Saddam Hussein is an evil man. During the 1980s he used chemical weapons against Iraq’s Kurdish citizens and against the Iranian army with whom he fought a decade-long war. In 1990 Iraq’s army overran Kuwait, and though quickly defeated by a U.S.-led coalition, Saddam has never lived up to his country’s treaty obligations. He has thwarted the efforts of UN weapons inspectors and diverted funds from the UN food-for-oil program. Iraqi oil illegally smuggled out of the country pays for Saddam’s army, his weapons program, and his personal aggrandizement as well as that of his advisers and allies while the Iraqi standard of living declines. He continues to threaten his neighbors, especially Kuwait.
Most observers-American, European, Middle Eastern-agree that there are sound and serious reasons to wish Saddam gone as the president of Iraq. But that is not the critical question. The critical question is: Are there justifiable reasons to go to war against Iraq in order to get rid of him?
Several members of the Bush administration, along with a string of conservative commentators, have been pressing action since the president came to office. Yet until the September 11 terrorist attack, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein stayed safely on the wish list of Bush advisor Richard Perle and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Since then, the war on terrorism has come to be regarded as authorization for regime change in "terrorist" states, with Iraq at the top of the list.
A trip by Vice President Dick Cheney to the Middle East early this past spring brought a sobering realization to the administration: our friends and allies there would not support a war against Iraq, certainly not as long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict festers. Since then, there have been diplomatic efforts, saber rattling, Pentagon leaks, intelligence information and disinformation, and fruitless efforts to link Saddam directly to Osama bin Laden and Al Quaeda-until recently, everything but open and informed debate in the United States.
None of this maneuvering has convinced our allies in Europe, Russia, or the Middle East. Most think we are dangerously overreaching. Turkey and Jordan, Iraq’s near neighbors, are particularly adamant in refusing the United States the right to fight the war from their territories. The Kurds in northern Iraq, prospering under the current containment policy, are reluctant to involve themselves in another brutal fight with Saddam. For good reason, they are demanding iron-clad guarantees that if the United States goes to war, we will fight to the end and that in a postwar Iraq, the Kurds will have an autonomous region. Except for Tony Blair of Britain, the United States has no support for this war, and unlike the Gulf War, when other countries, Saudi Arabia, in particular, paid 80 percent of the costs, we’d have to pay for this one ourselves.
These objections and obstacles might be overcome by cajolery, economic inducements, and strong-arming Jordan and Turkey. More crucially, however, there are enormous moral and legal strictures the administration would have to meet were it to justify war against Iraq. Is there a just cause? Though the United States and Britain have continued to be militarily engaged with Iraq since the end of the Gulf War, we are not at war with Iraq now. Furthermore, though Iraq defies international law, it is not at war with us or anybody else. President George W. Bush has been preaching preemptive strikes against terrorist states. This might be defensible in the case of Iraq if Saddam presented a clear and immediate danger, such as actually threatening and preparing to use biological or chemical weapons against the United States or his neighbors. But he does not. Though he likely has various components of weapons of mass destruction, experts doubt that he has the means to deliver those weapons or that he possesses nuclear weapons. Moreover, what if an American preemptive attack were the immediate cause of his unleashing what he does have?
Given current information, the United States does not have a just cause for war against Iraq. And if we did go to war, there is the matter of proportionality. To bring down one man and his regime, we risk: exposing Iraqi civilians and the U.S. military to chemical and biological attack resulting in innumerable deaths and serious injuries; destroying what remains of Iraq’s infrastructure; breaking up Iraq as a country and spreading more conflict in a turbulent region (and perhaps the larger Islamic world); creating a new lawless territory open to terrorist groups now given the means to develop their own chemical, biological, and perhaps nuclear weapons. This will not be the quick, short war we saw in Afghanistan. Furthermore, because Saddam is as evil as the Bush administration thinks he is, we need to realize that his military will use civilians and civilian areas for cover. It is one thing to have "collateral damage," as we did in Afghanistan, where civilians where killed and injured as an indirect consequence of direct attacks on the military. It is quite another to target a military known to be using civilians as shields.
After what has seemed many months of free fall into war, Congress is starting to pay attention. On July 31, Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, began hearings. The testimony, thus far, has been generally critical of the administration, which promises to make its case in September when the Senate returns from it summer recess. These hearings are important, but not sufficient to ensure that a full-scale debate takes place-especially prior to the November elections. Democrats and Republicans alike will be reluctant to put a stop to the administration’s planning. Of course, it may be that compelling evidence will emerge when the administration testifies; perhaps Iraq does present an immediate danger. But the case must be made, and made more convincingly than it has to date.
The wiser course would be to continue the present policy of Iraqi containment, militarily and economically, while cooperating with the UN’s inspection efforts. This may not bring a quick end to Saddam Hussein nor satisfy administration hawks, but it holds out the possibility of a more stable, and perhaps peaceful, Middle East over the next several years, and perhaps in the long term.
