Posted on 08/28/2002 1:17:12 PM PDT by aculeus
Saddam is not crazy to want them. That's the reason he must go.
The growing debate on invading Iraq hinges on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Opponents of invasion discount the existing threat by arguing that A) he is not crazy enough to use them against us, and B) if he doesn't use them, what threat are they?
The response to A is we do not know that Saddam is sane enough never to use them against us, and it is not a proposition that we should wish to test by giving him yet more time to acquire them. Saddam has acted with supreme irrationality in the past, from launching a catastrophic war against Iran in 1980 to forfeiting half a dozen opportunities offered to him in 1990 to extricate himself with advantage from Kuwait. In the annals of tyranny and on the scale of capricious savagery, he ranks somewhere between Caligula and Mao. There's not much percentage in counting on the rationality of such gentlemen.
Which brings us to objection B: What use are weapons of mass destruction anyway? Well, we had a quite extraordinary demonstration of their efficacy this summer. Just a few weeks ago, India and Pakistan appeared on the verge of war. It never happened. Not only did the feared war not go nuclear, but it did not even go conventional. Why? Many reasons, but perhaps the most important was, paradoxically, the nukes themselves. India made clear that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons. Pakistan, however, did not follow suit. "We ... do not subscribe to a no-first-use doctrine," declared Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S.
Why? Simply put, because Pakistan is the weaker party. And the weaker party, if nuclear capable, invariably holds out the threat of nuclear war as a way to deter conventional attack.
Pakistan was saying to India, You have a much stronger army. You could probably launch a war and overrun not just Kashmir but much of Pakistan as well. That is why we built our nuclear arsenal. Of course, we do not want to use it. But if you overrun us, we just might strike first. Think about it.
India did. The iron law of the nuclear age is this: nuclear weapons are instruments of madness; their actual use would be a descent into madness, but the threat to use them is not madness. On the contrary, it is exceedingly logical.
During the cold war, the U.S. also threatened first use of nuclear weapons. The Soviets fielded a huge conventional army that could have overrun Western Europe. The U.S. response was not to match the Soviets with countless tank divisions but to threaten nuclear retaliation against a conventional attack.
This is known as the doctrine of extended deterrence. It is "extended" because it was not American nukes deterring Soviet nukes in protection of the American homeland; it was American nukes extended in their deterrence to provide an umbrella for Europe against nonnuclear attack.
At home, first use provoked protest from the pacifist left, most dramatically against President Reagan, who was portrayed as a nuclear cowboy. This was silly. The doctrine of first use made perfect sense. It kept the peace. It also demonstrated the peculiar utility of otherwise unusable nuclear weapons: to deter a conventional attack.
That is precisely why today we cannot allow bad guys like Saddam to get their hands on nukes: not merely because a crazed Saddam might actually use them on us but also because a rational Saddam, one not interested in committing suicide by attacking us out of the blue with nukes, could nonetheless use them as accessories to aggression.
How? Imagine that Israel had not destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. What would have happened when Iraq invaded Kuwait? With a nuclear arsenal at Saddam's disposal, would the U.S. have attacked? As it was, war against a nonnuclear Iraq was authorized by the U.S. Senate by a mere five votes. Had Saddam had nukes in 1991, he would probably today be king of all Arabia.
We are in a race against time. Were Iraq to acquire a deliverable nuclear weapon, it would gain a measure of invulnerability. This is not because its nuclear arsenal could ever match America's but because the threat of just a few nuclear weapons, delivered by missile or terrorist to, say, New York City or San Francisco, would allow an aggressor to commit whatever depredations he fancied, calculating that America would be deterred from intervening with its otherwise overwhelming conventional power.
Nukes are not weapons of insanity. They have a logic. The U.S. showed it during the cold war. Pakistan showed it this year. Saddam would like to show it tomorrow. Which is why time is short. Nukes do not have to explode to be useful. Their value lies in mere possession. Possession creates an umbrella of inviolability. And there is nothing more dangerous than an inviolable aggressor.
Japan rebuilt Hiroshima and Nagasaki immediately after the war.
Hiroshima is now a thriving metropolis exceeding 1.1 million in population, Nagasaki is around 450K.
If Krauthammer wants to nuke & rebuild Baghdad, fine by me.
I won't shed any tears over Saddam Hussein, that's for sure.
But IMHO, we oughta go after Havana and liberate Cuba first...
clean up our own back yard.
What makes you think this offer hasn't already been made? Simple logic indicates that every top level person in Iraq has already been approached. The rewards accruing to the group(s) that takes him down will be tremendous.
Exactly. And thank G-d it is us.
My preference is to develop peaceful applications of nuclear power and electric mass-transportation systems so that we may tell the OPEC camel jockeys to take their oil and stuff-it where the sun don't shine. The nomadic tribes of the Middle East have been at each other's throats since the dawn of recorded history. Nothing we do is going to change that, and I'd just as soon keep our noses out of the region. The only thing that interests me there are the ancient, historical artifacts.
If Krauthammer wants to nuke'em, fine, nuke'em.
It's not gonna change anything, they'll only grow back like weeds.
What a difference four years makes. Scott Ritter in 1998.
He has totally flip-flopped his position since then. Reminds me of David Brock.
You got that right; but, it was a much worse mistake to allow him to stop the weapons inspections during the Clinton administration without having severe repercussions. After all, the cessation of hostilities in the Gulf War was predicated on his agreement to allow inspections unfettered.
I agree, but "moral equivalency" in these matters is usually dictated by the winners whether they are inherently right or inherently wrong.
Unless I'm mistaken, there are things known as treaties between countries that obligate one country to step up to the aid of another in such situations. And I think the U.S. and Kuwait had such treaties legally in effect.
Also, I'd be interested to see where in U.S. or international law it is stated that the United States is permitted or mandated to act as the world's "policeman."
He is a tyrant, a mass murderer, and a gambler. Those are not qualities anyone wants in a man with nuclear weapons.
;>)
My response to this statement will be the exact same response I gave back in the 1980s as an audience member in a high school debate on nuclear proliferation. Ironically, I was addressing this statement to the "liberal" speaker who was taking the typical "no nukes!" stand that was so popular among leftists at the time.
For many years, nations fought wars using bows, arrows, armored men on horses, and other hand-held weapons. When someone came along and invented a gun and this new type of weapon became the standard weapon of battle, nobody stood up and suggested that there was a moral imperative to abandon the gun and go back to the old weapons.
While the U.S. certainly has a vested interest in keeping any weapons out of "the wrong hands," the principles that guide this nation should not change simply because the potency of the weapon in question has changed. It is worth noting that this world has progressed from zero nuclear powers, to one nuclear power, to two, and so on until there are now a number of nations with nuclear arsenals of some kind. Ironically, the only time a nuclear weapon was ever used during the course of a war was when there was only one nuclear power.
Another irony, from my perspective, is that the United States expressed alarm about nuclear proliferation every time it was believed that another nation was close to developing a nuclear weapon, and yet Iraq is the first case is which the U.S. has decided that the use of force would be an approporiate deterrent.
Maybe I'm naive, but something about this whole "weapons of mass destruction" excuse really stinks to high heaven.
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