A Case Against The Dictatorial Occupation of Iraq -- LIFEBOAT

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Date Posted: 10:44:53 02/20/03 Thu
Author: SwimmingUpstream
Subject: A Case Against The Dictatorial Occupation of Iraq

For a dozen years the US government has been trying to disarm Saddam Hussein's regime through the form of terrorism most palatable to western humanitarians -- economic sanctions.

This technique, sometimes allied with a UN inspection regimen, has thus far failed -- at least according to the US government. And now the US government feels justified in resorting to an outright military conquest of Iraq, replacing Saddam Hussein's dictatorship with one imposed by the US.

It is vital we speak plainly about what looms -- a military dictatorship it shall be that the US imposes. For there is little evidence that the culturally disparate groups of persons (whom the US government likes to style "the Iraqi people") desire political union with each other. And there is much in recent experience that suggests the contrary. In order to maintain a political union between the various and varying groups of persons within Iraq the US government shall almost certainly have to install a US-headed military government and impose political union at the point of the US's many guns.

There are obviously myriad risks in such an undertaking. But I am going to defer looking at these risks for a moment and return to the putative reason for the proposed US military invasion and occupation of Iraq -- namely, depriving the government of Iraq of certain weapons and weapon delivery systems; a deprivation stipulated in the cease-fire agreement that put an end to the 1991 Gulf War effort to liberate Kuwait from Iraq's military occupation, and re-iterated in subsequent UN resolutions of which 1441is the latest.

The primary reason for depriving the government of Iraq of certain types of weaponry was that the government of Iraq had demonstrated its disregard of the territorial sovereignty of an internationally recognized nation state. In doing so Iraq had given evidence of its unreliability within the framework of civilized nations. Its unreliability made the government of Iraq a menace to the world, a menace that might become intolerable if Iraq was allowed to continually develop and possess weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.

The primary reason for utilizing non-military means to disarm Iraq in 1991 was that even with the allied military force of much of the world right there at hand, the task of disarming the Iraqi regime through military force was extremely risky. These risks were thought by many of the coalition governments, and by some officials within the US government, to be excessive in relation to the good being sought by disarming the Iraqi regime.

So, the nations of the world, as an act of seeking collective security, included proscriptions of various weapons in the cease-fire agreement of 1991, and decided to try to enforce those proscriptions through a regimen of UN inspections.

I mention the context in which UN resolution 1441 came into existence -- and I concede my description of this context is certainly not exhaustive -- because this context and all it signifies is the framework of much of the reasonable opposition that is being voiced by so many nations to the US's proposed military invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The questions being put to the Bush administration by those countries who oppose the military occupation of Iraq at this time are these: Wherein lies the greater threat of death and destruction to innocents? Does it lie in the consequences of the Iraqi regime's continued possession and control of whatever proscribed weapons it can successfully conceal from an ongoing UN inspection regimen? Or, does it lie in the consequences of a military invasion and dictatorial occupation of Iraq?

The Bush administration's answer is that the former is the greater threat; and, that this threat to the security of the US justifies pre-emptive military action by the US and the "coalition of the willing" it has cobbled together, regardless of the context of the UN cease-fire agreement and subsequent UN resolutions.

This answer means the Bush administration has concluded things have recently changed significantly in the equation that has up until now prompted the US to forego dictatorial military occupation of Iraq.

What, according to the Bush administration, has changed significantly in the equation recently?

The lethality of terrorists operating in the US, for one thing. Though radical moslem terrorists have been attempting to kill large numbers of Americans for many years -- for example, they tried to blow-up the World Trade Center in 1993 -- they weren't very successful at it until September 11, 2001. The perserverance of these terrorists has led the US to conclude that it is likely they will continue to make every effort to obtain weapons of mass destruction to use against the US and the other countries the terrorists think they have a beef against. And the proscribed weapons Saddam Hussein controls might make their way into the hands of the terrorists if he is allowed to possess them indefinitely.

The trouble with this reasoning is that its logic slips the surly bonds of experience. Saddam Hussein has survived in power because he has always taken great pains to survive.

The suggestion that Saddam Hussein would give to terrorists some of the proscribed weapons he has allegedly been working very hard to keep to himself so that the terrorists could use them against Americans or Israelis or Brits or whomever, and thereby bring on his immediate annihilation by the US or Israeli or British military, goes against all the world's experience of Saddam Hussein.

The operational links the US government has been telling us exist between Saddam Hussein's regime and terrorists aren't clearly in evidence, at least not yet. And if they do exist, he has apparently concluded that it is not in his best interests to furnish them with the proscribed weapons the US government fears he has. Of course, he can always alter that conclusion. And he might very well do so -- say, for instance, if his life were threatened by a military invasion.

Has anything else changed significantly in the equation recently that argues for moving to the last resort of military invasion and dictatorial occupation of Iraq?

The Bush administration says there has. Prestige is now on the line -- the prestige of the US and of the UN. This is a dangerous line of reasoning for them, however.

The prestige of the UN is not on the line in any significant way, save this: Its prestige will definitely be tarnished if the US dismisses as irrelevant the consent of the other members of the UN Security Council in determining what the "serious consequences" to Iraq will be and when they will befall Iraq if Iraq fails to comply fully with the UN resolution the US sought and obtained.

For having sought and obtained a UN Security Council resolution which implicitly delegates to the UN Security Council as a whole the authority to determine when these "serious consequences" have been earned by Iraq, the US implicitly acknowledged that other countries would be put at risk by the US's military invasion and dictatorial occupation of Iraq. And by voting for 1441 the US also implicitly engaged that it would not force all these other countries to incur that risk without the consensus of the Security Council. Until a consensus is reached in the Security Council that these risks are the lesser of the two evils we all face, the US is honor bound to refrain from military action.

In short, by its vote for 1441 the honor of the US has now been pledged to all the nations of the UN to abide by the consensus protocols of the Security Council. If the US did not intend to abide by the collective judgment of the Security Council, then it did not act in good faith by enjoining the member states of the Security Council to sign on ot 1441.

And on the other side of the scale we have the "prestige", so-called, of -- of whom? Of the US government? No. For how can one's true "prestige" be tarnished by acting in accord with one's honorably given word of honor?

What is at stake, if anything at all is actually at stake by not going to war against Iraq without the consent of the Security Council, is the vanity of those who would feel diminished by wisely stepping back from the brink of war after having stepped up to that brink. And it may well have been wise to step up to that brink.

Unfortunately, after having stepped up to the brink, instead of merely bellering at Saddam Hussein to abide by the terms of the cease-fire, President Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and other administration officials bellered at the allies they had induced to sign 1441. And the bellered words, by calling into question the honor and respectability of these US allies, have probably made it even harder for the Bush administration to step back from the brink if the administration is in fact plagued by vanity.

But is it wise for those of our allies who are reluctant to resort to war to be reluctant any longer?

If the risk of Saddam Hussein provisioning terrorists with weapons of mass destruction is small so long as the US does not invade and threaten his life, a very open question, how great are the risks that face the US and the rest of the world in consequence of a US-led military invasion and dictatorial occupation of Iraq?

We have all been treated to some of the "scorched earth" scenarios that our military planners suspect may be Saddam's response to invasion. If he destroys some of Iraq's oil fields, then it is likely oil will remain quite costly. This is bad for everybody, and worse for some countries than others, especially the poorer countries. It won't be great for the environment, either.

But there is a much more ominous consequence that may become part of Saddam Hussein's initial response to the threat of impending invasion. As soon as the UN inspectors leave Iraq, thereby signaling war was about to begin, it is not unlikely that with his life in imminent danger Saddam Hussein might do exactly what the US government would be trying to prevent by invading. He might go ahead and give some of his proscribed weapons to terrorists. If the US government thinks it likely he will give such weapons to terrorists even when he is not being overtly threatened by the US -- and the Bush administration keeps telling us this is what they do think, and why we must get rid of Saddam right away -- the US government cannot discount the likelihood of his doing so with the provocation of war.

And then there is the likelihood that other more conventional acts of terrorism in the US and elsewhere will increase in consequence of the re-appearance of an actively hostile US military in the Arabian peninsula.

Add to these risks the risks that our troops will face during the military invasion and dictatorial occupation of Iraq and the idea of disarming Saddam Hussein by military invasion begins to darken considerably.

I harp on that word dictatorial because it signifies something important about the occupation. It is not likely that all or even most Iraqis will be pleased with a US military occupation of their country, even if the ostensible purpose of the occupation is "liberation". Not only are there going to be violent problems involving the cultural disparateness between various groups of Iraqis which our troops will be subjected to, but some of these groups have a great affinity for political association with folks outside the borders of Iraq. The Shi'ites in the south of Iraq have a cultural affinity with folks in Iran. There is a very real likelihood that Iraq will not be able to be held together without the US occupation forces engaging in a wider war eventually.

Once such things begin to unfold there is the possibility that the stability of the entire mideast may be shaken, which will not do oil prices and the world economy any good. This may only mean high energy prices and some unemployment in the US, but it could easily mean famine and starvation on a large scale in some countries. It would undoubtedly mean mayhem in many middle-eastern countries.

In addition to these risks there is the likelihood that a significant number of the Iraqis we are putatively trying to liberate will be killed either in the invasion or during the "occupation of liberation". So much for the immediate "humanitarianism" of the endeavor.

All in all, it is difficult to understand how anyone can conclude that the risks of not invading Iraq are actually greater than the risks of invading. Clearly, any bad thing that Saddam Hussein could do during the time in which the US refrains from invading he is more likely to do if the US does not refrain.

Certainly, there is no way to guarantee that Saddam Hussein will not be the author of still more evil in the world. But there is a way to guarantee that he will. And the US government is coming close to guaranteeing the latter.

The reluctance of some of our allies to abandon the inspection regimen any time soon in favor of open warfare in Iraq looks like wisdom of a high order. I hope this wisdom is contagious, and that the Bush and Blair administrations are not immune to it.

Eastport, Maine
February, 2003

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