Perhaps it is time to declare in this space a position on the U.S. war against Iraq.
Having attended four demonstrations in four months (3 in New York, 1 in D.C.), it should be clear at the outset that I stand opposed to the war. I believe it illegal and unnecessary.
At the time of this writing, military action in Iraq is on-going. American soldiers have been captured and killed. Americans have accidently shot down a British helicopter. Iraqi soldiers and civilians have been killed. An American jet inadvertently bombed a bus full of civilians. Despite this, so far, the loss of life seems minimal.
NPR ('National Pentagon Radio' as it has been dubbed by the anti-war radio station, WBAI) took time to name each American soldier killed. It didn't take long. Compared to, say, the Congo's on-going civil war, where it is estimated about 3 million have died in the last two or three years, this Iraq conflict is mild. We shouldn't expect Congo-type numbers in Iraq. In any case, names are not read of the Iraqi dead, neither soldiers nor civilians, and that really expresses the ideology of the "news" stations. They have chosen a side; they know who butters their bread. Or is it supply-led, serving up pre-buttered bread for the masses?
In any event, 'Regime change' is the goal, not mass slaughter, and there's a big difference between occupying your enemy's country and decimating it. The U.S. war planners should be commended for their humanitarian agenda, however manipulative and self-serving it is. They have a choice, and they are choosing to let each and every Iraqi male choose for himself guns or butter. Whether or not each and every Iraqi male is in fact free to choose is another story, but the liberal mind cleanses its conscience in this manner.
The administration would like nothing better than a palace coup from Hussein's inner circle. If the head is lopped off, everything else can be left intact, a puppet government set up. The oil is already flowing from Southern Iraq to Kuwait. We should expect more of the same. The only question is which exiled Iraqis will be tapped to take over, and how long -- 15 years? -- will it take to really assess the fallout. A large percentage of current Iraqi citizens are children. What will be their perception of this when they enter their mid-30s?
Once over, other countries no doubt will line up to share in the spoils, and it seems clear that the U.S. will feel pressed to trade good will for oil concessions and clean-up contracts in the after-war global hug that's bound to work its healing magic, at least until the coming U.S. invasion of Iran, Lebanon, North Korea, or Syria, whichever presents itself as the next target of opportunity.
Taking an anti-war stance in one's home country once a war has begun is a tricky proposition. To the pro-war side, it would seem you are rooting for the enemy. That would be a stupid and wrong conclusion, but it is the easiest to make by those who would just as soon win and cover over their embarrassment at having the world against them.
Various anti-war protesters declare their patriotism, but this is as ugly as the pro-war side's patriotism Patriotism makes no difference in this conflict, because no issue of national threat is at stake. Loyalty here is solely in terms of whether one does or does not agree with the Republican Administration's view of how to re-arrange the Middle East. To conflate this sort of loyalty with patriotism is a perversion.
More: The attack on New York and the Pentagon by Al Qaeda can only be viewed as an attack on, say, Kansas, Minnesota, Alaska, and every other place within U.S. borders only by a twisted and tortured logic. The fact of the matter is that no set of terrorists can threaten even more than a tiny plot of real estate at a time, and while some plots may be foiled, any soldier worth his salt can perform a successful mission. I haven't done the research but I'm sure the risk analysis folks are having a field day. Doubtless the chance of being killed by terrorism is lower than death by any assortment of other means against which there is no war being waged. We are all in danger, but not all of us at once, and in fact, most of us never. We just don't know. The uncertainty of anxiety is difficult to live with perhaps, but this does not and can never justify the kind of action that the U.S. has taken. So-called 'rogue' states are not justly targets of opportunity for the United States until they have proven themselves offenders to the world, and the proper judge is the world, not any single country's executive team.
We can't call the U.S. action 'preemptive' in any sense, because that label assumes what would need to be shown, that a war begun by Iraq on the U.S. would have started at some point or other. This is absurd on its face, and it should be noted that the countries which share borders with Iraq did nothing prior to the war to suggest that they were worried over an immanent attack. Even now most of the countries bordering Iraq are hardly willing and ready help-mates to the U.S. forces.
To date no biological, chemical or nuclear weapons have been found inside of Iraq. It would be a terrible irony if Iraq were defeated, scoured for these weapons and none were found. Of course Thomas Hobbes would not rest an argument on this: we don't go to war because we are injured; we go to war because we expect we might be injured. But of course, this is an argument to violate every principle, to invade every land. A higher standard than fear must guide policy. A higher principle than winning must guide our evaluation of success.
In the present crisis, the U.S. is picking off an easy target. Well let's be clear. The United States as an entity is doing nothing. A cadre of six or seven men plus one woman have decided that the Middle East needs to be re-worked in America's favor, and so they are sending 18, 19 and 20 somethings to kill and be killed. With no effective military counterweight, the 800-pound gorilla (as John Mearsheimer would say) is going to work.
[If great power politics loom once again on the horizon, perhaps the next conflict will bring certain allies (France, Germany) and others of more dubious relation (Russia, China) to offer not only principled speeches on behalf of the weaker party but money, arms, advice, intelligence and troops to defend against American ambition. It is a brilliant stroke in world-historical terms that today individuals as non-state actors volunteer to be human shields. (This would be nonsense without global media/television coverage.) But it is best to remember that 'human shields' can take the form of well-equipped armies. At present no State is offering human shields to the Palestinians or to the Israelis, though States are all too happy to provide both sides with weapons.]
I would like to think that this 'preemptive' war aims to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but I doubt this very much. Nuclear proliferation is a legitimate fear, but whether it is warranted at this time is another story. It has been recently shown false that Niger supplied Iraq with nuclear material. Too bad the U.S. Senate relied on that faked evidence when (unconstitutionally) ceding its war-making powers to the President.
It should be remembered that the United States is the only country to have used nuclear bombs in war, and it is the United States which has recently reasserted its right and willingness to use nuclear weapons in war. No such threat has come from Iraq, though if Iraqis were to use such a weapon, or even chemical or biological weapons, they would be using them in a defensive war, begun by the United States. What would you do? If my regime were on the verge of destruction from a hated enemy, I would if pressed use my most horrible weapon against them. Why not?
The U.S. military planners are obviously aware of this contingency as their advertising campaign has shifted to warning citizens back home of the heightened possibilities of the use of such weapons as U.S. troops near Baghdad. Expect the worst, they say. It is at least a point of debate whether the Iraqis would be justified. From their point of view, they are trying to repel an invader. The U.S. arguments for nuking Japan had everything to do with notions of justice, however misapplied and tortured.
Also: For weeks the Answer Coalition had been advertising a march at Times Square for the day after the first bomb dropped. The media said only 300 people attended. A friend there reported 500. Granted it was rainy and cold, but a drop from 350,000 people at a prevent-the-war rally to 500 for the stop-the-ongoing-war rally is a pathetic showing. This makes all the more impressive last Saturday's stop-the-ongoing-war march.
The NYPD low-ball estimate was 125,000 people. The NYTimes said over 200,00 and the march organizers said over 250,000. Though smaller than the NYC rally of February 15th (of roughly 350,000) which aimed to prevent the war from starting, this last Saturday's march was much in doubt because it was unclear that people would be willing to march while American soldiers were fighting and dying for the cause.
But the people marching were not simply pro-Iraq. These people took quite sophisticated stances. Let me give an example: From the sideline a charismatic man chanted into his megaphone: "George Bush, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide." He sang this rhyming ditty five times in a row and not a single person joined in. Not one. And this was a crowd very willing to scream and shout. But they recognized an overstatement when they heard it. They didn't try to argue with him or silence him, but neither did they join in.
We don't charge George Bush with genocide. Not yet. But what he is guilty of is putting at risk the international legal framework which since the second World War, and certainly after the Cold War's end, has operated with more or less success.
The march was not protesting military action per se. Saddam Hussein is just the kind of dictator thug that the United Nations should agree to denounce and depose. But it is imperative that the international reach into any one country should be justified in the eyes of all participants. War must be understood as a last resort against a pressing or ongoing danger. The anti-war marchers did not feel this standard had been met.
There has been enough debate and discord at the highest levels to suggest that the U.S. government's unilateralism is a deviation from principled argument, and not an example of it. The suffering of Iraqi citizens due to the economic sanctions was the only urgent matter which needed addressing, together with ongoing inspections for evidence of a nuclear weapons program. These two goals could have been tackled without war.
Reasons why this administration is conducting the war should be addressed at two levels, domestic and international.
With respect to domestic politics, there is nothing so likely to distract a country from recession woes like foreign adventure. It seems clear that the Republican domestic strategy is to keep the attention of voters on things overseas. Should the war last so long, elections in 2004 will rest on how politicians situate themselves with respect to it. Should the Iraqi conflict end by then, shall we suddenly discover the U.S. embroiled in another overseas conflict? The odds are high. Any Democrat who is against such adventures will appear weak; any who join in are supporting the President. Democrats will fail to turn our focus back to domestic issues; they will be drowned in foreign affairs coverage because in our complex world, straight-ahead battles over life and death are so fascinating and basic and so much easier to take in. That, anyway seems to be the gamble that Republican planners have taken. We'll see how successful it is in 2004. Events may move in or out of their favor. People may oust Bush anyway, like his father before him.
On the international front, it is more difficult for me to say what the intention is. If domestic concerns are the primary interest, then the specifics of what happens in the Middle East are not that important, so long as a minimum level of 'security' is reached, so long as the new Iraqi state avers from its own foreign adventures. (Do what I say, not what I do.)
The pro-Palestinian camp which situates the Iraq conflict into a Middle East equation forces us to consider the place of Israel and oil in the Administration's calculus. On this line of reasoning, we would be forced to accept that 1) the U.S. planners feared that Iraq would have certainly blown up a nuclear device inside of Israel, and so a pre-emptive war was necessary, 2) that Israel has ambitions to expand its empire, and the U.S. is playing along, or 3) on oil, that U.S. planners feared Iraq would somehow manipulate OPEC against U.S. interests, making war a more attractive option. I don't find any of these scenarios plausible.
But there are personal reasons too motivating the specific shape of the policy. Reports by the Institute for Policy Studies remind us that Rumsfeld met with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s and was duped into believing that Hussein needed various protections from the United States. The U.S. supported Hussein against Iran, including shipment from Virgnia to Iraq of biological agents for 'research' purposes. These are the same biological weapons the U.S. is now hunting for. Rumsfeld apparently still feels betrayed, and of course Bush himself may wish to not only finish the job his father started but offer payback for Hussein's attempted assassination of the senior Bush. (I saw detailed on the back-window of a Chevy Blazer the New York Skyline with American Flags replacing the Twin Towers, with the motto: Payback is a bitch!) It is not too much I think to hypothesize that this Bush regime is trying to clean up the fallout and complete some of the agenda of the earlier Reagan-Bush era. (We may not know these kinds of details until all of these guys publish their memoirs, and probably not even then.)
There is also the very fishy fact that Cheney's former pals at Halliburton are already to receive a large and open-ended contract for oil clean-up in Iraq. Such personal connections need to be well-documented in the press, even if it is unlikely that any memo will be discovered which uses the words 'graft,' 'bribe,' 'patronage,' 'kick-back,' 'quid pro quo' or the like.
What is clear in public statements by Bush is that he intends for any successor state in Iraq to be permanently prevented from engaging in aggressive wars. Behave. It is difficult to imagine that arms dealers will simply, respectfully, decline to make their wares available to a new Iraq. In fact, Iraq will be desperate to buy more weapons having just spent so many. This suggests that whatever government gets installed will have to accept continued inspections by some outside force to ensure that their weapons procurement is purely for defensive purposes, and who will perform this duty?