Most of us would rather not think our way through the many-sided political and ethical quandary this country now confronts in Iraq. Its elements include, in one subset, large quantities of horrifying weapons under the control of a ruthless and defiant dictator who has held his civilian population hostage to international sanctions. Other components include a divided West, a United States largely alone (of all things) in backing the United Nations, and the unavoidable need for heavy doses of secrecy, ambiguity, and downright bluff in the desperate search for a diplomatic solution.
The task is made doubly hard by the free rider problem. Free riders are people who get the benefit of communal resources without having to pay-the company just beyond the city limits that benefits from the transportation system and schools it doesn’t pay taxes to support, or the woman who sneaks on the bus without paying her fare. When free riders outnumber taxpayers or paying customers, any human enterprise is in danger of collapsing. Something like that seems to be confronting U.S. policy on Iraq.
There are, first, the political free riders: most of Iraq’s neighbors who would be happy to be rid of the threat of Iraq’s military regime, but who are unwilling to force the issue of the UN weapons inspections. Then there are nations like France and Russia, who look forward to a lucrative Iraqi trade, with or without biological and chemical weapons, with or without Saddam Hussein. Certainly all would be content to see the Iraqi problem disappear, but none want to bear the cost-especially politically. If the United States is ready and willing, what does any other nation have to lose? If we succeed, everyone benefits; if we fail, we alone are responsible for the consequences.
Then, second, there are the moral free riders who would lighten the burdens of conscience by avoiding responsibility for consequences that they leave to the future to repair. There are those who, following Saddam Hussein’s deliberate humiliation of the UN arms inspectors, reflexively advocated bombing Iraq without explaining exactly what would be bombed and with what consequences. If attempting to wipe out Iraq’s hidden arsenals or weapons-building programs could be justified, what of civilian casualties and damage to an already fragile infrastructure? To succeed, wouldn’t air strikes have to be not only massive but repeated, conveying a counterproductive message of either futility or coldbloodedness? Even worse, what of the danger of success-the release of the very chemical and biological agents that the UN inspection teams are hoping to contain? Then there are those who advocate a land invasion and the ousting of Hussein, but without spelling out the future uncertainties or long-range commitments that such an action would produce. Thankfully, most of these proposals have come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks, and there should be no reader of the nation’s op-ed pages who still believes that solutions of this sort are either militarily or morally risk-free.
Moral free riding is not limited to one side of this debate, however. In 1991, there were many voices insisting that Saddam Hussein could be morally contained by economic sanctions rather than war. Yet the sanctions imposed in the wake of Iraq’s defeat turned out to be "war by other means," as Kenneth R. Himes argued in an article (Commonweal, February 28, 1997) proposing criteria for taking their moral measure. When Saddam Hussein managed to turn the sanctions against the poor and the powerless rather than his military machine, it was understandable that some people would call for abandoning the sanctions. What is less understandable is that those protesters never reconsidered a military approach for which sanctions were a substitute. But neither would they candidly acknowledge that such a turn in policy is tantamount to abandoning the objective of containing Hussein and his weapons programs (which turned out, according to UN inspectors, to be more lethal than was suspected at the time of the Gulf War).
The problem has not gone away. Do those who object morally to any military action against Hussein’s regime openly admit that they are kissing good-by to the future of United Nations peacemaking or arms-inspection efforts, which he has rendered a perfect joke? Do they remember how irrelevant the League of Nations became after Germany and Japan successfully defied it in the 1930s? Do they explain why the world should not anticipate, at the very least, a regional arms race with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel-and maybe Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and Libya-preparing themselves with counter-arsenals of biological, chemical, and nuclear weaponry? Can they imagine that the conditions of the Iraqi people may actually get worse if Saddam is freed both of economic sanctions and the threat of armed response? Do they consider what the implications of this will be, in five to ten years, for peace, for America’s understanding of its international role? Is it possible that, having failed to take a stand against Iraqi intransigence, the world will find itself facing not only a rearmed Iraqi military, but a plethora of thugs happy to call the bluff of all free riders?
