher.
In addition, if we toss aside this policy, it will provide justification for others around the world to follow suit. Consider India and Pakistan, as only one of many examples. Each of these countries has far more justification for invading the other than Bush Jr. has for invading Iraq. Each can point out that the other is not just developing nuclear weapons, but that they actually have them; each could call the other's actions "terrorist," and identify them as a clear and present danger. The policy of the pre-emptive strike is one that would be the father of countless wars and the orphan of peace.
In addition to the wars the policy itself would spawn, there is also the specter of Armageddon rising in the Middle East as a direct result of a U.S. invasion. Already relations are tense, not helped by the confusion and neglect that the Bush administration has used to turn a region grasping for peace into a region torn by escalating conflict and little hope for even a cease-fire. But if the U.S. should invade with opposition from the Arab states, the hope for any peace of any kind will die a swift death. Contrary to the rosy the-Arabs-will-love-us-for-saving-them pipe dream that Cheney has been hawking, the Arab people do not and never have reacted kindly to U.S. intervention, even when their governments allow it; should we go in with everyone opposing us, tempers will flare further still. Cheney argued that "extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad." Is he truly so utterly naive? An unsupported attack by America on an Arab nation would generate such fear and hostility in so many people that extremists would be swamped with volunteers willing to die for their cause. It would fire the call for a greater jihad, not frighten the extremists into impotency. Conflict is the friend of the terrorist.
And let us not forget the Israeli part of the equation: an attack by the U.S. would, without question, be answered by Iraq with missile attacks on Israel, just as it was in the Gulf War. The difference will be that this time, Israel will not sit back and take it without acting\they will retaliate, and that retaliation will bring outrage and reprisals from the Arab world. If it was unwise for Israel to answer an Iraqi attack in the Gulf War, when the Arab states supported the action against Iraq, how will an Israeli attack on an Arab nation be received now? It will be an open invitation to a region-wide conflict, with nuclear strikes being a highly likely result.
Are these not good enough reasons to avoid invading Iraq now, as Bush Jr. wants so badly? If not, let's continue, and now examine the justifications being forwarded by the administration for the invasion. As stated earlier, that Saddam is evil and we would be better off without him is not sufficient as cause, if the invasion stands to cause far more damage tha Iraq could ever cause on his own. We must have justification for an attack that enough nations would accept to form a coalition\and we do not have it.
Cheney recently asserted that "many of us are convinced that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. Just how soon, we cannot really gauge." In other words, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iraq is even working on nuclear weapons. Maybe they are, but if they are, we have no data to substantiate that claim. And let us not forget that we were fooled before: during the Gulf War, the Bush Sr. administration frightened us with the claim of a nuclear Iraq\but a 1992 study by atomic experts looking at International Atomic Energy Agency data revealed that Iraq never came close to building a bomb. With the claims being weaker now than they were then, we would be naive to presume that Cheney or anyone else spouting that rhetoric is not lying through their teeth. Remember the old admonition: "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."
Next is the Bush Jr. claim of legal authority to wage war without congressional approval. We already know that Bush Jr. could care less what the people want (specifically, he said, "People should be allowed to express their opinion [sic]. But America needs to know, I'll be making up my mind based upon the latest intelligence and how best to protect our own country plus our friends and allies." In other words, screw the people, I decide things around here.) Bush Jr.'s claim to legal action is dubious at best. His lawyers claim that as Commander-in-Chief, he has the right to use the military to invade foreign countries and topple their leaders. But the Constitution only says he is Commander-in-Chief, period--it says nothing about him being able to start wars. (See Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 if you don't believe me.) To the contrary, the Constitution specifically grants those powers to the Congress alone. In Article I, Section 8, it clearly grants Congress the power to declare war and other military actions (Clause 11), to "make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces" (Clause 14), and to "provide for calling forth the Militia [National Guard] to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions" (Clause 15). Any "legal authority" for the president to start wars without consent is manufactured, and if based on precedent, it is not supported by the constitution. Congress has attempted to reclaim this native power, most notably with the War Powers Act of 1973, but presidents always disregard it and Congress, not wanting to appear unpatriotic in the face of popular conflicts, has backed down. But like I said, look it up for yourself. The constitution is widely available on the Internet via many sites, like this one. Seems pretty clearly stated to me.
As for the justification that Congress gave Bush carte blanche to fight the war on terrorism, the links between Hussein and terrorists is weak at best. Hussein is a scumbag to be sure, but so far there is not much to suggest that he is involved in terrorist organizations; it is possible to be evil and yet not be part of al Qaeda. Even the death of the famed terrorist Abu Nidal in Iraq was twisted by the administration's spin doctors as somehow being evidence that Iraq is working with terrorists. Pardon me for being skeptical, but do you really garner terrorist support by killing their leaders?
And then we come to the end game: what is the exit strategy? How long will it take? How many of our troops will die? How many Iraqis (whom the Bush Jr. administration claims to be acting to benefit) will we end up killing? How long will our troops be there? How deeply will we become involved in rooting out everyone there who violently disagrees with our occupation? And how will the nation-building succeed? What guarantees do we have that the moment we extract ourselves, another Saddam Hussein won't pop up again and bring us back to square one? As far as I can determine, not a single one of these questions has been answered.
If that's not enough still, then ask yourself: in the Gulf War, why did we not follow through and get Saddam then? What stopped us? There are many answers to that question, but hardly a one of them is less valid today than it was a decade ago. What stopped us then will not stop us any less today.
And do not forget to ask, "why now?" Why the immediate interest in invading Iraq at this specific time? Why not anytime since the 80's, when we knew Iraq had developed and was using chemical weapons, and later when we found that Hussein was trying to build biological and nuclear weapons? Why not any time since the Gulf War? Why not when Bush Jr. first took office, and knew as much then about Iraq as now? Why not just after 9-11, when world support was stronger? What is the sudden emergency in the late summer of 2002? The truth of the matter is, there is no more reason to invade Iraq now than there has been in the past decade and more. The only likely reason for the timing is, as I have argued before, because Bush Jr.'s poll numbers are dropping and an election is coming soon. He got addicted to the blind and unquestioning obedience he commanded after 9-11, and he finds his ability to dictate political policy in the nation is beginning to fail. His false sheen of greatness is beginning to fade. And he knows full well that a war in Iraq would help resurrect the unparalleled power and popularity he has enjoyed. No other rationale for an immediate attack makes sense, and no other cause for such irrational and vehement war-mongering is as convincing as the argument that Bush needs another hit from his brand new addiction.
A little more than two weeks ago, I wrote an article which laid out some of these arguments, before the arguments became popular in the patriotism-emasculated media. Little did I suspect that bastions of conservatism such as James Baker (a.k.a. the Thief of Miami-Dade), Lawrence Eagleburger, and Brent Scowcroft would soon be publicly arguing many of the exact same points. Even Norman Schwarzkopf, whom many would consider a bit of an expert on the topic, has spoken out against this folly. And most believe that none of these people would be speaking publicly if it were without the consent of none other than George Bush Sr. It would appear that even Daddy himself disagrees with his son.
Saddam must go, and he will, but at the proper time and in the proper manner. He will not go to serve the political interests of the most dangerous president to disgrace the office in recent memory, and he will not go in a war that will burn the region in nuclear fire. We may have to wait until Bush Jr. has been safely removed from office before it will be possible to do this the right way, and if that is too long, Bush Jr. will stand responsible for having wrecked the opportunity to do this the right way in time to stop any harm.