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October 8, 2002War For Frivolous ReasonsThis is being written before President Bush’s address to the nation Monday night, but news reports say he doesn’t expect to deliver any startling new evidence beyond what has already been widely reported. He seems to think that what is already known about Saddam Hussein – that he is a thoroughly nasty dictator who has attacked his neighbors in the past and has weapons of mass destruction – is plenty of reason to attack him, or at least to insist that he submit to US and UN demands. Are
those reasons – and a few others that will be detailed – sufficient?
One hopes it is still worthwhile to discuss the question seriously. Just
for my own sanity I prefer to take President Bush at his word, that
he hasn’t yet decided on military action – although there’s evidence
to the contrary and if he hasn’t it seems curious that he would
be demanding that Congress give him authority to undertake it. So
I continue to hope that discussion and debate have at least some
chance of at least altering the course on which so many war-whoopers
would have us embark: an invasion of Iraq as soon as possible followed
by a search for other targets of opportunity. It
is at least mildly encouraging to see demonstrations against a war
with Iraq in major American cities, although it would be nice to
see slogans geared toward invoking solidarity with ordinary middle-class
Americans rather than demonstrating breast-beating radicalism and
disdain for the United States as a country. Most Americans understand
that it is possible – and in the United States something of a tradition
– to love the country and despise the government currently inhabiting
Washington. When war protestors slip into outright and even virulent
anti-Americanism, I suspect they do the cause more harm than good. On
the other hand, it’s generally the case that in the early stages
of a foreign conflict most Americans will not be inclined to become
activists until the conflict is well under way, body bags are coming
home in significant numbers, and/or they or their sons and daughters
are in imminent peril of being drafted to serve against their will.
It’s easy to forget
that there was very little antiwar activism during the early stages
of the Vietnam War, and that most media and politicians supported
the adventure almost uncritically until about 1967. Those
willing to go out and demonstrate before a war has begun (depending
on how you define "war" and "begun," of course,
which are questions worth pursuing in the current circumstances
but not in this article) are likely to be either the most stubbornly
principled or the most flamboyantly radical. That’s just part of
the politico-social dynamic. The
early protestors, then, might do some things that will embarrass
other critics of war or intervention, but it’s still nice to see
them out there. And because much of the media are populated by people
who are sorry they missed out on the 1960s, they are likely to get
at least superficially sympathetic treatment – at least until the
first incident of unjustified violence, which is probably inevitable
though I hope it never happens. DEVELOPING
CRITERIA Going to war, which means asking other peoples’ sons and daughters to be prepared to kill and be killed and unleashing death and destruction on human beings and various structures and assets (including, in this case, clues to the very birth of human civilization) is a serious business. Despite
attempts by some political leaders, to some extent with the acquiescence
of most of the media, to suggest otherwise, it is not a video game.
Real people and real resources will be destroyed. It should therefore
be entered into, if it is to be done, with a certain amount of solemnity
and seriousness – and only if it is fully justified by the circumstances. I
know all this sounds terribly obvious, like an introduction to a
political science course at the 101 level. But I’m afraid these
admonitions bear repeating. During the eight years I spent in Washington,
DC, including several years as a congressional staffer, some of
it during the latter stages of the Vietnam war, I met very few decision-makers
who had actually been to war. And very few of those making decisions
today (with exceptions) have actually experienced the stench of
death on the battlefield. I’m
not going to fall into the trap of saying that only those with combat
experience (which, I’ll admit, I lack) are qualified to make decisions
about war and peace. But it should be helpful to have at least some
people with that kind of experience in positions of authority or
influence. In Washington it is very easy to view the virtual backstabbing
(which
can in fact be rather devastating to those who are victimized) and
daily power-mongering game-playing that is the daily fare in the
Imperial City as the essence of real conflict. It can be easy to
forget that one’s decisions in the rarefied air there have real
consequences for real people outside the parochial confines of the
capital. So
what kind of criteria would justify going to war? Obviously, an
outright attack on US soil would provide a justification, perhaps
even a mandate. Although I would contend that the United States
ought to bring most of its troops home from their imperial outposts,
assuming that won’t happen, an attack on US troops overseas would
be tantamount to a declaration of war and would demand a response. What
about an attack by Iraq on one of its neighbors? Iraq did invade
and occupy Kuwait in 1990 (most likely after getting a wink-and-nod
from the US that we would look the other way, but leave that aside
for now) and the United States, after being beseeched by the Emir
and his family and friends, went to war to rectify the situation.
Was that war justifiable? I wasn’t in favor of it at the time, but
I will concede that it followed a demonstration that the Iraqi regime
was capable, in a very concrete way, of being a threat to the neighborhood. BANKING
ON POTENTIAL THREATS Has
the Iraqi regime demonstrated since then that it is much of a threat?
No doubt it has resisted the mandates and sanctions imposed on it
by various UN resolutions, although as I have noted previously,
those resolutions, by their very nature and by the nature of the
UN, are nowhere near so unambiguous and definite as the president
and his cohorts would like to suggest. They have ambiguities and
wiggle-room, as almost all diplomatic instruments do. That
may well be why the administration is pushing so hard to get a new
resolution from the UN that will involve further demands on Saddam
Hussein and his regime. The old resolutions – whose ambiguities
have been exploited without getting the "international community"
into much of a tizzy for 11 years – simply aren’t as specific
as what the current administration would like to demand of Saddam
– utterly unfettered access, inspectors backed by troops on
the ground, the right to blow up anything that even has the potential
to be used to build a weapon sometime in the future. The previous resolutions, at least as interpreted by the US and Great Britain, did impose a more stringent regime of inspection and control on Iraq than has ever been imposed on any defeated enemy in modern times, certainly more than was required of Japan or Germany after World War II. But
it still wasn’t as much control as the current administration would
like to demand over Saddam. Are those demands a pretext for a war
that is already in the works? The possibility is certainly open. The
inconvenient facts remain. Over the last 11 years Saddam, while
undoubtedly still thoroughly nasty to the Iraqis, has not attacked
his neighbors. He is almost certainly weaker than he was 11 years
ago militarily. Despite a year of full-court press activity by US
and British intelligence to develop some trace of evidence, there
seems to be no connection between Saddam and the terrorists who
attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon – and despite
an occasional outwardly friendly meeting, the secular regime of
Saddam and the militant Islamists have different
goals in the world and are generally suspicious of one another. Saddam
may well hate the United States and grit his teeth nightly wishing
there were some way he could destroy us and all we stand for. But
as a genuine threat to the United States – or even to his neighbors,
except for the possibility of lobbing a few missiles at Israel,
which would be more likely if the US invaded than if it didn’t –
he makes a pretty pitiful enemy. Based on his history, there’s even
some question as to whether he has a real ambition to rule the Middle
East. No
doubt he would like to be more influential in the region, and it
is quite possible that he would do more nasty things in other countries
if he thought he could pull them off without effective opposition.
But in fact he
is reasonably well boxed in. The evidence that he is becoming more
dangerous is scant at best. PRE-EMPTIVE
OR PREVENTIVE Let
me restate what I discussed more thoroughly in
a previous column. There is a difference between a pre-emptive
and a preventive war. A pre-emptive war – long justified in
international relations theory (I’m not sure it’s reasonable to
speak of "international law" as something real) –
can be undertaken in response to an imminent and obvious threat,
such as a neighbor who has been making threats massing troops on
your border and jamming your military communications channels. When
the threat, in short, is something almost certain to be perpetrated
in a matter of hours or days – weeks at the most – it is possible
to talk of a pre-emptive war or attack. And few would question the
justification of a country that undertook to strike first, if it
could, when aware of that kind of immediate threat. The
most "imminent" threat I have heard about regarding Iraq
is that if he can obtain fissile material (which most authorities
don’t think he has now but which might well be available for a high
price on the international black market) he might be able to develop
a nuclear weapon that just might, if all the circumstances were
just right, be available to blackmail his neighbors or threaten
the United States, in a year. Even in that scenario there are a
lot of "what ifs," along with the likelihood that US intelligence
(even though it hasn’t exactly displayed the highest levels of
competence lately) would become aware of it before it was imminent.
A raid like the Israeli raid of the early 1980s could probably then
eliminate or delay it for years. And there are hundreds of ways
even a determined Iraqi
regime could slip up, even if we were sure it was working assiduously
to acquire nuclear weapons, which we can’t be sure is the case. That
is a potential threat. A war to neutralize a potential threat –
one based on conjecture and worst-case scenarios rather than justified
by solid knowledge of an imminent threat – is a preventive war.
A preventive war is not the kind of thing a civilized country in
a regime of co-equal sovereign states does. It is the kind of thing
an empire does to keep a rebellious or fitful colony or dependent
in line – whether or not the relationship is formal or the dependency
it acknowledged on both sides. Unless he surprises me, that is the kind of war President Bush will be touting. I prefer to believe such a war is not inevitable, because it would change the United States of America, a country whose traditions and stated ideals I love, into a country I would not recognize. – Alan Bock
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