Posted on 02/20/2003 2:27:50 PM PST by AnalogReigns
Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute.
President George W. Bush, his surrogates, and the White House's pro-war allies in Congress and the media routinely cite an array of reasons a U.S. military campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein is a good idea.
Four reasons are especially prominent in the arguments of the pro-war camp. But all of them have major, obvious flaws.
Saddam Hussein is an evil ruler who represses, tortures and murders his own people. His overthrow would be an act of liberation.
There is no doubt that Saddam is a murderous tyrant. But that characteristic does not distinguish him from several dozen other rulers around the world. If overthrowing a dictator is sufficient reason for the United States to go to war, one must ask how many other holy crusades are in our future. When does the United States attack North Korea's Kim Jong Il, Cuba's Fidel Castro, Sudan's genocidal slave-masters or Burma's murderous military junta - to name just a few of the world's most odious regimes?
The United States is supposed to be a constitutional republic. As such, the job of the U.S. military is to defend the vital security interests of the American people. U.S. troops are not armed crusaders with a mission to right all wrongs and liberate oppressed populations. American dollars are too scarce and American lives too precious for such feckless ventures.
Saddam's overthrow would trigger a democratic transformation in the Middle East, producing new regimes that would be far friendlier to both Israel and the United States.
That is a fantasy, not a realistic goal. It is highly improbable that overthrowing Saddam's regime and setting up a democratic successor in Iraq would lead to a surge of democracy in the region. Indeed, it probably wouldn't even lead to a stable, united, democratic Iraq over the long term. A U.S. occupation force would be needed for many years just to keep a client regime in power.
The harsh reality is that the Middle East has no history of democratic rule, democratic institutions or serious democratic movements. To expect stable democracies to emerge from such an environment is naive.
Moreover, even in the unlikely event that a wave of democratic revolutions swept the Middle East following the U.S. conquest of Iraq, the United States would probably not like the results. If free elections were held today in such countries as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, they would produce virulently anti-American governments.
Overthrowing Saddam would weaken the terrorist threat and intimidate other regimes that might be tempted to cooperate with terrorists.
A war with Iraq is likely to have the opposite effect. It would serve as a recruiting poster for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida. However much Americans might believe that an attack on Iraq is justified, it would be perceived throughout the Islamic world as aggressive U.S. imperialism. That perception would be intensified if the United States occupies Iraq for an extended period and takes control of the country's oil resources.
As far as intimidating other regimes is concerned, if the U.S. ouster of the Taliban government in Afghanistan did not show how perilous it is to harbor anti-American terrorists, it is not apparent how overthrowing the Iraqi government would convey that message with greater clarity.
If we do not oust Saddam, Iraq will someday use its weapons of mass destruction to blackmail the United States, or even worse, will pass along such weapons to al-Qaida, which will use them against American targets.
The United States successfully deterred the likes of Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong - two brutal and erratic rulers. And those dictators possessed nuclear, not just chemical and biological, weapons, whereas there is no credible evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear weapons program. The pro-war faction has never explained why the United States cannot deter a garden-variety thug like Saddam Hussein.
Saddam and the other members of the Iraqi political elite know that threatening, much less attacking, the United States would be an act of suicide. Young, useful idiots like the Sept. 11 terrorists may be suicidal, but rulers of countries almost never are. Iraq's rulers know that attacking the United States would lead to an annihilating counterstroke from the world's largest nuclear arsenal.
Nor is it likely that Iraq would pass along chemical or biological weapons to al-Qaida. Evidence of a connection between Baghdad and al-Qaida is flimsy at best.
Moreover, Saddam knows that he would be at the top of a very short list of suspects as the source of such a weapon if al-Qaida detonated one against an American target.
The only circumstance under which Saddam might pass a weapon to al-Qaida is if the United States invades Iraq because he would then have nothing to lose.
Going to war is serious business. The issue is not whether Iraq has cooperated sufficiently with U.N. inspectors or complied with U.N. resolutions. The issue is not whether the Iraqi people and the Middle East region would be better off without Saddam Hussein. The issue is not even whether Iraq possesses chemical or biological weapons. The only pertinent issue is whether Iraq poses a serious, imminent threat to the United States, thereby justifying pre-emptive war. The pro-war camp has utterly failed to make the case that Iraq poses such a threat.
This article originally appeared in The Orange County Register on February 2, 2003.
I disagree with Ted on the Iraq war, but I'd like to hear other FReepers refutation of his points, before I chime in.
Lets see how sharp we are....
We shouldn't attack IRAQ for the reasons stated, period.
Now we should make the moral argument for attack.
It is as follows:
1) Saddam made a deal to end the Gulf war and then he broke it. Thus, by any logical standard the war should resume..
2) The second he launched SCUD's at the Jews (who were non-combatants) and torched the Kuait oil fields during his (quick) retreat, he became a war criminal. At that point, imo.. all bets (with regard to the "power given us" under the UN resolution to remove him) were off.
I don't want to be the New Roman Empire and I don't want to base foreign policy on sketchy, arbitrary notions of "preemption"
But this guy has it coming regardless, for the reasons stated above.
It's a just war and we should see it through, but not necessarily for the reasons we have been given.
Nor is it likely that Iraq would risk its destruction by attempting to assasinate the President of the United St...oooppsss. They DID do that. Likely is not good enough any more after 9/11. Plus we know for a fact Saddam funds terrorism in Israel. Other arab nations also fund terrorists also, but Saddam is the spookiest and has been the most unpredictable.
Oh I doubt he (Saddam) would even bother sending his weapons to al-Qaida; I think he would launch them himself at the invading US troops or at Israel. As the author said: he would then have nothing to lose.
I read today that Saddam has been sending and hiding his WMDs in friendly neighboring states (Syria). Are we then going to invade Syria?
The issue is not whether Iraq has cooperated sufficiently with U.N. inspectors or complied with U.N. resolutions.
Yes, it is.
The issue is not even whether Iraq possesses chemical or biological weapons. The only pertinent issue is whether Iraq poses a serious, imminent threat to the United States, thereby justifying pre-emptive war.
Yes, it is the issue. They are NOT supposed to have those weapons. Iraq was supposed to DISARM.
The pro-war camp has utterly failed to make the case that Iraq poses such a threat.
I guess this guy does not pay attention to the news. Saddam doesn't pose a threat??? What a moron.
Must ask the author's question then: how many holy crusades are we in for?
We heard this prior to invading Afghanistan to remove the most Islamist and extreme of any arab regime on the planet, the Taliban. Where is the condemnation and arab rage on the streets? Hhhmmm... No self respecting Arab is going to miss the very secular Saddam Hussein or his cronies. Saddam's own people want him gone and they WILL be dancing in the streets just like the happy young girls in Afghanistan who now can attend schools without fear of execution.
Yes, it is.
Careful here. If we are going to condemn Iraq for violating UN resolutions, we must also condemn Israel. Of course, a true Conservative would have long ago thumbed his nose at the UN and their globalist, unenforcable "sanctions", thereby eliminating that as an excuse.
This may be true, but I doubt they will embrace a US invading force with open arms either. They have a flaky and fickle history, the Arabs. When the English and Americans landed in North Africa in 1942, and freed it from the French, Arabs cheered the invaders because they thought it was the Nazis. Probably says more about the French than anything else, but it shows how fickle the Arabs can be.
What's "pre-emptive" about it? We've been bombing Iraq since 1998, relating to WMD.
The war/no war dichotomy is misleading. Let me give you three possibilities.
1. Pull out of the region. Saddam gets all he wants, our Kurdish allies get genocided by the returning Iraqi army, etc.
2. Continue the "War of Containment" for lack of another word. Enforce flightzones, maintain forces in the region, continue bombings, ad infinitum. Iraqi people suffer on and on. We keep paying, our "allies" make craven deals and stab us in the back.
3. Finish the war. This was always talked about, but there was no political will, or enough focus, until 9/11.
.
I see often in these articles references to and pleas about "history" and the like. Yet they don't examine the actual history. I suspect he knows it, but omits it because it would not make his essay palatable, and would highlight that he does not discuss the consequences of applying his own postion.
Well there is a problem right there...
Isreal is a democratic nation and quite stable in spite of the genocidal arabs and the villainous United (League of) Nations.
Egypt and Turkey I believe are republican forms of government. The Iranian Student movements are gaining strength against the Fascism instituted by the Carter Administration.
I see no reason to abandon the Middle East to Totalitarianism when better options are available. Even if you have to use force to liberate an oppressed people.
I will offer one more point concerning the physical presence of a post-Saddam regime with a significant American military force in the heart of the Middle East bordering Iran and Saudi Arabia.
At best, this is an effective presence to influence other countries and protect pro-American regimes (following the model in Europe and Asia). At worst, this presents the Islamic authoritarian/militant/terrorists with fighting on two fronts (Isreal and Afghanistan/Iraq) and moving the threat to them closer to home with a greater ability to interdict operations against the homefront.
As a member of the armed forces, I would rather be an armed target in the Middle East for our enemies, than allowing those I am sworn to defend remain targets unopposed in the US.
This is an excellent strategic point. I just wonder what Israel is providing to the US for taking some of the heat off of them.
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