Posted on 09/16/2002 10:09:20 AM PDT by vannrox
Roy Hattersley
Monday September 16, 2002
The Guardian
It was Geoffrey Hoon who converted and convinced me. Six weeks ago, in this column, I described myself as an unlikely hawk. And until last Thursday evening, a hawk of sorts I remained. For I accepted the doctrine of the pre-emptive strike - the right of a nation under threat to take early action against a potential aggressor. I still do. But when I heard the secretary of state for defence - appearing on a special edition of Question Time - give the official explanation of why military action against Baghdad might be a regrettable necessity, I became a Gulf war dove.
Hoon's indictment of the Baghdad regime was impressive and irrefutable. But most of it had absolutely nothing to do with Saddam Hussein's threat to the west. One item on the charge sheet was a comparison between infant mortality rates in the parts of Iraq under Saddam's personal control and those outside his area of direct influence. As Hoon explained that the further a family lived from the centre of power, the greater its children's life expectancy, I realised what should have been obvious for weeks. We are being encouraged to support the war not because Saddam is a threat, but because he is evil.
Evil he undoubtedly is. But that is not in itself sufficient justification for starting a war that will kill thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of innocent civilians. If it were, God knows how many countries we would be preparing to invade. So next Tuesday, when at last we see the dossier that explains the need for a "regime change", we must not be satisfied with a catalogue of wickedness.
Indeed, the more that the president and the prime minister base their argument on the undoubted villainy of Saddam, the more we are entitled to believe that they cannot demonstrate, even to their own satisfaction, that he is likely to attack Israel or the west.
For next week's dossier to be intellectually convincing its claims must be judged against three criteria. Does Saddam possess, or is he likely to acquire, weapons of mass destruction? Does he possess or is he likely to acquire delivery systems, which will allow him to target America and her allies? And assuming he possesses both warheads and missiles, are there any circumstances in which it can be plausibly agreed that he would use them?
No one seriously doubts that Saddam already possesses chemical and biological weapons and that, sooner or later, he will add a primitive nuclear capability to his arsenal. And he is building, perhaps has built, some sort of rocket, as well as a crude version of the flying bomb that was used on London during the last years of the second world war. But the third question still has to be asked. Why should Saddam launch a doomed attack on the most powerful military complex that the world has ever known? I agree he is bad enough to do it. But is he sufficiently insane to set in train a course of action that can only end in his own total destruction?
The official answer to that question is that he happily gassed his own people when they defied his will, so why should we doubt his willingness to gas Americans and Israelis? On such a glorious non sequitur is the case for war constructed. Saddam knew he could get away with mass murder inside his own boundaries. Indeed, the genocide of the marsh Arabs probably made his tyranny more secure. It only needs one gas-filled warhead to land on Long Island for him and his regime to be wiped out. It does not even have to explode.
That fate cannot be avoided - as some of the more fatalistic scenarios suggest - by contracting out the dirty work. It is possible for freelance fanatics to send envelopes of anthrax through the post and suicide bombers do not need much logistical support. But intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads can only be landed from sophisticated installations by trained technicians. If Saddam was behind it, the world would know and he would pay the price. No doubt he does give comfort and support to al-Qaida terrorists. But if America intends to invade every country that does the same, we are on the eve of another year's war.
To believe that Saddam is likely to attack the west - the only justification for war - is to believe he is a suicidal lunatic.
That is an allegation that I have not heard even George Bush make against him. Indeed, the president is now barely even bothering to pretend that it is the fear of attack that prompts American action. Only two of the five requirements that he told the United Nations Saddam must meet had anything to do with the security of the United States. The other three concerned moral conduct not military capability.
For next week's dossier to make me a hawk again it will have to explain why Saddam is bent on self-destruction. Up to now nobody has even tried.
If you look at his "strategy" for starting the Iran / Iraq war, and invading Kuwait, you can easily come to the conclusion Saddam is a lunatic. He need not initially have suicidal tendencies to still be a nut with a nuke. Even a "primitive" nuclear device can ruin your whole day.
Bush Doctrine II: No terroristic nuts with nukes.
The likely risks are these:
1) Saddam gives the device to a terrorist cell to infiltrate into the U.S. and tries to cover his tracks.
2) Even more likely: Saddam uses the bomb for nuclear blackmail. He invades Kuwait and the Gulf States and then warns: "If you try stopping me, I'll obliterate Tel Aviv, Ankara, Rome, or even New York."
At that point, a U.S. President would have few options to consider, and none of them would be very attractive.
Hitler is not that mad, surely?
Sigh. No, it is not, you narrow-minded idiot.
This strain of anti-war argument is especially pathetic, because it betrays a huge lack of imagination on the part of the speaker. Evidently people like this author think that (a) the only violence Saddam can do or cause against us would come in the form of an Announced, Massive Attack In A War He Declares Against Us, and that therefore (b) if he doesn't do that, we're all safe. The rest of the argument is indeed quite simple: "He won't do that, because he's not suicidal."
There's one problem. That's not the only way Saddam and his WMDs can harm us. He can give them to other people to use. He can secretly spin off elements of his armed forces into quasi "independent" groups which nominally Have No Official Connection To Iraq Whatsoever. Then "they" can attack us.
In short, Saddam can attack us, kill some Americans, and simply not announce to the world that he's the one behind it. Indeed, that's what he's most likely to do (this follows immediately from the anti-war "Saddam's not suicidal" argument, in fact!), and in all probability it's what he's been doing.
But this possibility - apparently - leaves the anti-war folks dumbfounded. Why, all wars are overt, they apparently think. If Saddam attacks us surely he'd put his face on a big videoscreen and make a televised-phone call to the White House to explain that he's attacking us first. After all, that's how it works on TV and in the movies. That's how "Dr. Evil" does it in those Austin Powers movies!
Again, the only type of military violence the anti-war people seem to know about and comprehend is overt, declared military strikes. Funneling materiel to terrorist groups, secretly training and aiding them, distancing himself from these private armies so he can keep his hands clean - the anti-war folks simply can't grasp any of these possibilities.
The end result is that the anti-war zealots end up (ironically) telegraphing the following message to the Saddams of the world: "If you want to attack us or do harm to us, make sure that any violence is not performed by your official armed forces, but is done through middle men and private armies to which you can marginally plausibly claim you have no 'connection'. Because, if you do so, we won't fight back at all, we'll argue with anyone who supports fighting back, and we'll wink our eyes and pretend that we actually believe your hands are clean."
That's the result of this type of narrow thinking. The result is to encourage fighting via terrorists and suitcase nukes rather than overt missile strikes and invasion forces.
And then people whose heads are steeped in reality rather than utopia have to clean up the mess and deal with the terrorists which the anti-war people invite to our shores, all the while listening to a cacophony of whines from them.
Yes, truly ironic indeed.
In five pages or less, describe the fundamental nature of (a) warfare, (b) terrorism, and (c) state-sponsored terrorism. Apply your analysis to the current historical context. (20 points)
It's that Hussein would be in a position of mutually assured destruction with ourselves. That itself is the alarming prospect that calls for action.
It's nothing less than bizarre that the left recognizes exactly this danger but claims that it is a reason not to act. Whereas being under a constant threat from Sadaam of his nuking our homelands, or just our troops in the Middle East, seems to me like a dangerous thing, the left would have us believe that such a position is a description of our security.
We could argue about this, I guess, but I don't believe they even mean this. After all, these are the same critics, especially in Britain, who used to tell us that we ought to disarm unilaterally in the face of the Soviet Union. It was only our aggressive stance toward the Soviets that "caused" the poor, peace loving communists to arm themselves, you see. So their recent adoption of MAD-- and with Sadaam Hussein no less-- is just political opportunism and not a sincere belief.
For the rest of the non-lying, sane world, it's worth pointing out that MAD with Hussein puts us in a more dangerous position than in 1990. Recall that then Hussein threatened to control of most of the world's oil. Even if he didn't invade SA he would have always had the threat of doing so handy to cow the Saudis and control them. Notice that if Hussein had had a nuclear bomb he likely would have succeeded.
No, he likely wouldn't have nuked the homelands of Britain and the U.S. then. He would, however, have had a credible threat of nuking our troops during the Gulf War, a threat that likely would have kept us from liberating Kuwait. At the very least, I can't say with any confidence that we would have been likely to act.
Does anyone now think that surrendering to Hussein in the Gulf War would have been just fine? I know the psycho left thinks so, but it's worth pointing out that that is the claim they must make publicly if they're going to adopt this absurd view that MAD with Sadaam Hussein is a sensible policy position.
So, the connection to terrorism is hardly the only concern here. The concern is simply that Hussein's aggressive and determined government will be unstoppable in its Middle Eastern ambitions if Hussein gets a nuclear bomb.
These are the same people, remember, who insisted that Fidel Castro, the Sandinistas and the Viet Cong, maong others, were all "freedom fighters".
The concept of "surrogate warfare" never penetrated their ever-furrowed and compassionate brow. So don't expect them to solve 2 + 2 either...
We have a winner......bombs away....
I would add, also, that Saddam's past actions have not been notable for their rationality.
If one were to judge from his ill-advised wars with Iran and Kuwait, not to mention his internal use of WMDs, one cannot very easily dismiss the possibility of Saddam impulsively popping off a nuke (at Israel, most likely), in the expectation that the Islamic world would rally behind him.
Let's just protect ourselves and let these animals have at the rest of the world. I'm so go**amned sick and tired of this garbage, it makes me want to scream.
It'll take until there are burned or contorted-by-gas corpses laying around by the thousands will these MORONS be convinced. Fine.
I repeat for the hard of hearing: F**K 'em.
Tell me again about why it was our duty to go after Milosevic?
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