In an address to the Senate on February 12, chastising his colleagues for being "ominously, dreadfully silent," Senator Robert Byrd (D–W.Va.) stepped up and offered some ominous and dreadful words himself: "This coming battle...represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world." It was the Bush administration’s policy of preemption that he was attacking—"the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future." Senator Byrd had no takers in the Senate for a sustained and serious debate. War began on March 19.
Not surprisingly, American support for war with Iraq grew as hostilities began (76 percent on the first day, according to a CNN/Gallup poll). That level of support, which has held steady for the first weeks, can hardly be sustained for an "unnecessary war," as Bryan Hehir put it ("An Unnecessary War," Commonweal, March 28), unless it ends very quickly.
Americans see too much of the combat and the "collateral damage" to put to rest grave misgivings about the decision to go to war in the first place, even if most want to show support for U.S. and British troops. Twenty-four-hour media and Web coverage from every conceivable point of view raises the level of skepticism and the gamy extravagance of conspiracy theories. Regular analysis and knowledgeable commentary on U.S. television from a phalanx of retired military officers has been informative and subtly critical of the civilian hawks in the Pentagon. "Embedded" journalists daily provide sympathetic accounts of men and women in battle, and we are compelled to ask: "Why are they there?" Stiff resistance from at least some elements of the Iraqi military and political forces and suicide bombers have surprised military commanders and thrown assurances of a quick victory into doubt. One battlefield commander observed that such tactics were not "war-gamed." There have been few jubilant Iraqis welcoming their "liberators." How could they? Hedging their bets is a reasonable, perhaps life-saving, calculus until noncombatants know who will prevail in their own streets and in Baghdad, and most important, who will rule them afterward. Crude but effective propaganda from Saddam Hussein’s regime has made its mark among Iraqis, in the Arab world, and no doubt elsewhere. The coalition of the willing remains small: the United States and Britain fight virtually alone. Given what we see and hear, the coalition of the outraged can only grow.
As I write, the war is barely two weeks along; yet there is an ominous and dreadful sense that the fog of war has settled on much more than the battlefield. The administration’s obstinate and arrogant press for war at the United Nations and its dangling, as it turns out unsuccessfully, every sort of inducement to potential allies, has left our foreign relations in disarray. Friendships did not hold. Bribery did not work. Even strong-arming a friendly and supplicant Turkey failed.
There will be a life after war. But Washington is in no rush to repair the damage done to the UN or to mend the toll taken on the tried and true alliances of the last half-century. The unilateralist policy of this administration, on display from its first days in office, persists despite evidence proving the value of multilateralism: worldwide sympathy for the United States following September 11; international cooperation in identifying terrorists along with their networks and resources; and support for the war in Afghanistan and the end of Osama bin Laden.
During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush cautioned against being an arrogant nation and urged that America be humble in its relations with the rest of the world. He opposed using the military for nation building or responding to crises that were beyond our power to resolve. Only two years in office, he has long abandoned his own counsel and now leads the country into a second war.
If the first war, Afghanistan, had a singular purpose and a just cause—removing a government that sheltered Al Qaeda—the second is overlaid with too many purposes and even so lacks a just cause. The president can hardly stand at a podium without enunciating one or another of those purposes, as if sheer repetition will make this a just war. We are at war in Iraq, he says, to enforce UN resolutions and/or the 1991 cease-fire agreement, to liberate the Iraqi people, to end a totalitarian regime, to destroy weapons of mass destruction, to fight the war on terrorism, to reconfigure the politics of the Middle East, and to bring democracy and prosperity to its people. The president insists that the war is not for oil, "that oil belongs to the Iraqi people." Perhaps the president believes that. Yet even while war rages, U.S. corporations are bidding for reconstruction contracts in Iraq; Vice President Dick Cheney’s former firm, Halliburton, is in on the ground floor, putting out oil fires in southern Iraq (New York Times, March 23; Bloomberg News, March 25). Is it any wonder that the world is skeptical about American motives even as some countries seethe at being shut out of this lucrative business?
If there is not a just cause for this war, there is, to shift philosophical paradigms, a proximate cause. The single most potent cause of hostilities in the Middle East is not Saddam Hussein but the interminable conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. To all appearances, the administration has relinquished whatever leverage or control over Israel the United States has had by reason of friendship and economic subsidy. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon continues to enlarge the territory under Israeli military occupation not only in the West Bank, but in Gaza as well. "The facts on the ground" grow apace: the "security fence" meant to protect Israelis now meanders in and out of Palestinian towns, villages, and olive groves. The conflict will still be there when the war in Iraq dies down. What will the administration do then? Invade Iran?
Does the president and commander-in-chief know what he is doing? Critics and many commentators think not, and perhaps even some congressional Republicans are having private doubts. Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have been identified in books and news accounts, along with a coterie of conservative officials and colleagues, as the architects of the administration’s foreign policy, specifically a war against Iraq. Two weeks into battle is not a long time, but on many fronts—diplomatically, militarily, and politically—growing signs suggest that they miscalculated, overestimating their friends, underestimating the enemy, and stinting on the resources needed to achieve their goal of regime change. What next?
The administration’s arrogance has taken on a life of its own. At their joint press conference on March 27, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush could hardly have offered a greater contrast in decency and political acumen. Blair’s eager articulation in defending the pace of the war as well as his argument for an important UN role in reconstruction was in stark contrast to Bush’s peevish response when questioned about the duration of the war: "However long it takes."
By the time the United States has accomplished regime change in Iraq, the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign will be underway. And then, it will be time for this country to consider a regime change of its own.
March 31, 2003
