Articles, Etc.

Don't Invade Iraq

        How best can we defend our territory, our government and our lives from present threats? The big threat comes from the author of the most serious attack on us, al Qaeda, a network of cells scattered across much of the world. Rather than a conventional war against another nation, to defeat this enemy calls for police action against a criminal gang and its members: An integrated program: Intelligence to track and discover, and action to prosecute, those who undertake and plan attacks on us.

        Second, restrict the most dreadful weapons. For this, we must cease our Lone Ranger, load-and-shoot approach, refusing cooperation to limit creation and spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. As a step toward observance of a rule of law between nations, we should cease to refuse to join the International Criminal Court. Our expressed fear of being prosecuted recalls the Old Testament verse: “The guilty flee when no man pursueth.”

        We are asked to shift our concentration to Iraq whose brutal and ruthless leadership, hostile to us, has a record of seeking to develop deadly weapons. Some propose to remove both the leadership and the weapons and to do so by making war against that country. How does Iraq threaten us, and what price may we pay to remove the threat?

        Far off, and with no navy, Iraq cannot invade us. Nor does it have the only other means by which it directly could attack us: long range planes or missiles. An ICBM silo can’t be trundled around between hiding places and is easy to spot and to destroy. If Iraq were to undertake some, as soon as each was observed under construction, our forces should and would dispatch them like the proverbial ducks in a barrel. That’s the place for preemptive strikes. We would not need to weigh the question of deterrence by threat of retaliation. Iraq is not to be expected to choose a course certain to fail.

        Iraq could seek to attack us indirectly by assisting al Qaeda to smuggle weapons across our border. The most destructive means would be an atom bomb in a ship’s hold, incinerating one of our port cities. However, like Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Algeria, Iraq has a Muslim population but a secular government, not a theocracy. This contrasts with al Qaeda, composed of impassioned Islamist fanatics. Iraq’s government may hesitate to entrust weapons to those whose dislike and distrust may turn them back against it. 
Rather than seeking such a weapon from Iraq’s government, not inclined to furnish one even if it had one, which is far from sure, al Qaeda agents, may be more likely to seek one from territory of the former Soviet Union, where countless and uncounted (poor inventory controls) nukes are under the charge of low-paid bureaucrats, many of whom are incompetent or criminal.

        Would our prospective gain from reducing or avoiding the foregoing modest risk exceed the price that a solo invasion would impose on us? 

        1) American soldiers’ lives and taxpayers’ $s. How many and how much would depend on war’s uncertainties, among which would be the weapons Iraq may have available to use against our invading troops. If its armed force is as strong as we are told, to overcome it will bear a heavy cost.

        2) Going alone would demonstrate such disagreement that would lead to refusals of the needed cooperative action for the long, long war on international terrorism. When we act without allies, where international law calls for some consent among leading nations, our disregard for it impairs our influence, reduces our power. If we think we can protect ourselves from cells of zealots, without the willing cooperation of governments where they are located, we are nuts. 

        3) Prospective allies’ unwillingness to commit troops to the endeavor would give us pause, raising doubt in reasonable minds. Are we really the only one right, and all others wrong?

        4) Left with the job of rebuilding a nation unfamiliar with democratic processes or government under law, to get Iraq’s fractious parts to yield the essential cooperation, hard enough for an international consortium but probably impossible under our imperial authority, we would risk the chaos that would set Iraq’s neighbors at war.

        5) It would not stop al Qaeda’s war on us but would intensify its energies. Terrorists are wide spread. Iraq did not send Mohammed Atta or Timothy McVeigh, nor did it organize al Qaeda or the Aryan Nation. After Oklahoma City, we convicted two men. We did not attack Aryan Nation communities in northern Idaho or in Michigan. If England struck Boston, from which some of the IRA bombings in England have been financed, we would not approve.

        To assault a nation, whether Afghanistan, Iraq or another, fails to protect our country from terrorist attacks. And it kills an unnecessary number. Violating human morality reduces our nation’s claim to stand for civilized decency. Others should be killed only when necessary to defend our liberty or lives. By violating our duty of “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” in Jefferson’s phrase, we terrify and offend other nations and thereby increase the numbers and passions of those who will aim terrorist attacks against us.