Nasty Realities

Evading them won't make us safe

John Mueller sees correctly that the Iraq problem has two aspects: (1) regional security and (2) global terrorism. Unfortunately, he fails to grasp the nasty realities of either.

Mueller's assessment of the regional threat posed by a nuclear Iraq is nothing short of fantastic. He pooh-poohs the possibility that Iraq might invade one or more of its neighbors and argues that Saddam Hussein "is primarily devoted to preserving his regime and his own personal existence." Huh? Try telling that to Iran and Kuwait.

Mueller needs to read Mark Bowden's superb—and chilling—profile of Saddam in the May 2002 issue of The Atlantic. Bowden makes clear that Saddam sees himself as a world-historical figure—a man destined to lead pan-Arabia back to greatness. Perversely, every brush with disaster and death "has strengthened his conviction that his path is divinely inspired and that greatness is his destiny." Why on earth should we suppose that a nuclear arsenal—built in reckless defiance of the United States and the world—would temper rather than inflame Saddam's raging megalomania?

Mueller blithely assumes that any future Iraqi aggression would be "extremely likely to trigger a concerted multilateral military attack upon him and his regime" and thus "patently suicidal." Excuse me, but there was no multilateral response to Iraq's attack on Iran, and the world would have been all too happy to acquiesce in Kuwait's disappearance had President Bush 41 not stepped in and forced the issue. What makes Mueller think that the world would rush in to confront a nuclear-armed Iraq? That task, inevitably, would fall to the United States. Mueller's counsel boils down to this: The United States should avoid war with a relatively weak Iraq today so that it can tangle with a nuclear adversary tomorrow.

What about the nexus between Iraq and terrorism, which Mueller dismisses as so much "arm-waving"? Allow me to quote Bowden's article once more, this time from a scene in which Saddam is addressing Iraqi military leaders who run terrorist training camps:

He told [them] that they were the best men in the nation, the most trusted and able. That was why they had been selected to meet with him, and to work at the terrorist camps where warriors were being trained to strike back at America. The United States, he said, because of its reckless treatment of Arab nations and the Arab people, was a necessary target for revenge and destruction. American aggression must be stopped in order for Iraq to rebuild and to resume leadership of the Arab world.

This meeting occurred back in 1996—before the recent heating up of the conflict. So much for Saddam's live-and-let-live foreign policy.

Bellicose rhetoric is one thing; the ability to back it up is something altogether more serious. Here is the ultimate threat, the one that Mueller can't even bring himself to discuss: Iraqi biological or nuclear weapons might someday be put in the hands of terrorist groups. If that were to happen, America could experience horrors that would dwarf those unleashed on September 11.

Opponents of action against Iraq argue that we can rely on deterrence to protect us from such atrocities. No country, not even one as rash as Iraq, would dare to use weapons of mass destruction against the United States because of the threat of overwhelming retaliation. That argument has considerable force with respect to a direct attack by Iraq, but it fails completely to confront the possibility that Iraq could use terrorist intermediaries to do its dirty work while masking its own involvement. How is deterrence supposed to work when WMDs lack a return address?

Recall, again, last year's anthrax attacks. We still don't know who was responsible, or whether there was any foreign state involvement. Just this week, a Washington Post article cast considerable doubt on the FBI's favored theory that the murders were the work of a disgruntled American scientist—and suggested that an Iraqi role remains a live possibility.

Go back a few more years—to the 1993 plot to assassinate former President Bush in Kuwait. It appears that the attack was an Iraqi operation—but the fact is we're not really sure. Read this 1993 New Yorker piece by Seymour Hersh for an in-depth review of the less-than-airtight case.

Welcome to the shadowy world in which we now live. A world in which deterrence no longer suffices. A world in which the judicious use of American power to preempt looming threats may be all that stands between us and catastrophe.

Here is what we know about the current Iraqi regime. It has weapons of mass destruction and is actively seeking to add to its arsenal. It is rabidly hostile to the United States. It has an established track record of predatory conduct and a demonstrated willingness to take extreme risks in pursuing its predatory ambitions. There is not another country on earth that matches Iraq's combination of destructive capacity, anti-American animus, and recklessness in projecting power. In a shadowy world, this much is clear: We are not safe while the present regime rules Iraq.