"The witness against the government of Iraq walked stiffly into the room, metal callipers buckled to heavy medical shoes. They had tortured her two years ago. She is now four."
The above is from John Sweeney's articles for the BBC and London's Observer. There's more, and it's all worth reading. Especially if you come across people outraged that the U.S. embargo is killing children in Iraq. As Sweeney reports, this is almost certainly a lie.
There are those who say that President Bush has not "made the case" for...
...invading Iraq. There are others who suggest that everything bad in Iraq is because we once had moderately friendly relations with its tyrant. Still others suggest that we only went to war with him in 1991 to keep oil prices cheap, and that "finishing Daddy's job" is our only reason for going after him now. So let's make the case for why we were once moderately friendly with Saddam Hussein, why taking him down is a good idea, and why the Bush administration isn't making the case itself.
History shows that it is often necessary to make common cause with people you do not like. Just read Sun Tzu's The Art of War. Contemplate that it was written 2,500 years ago. Yet its words ring every bit as true today.
Imagine if the West not allied with Stalin in World War II. We had no reason to believe he was any better than Hitler. But failure to work with him would almost certainly have led to Nazi victory. Even so, we soon found ourselves in epic struggle against Stalin and his heirs.
We often found ourselves supporting other, smaller tyrants during that struggle. Why? Because we had to work with whatever governments we found that would work with us. During the Cold War, it was widely observed that once a country became Communist, it would stay Communist. A normal tyrant we could influence, but a Communist tyrant was beyond our reach.
The best examples of what can happen when you don't support tyrants, and what can happen if you do, are probably Iran and Chile.
The Shah of Iran was, by all accounts, a brutal ruler. Still and all, it was known that the Soviet Empire had designs on Iran, and so we made common cause with him. We hoped to push and prod him toward modernization, democracy, and better treatment of his people, while we helped him keep the Communists at bay.
In the late 1970s the Carter administration came to the conclusion that we were demeaning ourselves to help the Shah. We cut intelligence and other support in Iran. When a group of religious fanatics seized power, we were surprised. In the end it worked out okay for our Cold War aims--the religious fanatics had no tolerance whatsoever for atheistic Communism--but the hapless citizens of Iran wound up crushed under the heel of a brutal tyranny many times worse than the Shah.
In the early 1970s, the Nixon and Ford administrations helped topple the recently-elected government of Communist Salvador Allende in Chile. Allende had been elected, but in Hitler-like fashion, with less than a third of the votes. He was also making common cause with brutal Communists like Castro and the North Koreans. He practiced torture against some of his subjects. The Chilean economy was collapsing when a right-wing general named Pinochet seized power, with some popular support from people (trade unionists especially) who felt Allende was destroying their nation.
The Americans, through the CIA, backed Pinochet. Over the years, people were wrongly imprisoned, even tortured, and there were about four thousand people killed. This sullied the reputation of America and her allies. This man was brutal, and we propped him up. (Although later analyses showed that about half those killings were committed by Allende's men.)
Yet, under heavy pressure from the Thatcher government in the UK, and the Carter and Reagan administrations in the US, Pinochet's use of torture all but evaporated by 1983; even Amnesty International, one of the Pinochet's harshest critics, admits this. Furthermore, under encouragement from Western intellectuals, Pinochet brought substantial economic liberalization to his country. He also gradually restored more and more freedom. Eventually a referendum was held to determine whether Pinochet should remain President. When 55% of Chileans voted that he should step down (vs. 45% who voted that he should stay), Pinochet vowed to leave quietly. Within two years, a new President was elected, and Pinochet gradually gave up more and more power, finally retiring.
Today, Pinochet is history. Chile has been a stable Democracy for about a decade and a half. It has the highest standard of living of any South American state--yes, better even than Brazil. Its economy grows, its democratically-elected government is stable, and freedom of speech and the press are the norm. It is the freest, most prosperous nation south of the United States, and by all indications may well be one of the world's economic powerhouses in the coming decades.
I submit that only an ignorant man or a petulant child would deny that there are moral justifications, at times, for supporting tyrants. Even if you know that, later on, you may be forced to take that same tyrant down.
There was a short time when Saddam Hussein was "our" tyrant, although never as much so as others. We did not create his regime, and he never danced to our tune. In fact, he was a socialist (that's right, a left-winger) who tried to play the Soviets and the Americans off one another. What support he got from us ended with the Cold War. By 1991 it became obvious that this thug was a growing threat to the world. When he moved to take Kuwait, it was clear to most in the West that allowing him to keep Kuwait would give him enormously more power and money. He was too dangerous to allow that to happen.
In 1991, some critics charged that we were only going after Saddam Hussein to "assure a steady flow of oil at market prices," or to keep "big oil companies" profitable. But if America stopped importing oil, the domestic oil industry would reap windfall profits; American oil companies face all kinds of economic struggles from competing with foreign oil. Everyday Americans would suffer economic hardships from higher oil prices, true, but certainly not the oil companies. The real danger was in allowing a tyrant like him to amass the power and wealth that holding Kuwait would have given him. It would have made him ten times the threat that he is today.
We now face a worldwide war against terrorism. The same Saddam Hussein has grown older, more ruthless, more egomaniacal. He now supports terrorists with weapons and money and intelligence. He is also the only power in the region known to be within reach of obtaining nuclear weapons. He is not only a threat to the region, he is a threat to the world. Those who say that the fight against him is "all about oil" need to check their ideological baggage and ask themselves how much worse things would be if he had ten times as much money and power, and if his military hadn't been decimated 10 years ago.
It's true that there are other regimes which support terrorism. The question for any war planner is where, when, and how to deal with those regimes. It's very easy for armchair generals to declare that we should immediately make war on them all. I submit that if you don't know we have the manpower and resources to do that, you should shut the hell up and let the people who do have the data make the choices.
The U.S. simply has to go after Iraq, and it has to be a major priority. First because of the impending nuclear threat. Second because, by taking down any major terror-sponsoring regime in the Middle East, we deal a blow to terror networks. Third, because it puts other regimes in the area on notice that we mean business, even if we haven't come for them--yet.
So why don't our leaders come out and make this case forthrightly? It seems embarassing to have to say this, but: they'd be crazy if they did.
We have not, since World War I, made war by announcing when and where we will begin fighting. The administration knows most Americans support taking down Saddam Hussein--most polls clearly show it. The case is also obvious enough that, once the fighting starts, it will not be hard to explain why we're doing it. Saddam Hussein also knows it's coming, but he doesn't know for sure when, or where, or how, and keeping him guessing only tires him out and raises his stress levels.
The war on terror requires that our next stop be Baghdad. The President doesn't have to say so--indeed, he should not. But we must take Baghdad. Until we do, we need to ask the armchair generals and petty, sniping Bush-bashers to put a sock in it.
Well I suppose I should take this in order:
Part 1. Time: Spring 1990,- roughly 1 year after the end of the Cold War. The American Empire (oops, the United States) has knocked the Soviet Union into the dust heap of history. There is now only one superpower (shades of "there can be only one!!"). Old power relationships have died. New ones are still germinating. What will the spring bring? What dangers will present themselves, and what opportunities, for the opportunistically alert?
Time: August 1990. Iraq invades Kuwait. Justification; Kuwait has been "stealing" oil from a mutually developed field (by pumping more than their share of the oil), and, besides, Kuwait is really a part of Greater Iraq.
The only problem is that Iraq has only existed since the 1930's, and that due to European fiat after the first World War. Kuwait has existed as a recognizable entity for much longer than that. At the least they had relations with the British Empire in the mid- to late-1800's. And civilized countries sue each other over contracts instead of heavy mobile armor attacks.
Hussein was (and is) a clever fellow. Give the devil his due, almost literally. He counted on the "Vietnam Syndrome" paralyzing the US while touting the "Mid-East solution" (AKA the Israel-Palestine situation "is all the Zionist/Jews' fault" to keep Europe tied up in knots and bring the Arab states into line behind him against the Zionist/American/Great Satan/West.
The problem is, most Arab countries were more upset about naked agression against a fellow Arab country. The problem is that the rest of the civilized world saw it as naked agression, period. The problem is that Hussein never understood that the US had spent the past 30 years FIXING most, if not all of the bad ideas & practices leading to "Vietnam". Hussein didn't understand what it meant to go up against a truly world-class, professional army. Oh, as an aside: the whole "blood for oil" thing was a pathetic red herring. The G8 countries would take a bit of an economic hit, yes. But nothing like the developing (AKA "poor countries with NO margin for error!") countries. To quote "From Shield To Storm" by Austin Bay & Jim Dunnigan: "The Third World nations, which depend on the industrial nations for trade and aid (particularly food), suffer even more bitterly when oil prices increase. Sadly, recession and depression among the rich places millions of the Third World's poor in danger of starvation. It's an aspect of the 'integrated global economy' that is often ignored."
The result was that Iraq was faced with one of the very few times that the UN membership was completely united. Say what you will, the work of the Bush, Sr. administration should stand as one of the most outstanding examples of US diplomacy in the 20th century. Think of it: an alliance, led by the "Great Satan" that included Moslem nations such as Egypt, Syria (who woulda figgured?), Saudia Arabia, and Pakistan; European nations such as Great Britain (always staunch), Germany, and France. Even the froggies got involved, even if they refused to divulge important data about providing material & training to the Iraqis. Even Japan came in.
The result: Iraq got whipped like a red-headed stepchild. I'll let Dean & others tally how shamefully the American Left acted at that time.
The after-action result: the "get Saddam" crowd started crying about 2 hours after the declared end of Desert Storm, and haven't stopped for the past 11 years. The only problems is that there was no realistic way to "go after" him.
Fact: we were part of a coalition. And one of the very basic elements of a coalition is that the members cooperate. If this presents a conceptual problem I direct the reader to a dictionary for a refresher on basic vocabulary. (that is to say, the definition of a coalition) Recall: THE BASIC AIM OF THE COALITION WAS TO DRIVE IRAQ OUT OF KUWAIT. The US breaks with the coalition, all sorts of ugly things happen. I remind the armchair generals that winning the war is one thing; winning the peace is something else. Ripping apart the coalition just to witch-hunt Hussein was (and is) a bad idea. Muck that up and you lose Egypt, Syria, and Pakistan (at the very least), and Israel starts lobbing stuff at everyone in sight. _Hopefully_ non-nuclear. The Israelis tend not to have a sense of humor about being misled. At the time he was percieved as Yet One More Third World Dictator. The Gulf War would tear down the infrastructure of Iraq to such a degree that Hussein would no longer be a major player.
There was also the logistic level: like it or not, the US armed forces were at the end of a very thin line at the end of hostilities. They were running out of gas, out of water, out of munitions. There is a very good reason for the old saying "amateurs study tactics; professionals study logistics". If you don't have the tail to support the teeth, you are SOL.
Part 2. So we come to 2001/2002. "Dubya" Bush declares a war on terrorism. (an aside: I agree with Jerry Pournelle: a formal declaration of war is an important & useful thing. Should we think about this more?)
Follow the logic, and the strategy: if the US is sincere about elimintating terrorism as an organized force, then we need to focus on those states sponsoring terrorism. Forget just breaking up the current infrastructure: we want to make sure that the next time a government even thinks about supporting terrorists someone will pull short and exclaim, "Are you crazy? Look at what happened to last country that did that!"
So forget what Iraq "has" right now. Forget what Hussein "could" do. What he is doing is fomenting hate, fear, death, and destruction over a large part of the earth. For this, and nothing else, he should fall.
I do have one little nit to pick, Dean: the major reason that the US has not (as you say) "made war by announcing when and where we will begin fighting." (after WW1) is that most of the time we were attacked. From the US viewpoint: we were forced into WW1 by unrestricted German U-boat warfare. We were forced into WW2 by the attack on Pearl by the Imperial Japanese Navy (AND, I might add, a gratuitous declaration of war against the US by Germany, by grace of God). Same thing for Korea. Technically Vietnam wasn't a war. And in Iraq/Kuwait:1991 we bloody well did declare what, where, when, and how we were going to do what we would do.
So let's forget all this coulda/woulda/shoulda rationalization, and fall back to a greater method: to quote an old story-teller: "To be dealt with as wolves are!"
Yes, coalition forces did give Saddam Hussein a deadline to move out of Kuwait before he would be repelled by force.
As you say, though, the coalition is/was a different thing from a war by the United States. We may have led, but it was a coalition, and the mission was not to destroy a regime.
We are now at war. In war, you sometimes give ultimatums, but except for unusual circumstances you do not tell your enemy when exactly you plan your attack. That's just stupid. If our objective is regime change in Bagdad, we do not want to make it clear when or how we expect to make that happen. Not unless we want to shoot ourselves in the foot.
That's the point I was trying to make. We are no longer in an era where generals cordially meet over a battlefield, set a date and time to start, and carefully line their forces up and begin firing. That's a dead model. Surprise and head fakes are part of the game. People need to realize this.
By the way, I, too, am still a little disturbed that we have not had a formal declaration of war. There are reasons not to do it, since true declaration of war would open the door to even greater encroachments on liberty at home, which is something we need to think carefully about since this particular war may be doing on for a decade or more--and while I'm generally quite impatient with "slippery slope" arguments, I'd be disturbed to see us in full-scale war mode for decades, with no end in sight. Right now we're in half-war with that, and I'm comfortable with it.
Still, I dunno, there are real reasons to worry about this sort of thing. Declaring war also require the end of war at some point. Open-ended engagements like this are...
Aaargh. Yes, we should be talking more about it as a nation.
Ok, Dean, I'm a little clearer on your position. I'm not saying we should tell Hussein "when & where", but (as the saying goes) "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them", etc.
Again, I'll quote Churchill, after his declaration of war to Empire of Japan: "Some people did not like this ceremonial style. But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite."
And I do not believe there ever was a time where (as you put it) "generals cordially meet over a battlefield, set a date and time to start." This only happens in very bad Hollywood movies (usually the same ones where E-5's ride hydrogen bombs out of the bomb bay of a B-52, but that's another story.)
I prefer the "American" approach as typified by Nathan B. Forrest: "hit them firstest with the mostest." In fact a careful study of the US Civil War reveals a professional cadre that could meet, and defeat any nation then existant. Except, perhaps, Prussia. :)
And, yes, you should be very much concerned about civil liberties! Do you know that the USA PATRIOT act (please, Lord, don't expect me to remember the acronym, but PATRIOT _is_ an acronym!) was passed unanimously in both houses, and that _no representative_ (congress or senate) had read the entire act before voting for it??
Don't get me started; most of what Congress has passed since 9/11 has made about as much sense as Federalizing airport security personell (and then discovering that firing most of the current worthless would result in a 70% reduction, so they added a spineless "or until they can get a GED equivalent" proviso)...
The plain fact is that:
-1- The US changed focus from "Arab" terrorism to "right wing terrorism" in the '90s. And let's leave Slick Willie alone on this one, it's too easy to make him a whipping boy, ok?
-2- The US _reduced_ funding on human intelligence (as I mentioned in an earlier post to you) in the Mid-East, to their regret. Can't be associating with the "wrong types" don'tcha know.
-3- The Congress is mostly engaging in "CYA" actions right now instead of real reform. This Fatherland (er) Homeland Security crap, for example. We don't need massive reform. We just need Foggy Bottom to get its head out of its collective ass and accomplish something. Recall that one of the four planes of 9/11 was brought down by nothing more than American citizens deciding "no more!" after a few minutes of talking on the telephone to their loved ones about what had happened in New York.
Maybe we need to start _writing_ those representatives, instead of "trusting" them, eh?
God forbid we should start instructing our masters (er, servants) now, eh?
In a mature society, "civil servant" is semantically equal to "civil master."
Strategy for dealing with Saddam Hussein:
"We want you gone. We have no plans to invade. We might invade. Maybe we won't invade. Well we're talking about invading. Our allies don't want us to invade, and we care what they think. So we have no plans to invade. If necessary we will invade. Maybe not. If you do what we want, we wouldn't need to invade. We want you gone no matter what. Who said we were going to invade?"
If some people find this head game frustrating here, imagine what the intended victim must feel like. There is no down side to any potential reaction he might have.
Talk about head games. Heehee!
What would happen to the people in Iraq if Bush declares waron iraq?
They would dance in the streets and greet us with glee when we arrived.
They would be freed from one of the worst dictators who ever lived.
The cruelty of people who oppose this boggles my mind.
No one has ever seen a LION demanding from a buffalo to first remove his horns and hoofs before attacking it to make a morsel of it
None ever imagined in a duel to ask the adversery to disarm before the fight
Long live BUSH the lion of 21st century