A Thinking Reed

WMD hide and seek

Written by

Lee M.

in

Hey, we found WMD in Iraq! Oh wait, not really.

This may put me on the fringe (if I wasn’t there already), but I always thought the WMD business was a red herring in the first place. I recall reading an article Gregg Easterbrook wrote back in 2002 – in The New Republic of all places – arguing that “WMD” conflates biological and chemical weapons, which are very difficult to weaponize and use effectively to kill large numbers of people, with nuclear weapons, and that only the latter really deserve to be called weapons of mass descruction. And even before the war, the evidence that Saddam had an advanced nuclear program was scanty at best. So I was never prepared to concede that the mere possession of “WMD” was sufficient grounds for war.

In focusing so much on the WMD issue, anti-war people may have actually made a tactical error since they’ve effectively conceded that possession of WMD would justify war if there had actually been any.

Comments

8 responses to “WMD hide and seek”

  1. CPA

    I would agree on both points.

    Reply
  2. Lee

    CPA – I’m surprised to hear you say that. I take it you think there were other sufficent reasons for the Iraq war unrelated to the WMD claims?

    Reply
  3. Chip Frontz

    Before the NYTimes made us pay for him (boo!) Thomas Friedman was rather consistent in insisting that we were going to war in Iraq because we could. And he supported the invasion then (I doubt he does now).

    Reply
  4. Lee

    I remember Jonah Goldberg at National Review writing something to the effect of “every once in a while America has to pick up some crappy little country and throw it against the wall just to remind everyone that we can.”

    Of course, given how long the war has dragged out it’s looking less and less that an awe-inspiring display of American power.

    Reply
  5. Chip Frontz

    That’s what air power is for (see Libya, 1986).

    It’s a lot different when you’ve actually got to occupy somebody.

    Reply
  6. CPA

    Yes, Lee. I supported and support it for the following reasons:

    1) We made a cease-fire at the end of the first Gulf War and Saddam never fulfilled its conditions, from the very beginning. Cease-fires are contracts: you do this and we will stop shooting at you. He didn’t do what he said he would, and the expected consequence should be we start shooting again.

    2) Saddam openly supported and encouraged terrorism against the US and our allies. I’m not going to get into any “Iraq supported 9/11” or “Iraq was hand in glove with al Qaeda” scenario. But when every other country in the UN (including Cuba! Iran! North Korea!) lowers its flag after 9/11, except Iraq, that’s a crystal clear statement of intent: “If we get the chance, we’ll do the same.” In Baghdad today, the ruling class HATES terrorism, HATES al-Qaeda, HATES the whole ideology that led to 9/11, in a deep and visceral way. It’s probably the only Islamic country where that can be said to be true. And that ruling class is based more squarely on the popular consent than in any other Islamic nation. No mean achievement, I think.

    3) The alternative to regime change was either permanent blockade of Iraq or else allowing Saddam to return to the family of nations without renouncing his policies. The first was really terrible — we all forget how destructive it was.

    4) Tyrants are widespread all over the world. But as was argued during the apartheid controversy, there is something uniquely outrageous about racially or religiously based minority rule. And practically, as a Sunni Arab minority regime, Iraq was always going to be pursuing pan-Arab adventures, in order to get outside support for Sunni Arab supremacy.

    5) Strategically, our invasion of Iraq has 1) finally discredited Baathism (Arab fascism); 2) put Iran in the uncomfortable position of seeing her natural proteges (Iraq’s Shi’ites) develop strong elite-level cooperation with the US; 3) overthrown a regime that was inevitably tilting toward whichever ideology is the most virulent form of Sunni Arab supremacy — and after 9/11 that’s al Qaeda. Of course if we withdraw now, it will be a big windfall for Iran — but if we don’t its a standing ideological menace to Iran.

    6) We (non-Muslims) can’t “reform Islam”. But we can do our best to empower 1) non-Muslims in the Islamic world, and 2) non-mainstream Muslims (Shi’ites, Sufis, etc.), and let them speak up. Where to start? How about a country ruled by a mass-murdering, international outlaw Sunni clique suppressing a Shi’ite majority? If we can’t challenge Sunni supremacy there, then we might as well admit we’re not ready to challenge it anywhere. And since Sunni supremacy is what caused 9/11, that’s throwing in the towel.

    Reply
  7. Joshie

    CPA, with all due respect, in regard to your picture of the “ruling elite” in Iraq, you are completely delusional.

    There is only an Iraqi government on paper and in Baghdad. Outside of those two places the country is ruled by the militias. All this talk of purging the police force of militias is naive. The Police force IS the militias. Iraq, far from becoming the US or Canada as some comedians have joked about, is well on it’s way to becoming Afghanistan or Somalia.

    I take that back. There is actually hope for peace in Somalia now that the provional government and the Islamic courts movement are negotiating. In Iraq there is only civil war in the forseeable future.

    And the Iranians are hardly shaking in their boots. Their man Sisatni is the same guy we’ve been touting as the hope for peace in Iraq. We’ve handed them Iraq on a silver platter. Ironically, our only hope for keeping Iraq out of the Iranian sphere is if Al-Sadr, who hates Sisatni, moves into Sistani’s place as the pre-eminent Shia leader.

    Saddam was a bloodthirsty thug, but at least under his rule women could be educated and be work outside the home freely and Christians were allowed to worship freely (or at least as freely as anybody else). Hell, there was even a Catholic in Saddam’s cabinet, Tariq Aziz! Think either of those things will happen in this new “free” Iraq? Not Bloody likely.
    Finally, you discriptions of Iraq in items five and six sound much more like Saudi Arabia our “ally” who helped create the Taliban (with our other “ally” Pakistan) and helped create Al Qaeda. If it’s about how bad a country is and how much they export and support terrorism, why didn’t we invade Saudi Arabia? But of course we all know thw answer to that.

    I think an arguement could be made for the war, even now. But let’s “keep it real” as the kids say, huh?

    Reply
  8. Lee

    I’m not going to offer a point-by-point response to CPA – partly because I see that according to his (excellent, BTW) blog he’s off on a trip for the next month or so and partly cause it would involve a lot of rehashing of old arguments.

    But I do want to point out that part of the reason that the sanctions were so damaging to Iraqi society is that we destroyed much of the civilian infrastructure during the first Gulf War. Which, I think, calls into question the justice and proportionality of the response to Saddam’s aggression. And, by extension, calls into question the justice of the cease fire, the violation of which was taken to be a sufficient reason to resume hostilities.

    As for the current situation in Iraq, I’m not going to pretend to be paticularly well-informed about what’s going on there. I read the same newspaper stories as everybody else. But, even putting the best spin on the situation, can we say that we had exhausted other means of dealing with the issue short of war?

    Reply

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