Should We Invade Iraq?

A Reason online debate

Brink Lindsey & John Mueller from the January 2003 issue

(Page 2 of 6)

Quite a bit of oil comes from the Middle East, of course, but discussions of the American interest on that score tend to ignore simple economics. The area already is dominated by an entity, OPEC, which would dearly love to hike the price for the commodity. It is constrained from doing so not by warm and cuddly feelings toward its customers but by the grim economic realization that such a policy would reduce demand, intensify the search for new petroleum sources, and bring about a worldwide inflation that would raise the prices of imported commodities even more than any gains obtained by an increase in the oil price. Whatever happens in the region, this fundamental market reality is likely to mellow and correct incidental distortions.

In the meantime, monarchs in a number of countries may gradually be coming to the realization that they are out of date, rather in the way Latin American militarists more or less voluntarily decided during the last quarter century to relinquish control to democratic forces. If this does happen, however, the process will be impelled, as in Latin America, primarily by domestic forces, not outside ones.

A humanitarian argument could be made for a war against Iraq -- to liberate its people from a vicious tyranny and from the debilitating and destructive effects of the sanctions which the United States apparently is incapable of relaxing while Saddam Hussein remains in power. Such a war would have to be kept inexpensive in casualties, and the United States would have to be willing to hang on for quite some time to help rebuild the nation, something experience suggests is unlikely.

But calls for war do not stress this argument. Instead, they raise alarms about vague, imagined international threats that, however improbable, could conceivably emanate from a miserable and pathetic regime. In due course, nature (there have been persistent rumors about cancer) or some other force will remove our devil du jour. The situation calls for patient watchfulness, not hysteria.

No More 9/11s

The case for invading Iraq
Brink Lindsey

John Mueller tries to make light of Iraq. Feeble, inept, pathetic, and daffy are some of the adjectives he uses to describe the blood-soaked, predatory regime now in power there. The implication is that only the paranoid could find in Saddam Hussein's buffoonery any cause for serious concern.

Well, I beg to differ. Iraq is no joke: The crimes that the Ba'athist regime there has committed and may intend to commit in the future are deadly serious business. Under the reign of Saddam Hussein, Iraq has invaded two of its neighbors, lobbed missiles at two other countries in the region, systematically defied U.N. resolutions that demand its disarmament, fired on U.S. and coalition aircraft thousands of times over the past decade, and committed atrocious human rights abuses against its own citizens, including the waging of genocidal chemical warfare against Iraqi Kurds. In short, this is a regime that is responsible for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of deaths.

Meanwhile, Iraq has a long record of active support for international terrorist groups. Indeed, it apparently has staged terrorist attacks of its own directly against the United States. I am speaking of Iraq's likely involvement in the attempted assassination of former President Bush in Kuwait in 1993.

Most ominously, Iraq has been engaged for many years in the monomaniacal pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). It reportedly has significant stockpiles of biological weapons, and its aggressive, large-scale nuclear program is thought to be at most a few years away from success. The fact that Iraq has been willing to endure ongoing sanctions, and thus the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars in oil revenue, rather than dismantle its WMD programs shows the ferocity of its commitment to maximizing its destructive capabilities.

In light of the above, I would support military action against Iraq even if 9/11 had never happened and there were no such thing as Al Qaeda. After all, I supported the Gulf War back in 1991 in the hope of toppling Saddam Hussein's regime before it fulfilled its nuclear ambitions. Unfortunately, quagmire was plucked from the jaws of victory in that conflict, and so today we are faced with concluding its unfinished business. In my view, standing by with "patient watchfulness" while predatory, anti-Western terror states become nuclear powers is irresponsible and dangerous folly.

As for the headline question, "What's the rush?," my reply is: North Korea. In 1994 President Clinton, with the help of former President Carter, swept the Korean threat under the rug and trusted that "nature," or something, would deal with that "devil du jour." Now North Korea's psychopathic regime informs us that it has nuclear weapons, a fact that vastly complicates any efforts to prevent the situation from getting even worse. We can look forward to similar complications with Iraq unless we act soon.

The case for action against Iraq is further strengthened by the unfortunate facts that 9/11 did happen and Al Qaeda does exist. Here is the grim reality: Radical Islamism is in arms against the West, and its fanatical followers have pledged their lives to killing as many of the infidel as they possibly can. American office workers in New York and Washington, French seamen in Yemen, Australian tourists in Bali, Russian theatergoers in Moscow -- nobody is safe. However exactly this conflict arose, it is now in full flame. And let there be no mistake: This is a fight to the death. Either we crush radical Islamism's global jihad, or thousands, even millions, more Americans will die.

Iraq occupies a strategic position in the war against Islamist terror along several dimensions. First, Iraq's WMD programs threaten to stock the armory of Al Qaeda & Company. Saddam Hussein's regime has a long and inglorious history of reckless aggression and grievous miscalculation. The decision to use terrorist intermediaries to unleash, say, Iraqi bioweapons against the United States strikes me as an entirely plausible scenario, assuming that Iraq's leadership can convince itself that the attack could be carried out with "plausible deniability." Given that more than a year has gone by since last fall's anthrax letter scare and we still have no idea who was responsible, the threat posed by Iraq's WMD programs is far from idle. It is, in fact, intolerable.

Second, the resolution -- one way or another -- of our longstanding conflict with Iraq will have vitally important repercussions in the larger war against terror. If we proceeded to remove the Ba'athist regime from power, we would make it clear that the United States means business in dealing with terrorism and its sponsors. All those countries that continue, more than a year after 9/11, to demonstrate their incapacity or unwillingness to root out the terrorists in their midst (e.g., Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen) would have newly strengthened incentives to do the right thing. If, on the other hand, all the tough talk against Iraq turned out to have been hot air, U.S. credibility would sustain a major blow. Al Qaeda would be emboldened by perceived American weakness, and countries that have to balance fear of the United States against fear of Islamists at home would be inclined to take U.S. displeasure less seriously.