Inspections.
At the risk of making pro-warriors uncomfortable by mentioning a word they once loved to discuss but now treat as forbidden, I would point out that the inspections that were being conducted under the auspices of the U.N. before the Iraq war did not result in tens of thousands of casualties and the destruction of much of Iraq's infrastructure. Also they didn't cost $200 billion. Also they were working.
Yet pro-warriors often act as if military action were a choice thrust upon us. As if there weren't a clear alternate choice at the time President Bush chose war: Allow the inspections to finish. As if the consensus of the experts in the field was not that the inspections could come to a determination on the factual matter of Saddam's possession of WMD.
It is possible to imagine how the pro-war side could have been right and the anti-war "appeasers" wrong. If the inspections that were under way at the time Bush rushed into war had a) Run their course to the satisfaction of the international experts, and b) Also failed to discover actual WMD that they should have discovered, then the argument for military action over inspections would be persuasive today.
But that's not what happened.
The pro-war side finds it convenient to forget that they were arguing that the international team of experts assigned by the U.N. to determine if Iraq had WMD were incompetent and had no hope of finding the WMD that were surely in Iraq. Many pro-warriors went so far as to accuse Hans Blix of being corrupt and actively hiding evidence that Saddam had WMD. Just wait until the U.S. gets in and occupies Iraq, the pro-war side said, then you'll see how useless these inspections were.
In September 2002, Donald Rumsfeld flatly stated that Saddam "has at this moment stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons." Just before the war, he stated, "We know where [the WMD] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
This was the case that got us into the war: Saddam has known stockpiles of WMD and the inspections are useless for finding them. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," Rumsfeld said of the inspections.
Yet, today, in the absence of the promised discoveries, the pro-war side proceeds as if the key question at the start of the war wasn't whether the inspections were working. Many pro-warriors here at Blogcritics ridiculed those who said that we should rely on inspections to determine the WMD issue.
The international community--disparaged as a "debating society" that simply wouldn't acknowledge that there must be WMD stockpiles currently in Iraq--was practically screaming, If you're going to war based on the WMD issue, you may be making a huge mistake--let the inspections finish.
But Bush refused. The administration declared the prior conclusions of the inspectors wrong and said waiting would just prove them wrong again. Rumsfeld and other Bush administration figures did not say that they weren't sure about the WMD issue and that an invasion was the only way to make a determination. They said they were sure about the WMD and they knew that the inspections were simply failing to find them.
Inspections. Now that this word has gone down the pro-war memory hole, it's as if the inspections were not aborted for the war. It's as if that wasn't the road not taken.
My guess is that pro-warriors fear to imagine a realistic alternate scenario to war. Given the conditions at the time Bush rushed into battle, what might have happened if we'd gone the other way? What if Hans Blix had come to a determination within weeks that there were no WMD in Iraq?
We'll never know.
But I don't think pro-warriors spend a lot of time thinking about it, because they'd have to admit that inspections were Issue #1 at the time Bush rushed into war, and they'd have to admit that, in all probability, the pro-warriors were just plain wrong about the futility of the inspections. They were probably working.
It probably is possible to use a coercive inspections process with international experts to determine whether a country has WMD or does not. It probably is possible to spend $200B of U.S. taxpayer dollars in a better way than an invasion and occupation that turns out to discover exactly what would have been discovered by an inspections process that cost only millions.
And it probably is possible, perhaps, to use that $200B in a way that reduces more overall suffering, including rectifying human-rights violations, than invading Iraq, slaughtering and maiming tens of thousands of people, enduring an insurgency fight that costs still more lives, and possibly abandoning Iraq to the same kind of chaos and violence that led to the leadership of Saddam Hussein.
If we'd thought it out, we probably wouldn't have done it this way.
And that's why pro-warriors can't allow themselves to think about it.
It starts with ignoring the inspections, because it is obvious that the inspections process would likely have resulted in a finding of fact (are there WMD in Iraq?) in an astronomically less costly way.
So then there is the waltz over to the human-rights issue, because how can anyone defend Saddam's regime? (As if anyone did.)
But the pro-warrior then senses that his improvised human-rights argument is extremely weak, given the invasion's huge toll in lives, the uncertainty about whether the region will even be less violent as a result, and the near-complete lack of discussion beforehand about whether this was truly the best strategy to export democracy to those who don't have it.
Obviously, that discussion didn't happen because nobody in the Bush Administration could have made the case with a straight face that attacking Iraq would best bring democracy to those on the globe suffering under repressive regimes. The war was never planned with an eye toward reducing human suffering. Pro-warriors can make this argument only as long as nobody scrutinizes it.
Imagine if, before the Iraq war was even a thought, you were to say to the head of any reputable organization dealing with the issue of human rights, "I have $200 billion to spend and a huge army to deploy to help end human-rights violations on this planet. Is the best way to use these resources an invasion and occupation of Iraq?" You'd have gone deaf from the laughter.
So then there is the quick Texas two-step over to the terrorism issue: Saddam was behind 9-11, so the invasion was a just, self-defense-ish attack designed to retaliate and to keep future 9-11s from happening.
Except that, in all likelihood, Saddam wasn't linked to 9-11 in any significant way. In fact, upon scrutiny, the attempt by the Bush Administration to imply this connection and successfully cause the American public to believe that Saddam was connected to 9-11 is one of the most troubling aspects of the war. This craven, cynical strategy nearly proves that the administration knew it did not have a solid case for war and therefore had to employ deception on the American people.
So, the pro-warrior can't stay there long. It's time to dance again. How about we hustle on over to...um...Iraq was seeking weapons...of some kind. Yeah, that's the ticket.
And the dance starts again.
The United States faces two key threats to its security at this time: Terrorism and WMD proliferation. They are very real threats and require urgent action.
But the Iraq war has done nothing on the matter of WMD proliferation (because WMD were not likely there) and has had the opposite of its intended effect on the criminal gangs of terrorists who are our real enemies--it has inspired formerly non-radicalized Muslims to believe that the West does, indeed, intend another Crusade against their culture. War supporters may still be in denial, but the rest of the world is not--it's obvious to any observer that the war was launched with lies, so suspicion and speculation about real motives are virtually guaranteed.
The Iraq war has done nothing to weaken terrorists. The terrorists are not states. You can't destroy them merely by destroying a government. It's harder than that.
And the only truly effective way to reduce WMD proliferation is through international policing. The U.S. cannot solve the problem with invasions. (This is actually a good thing--because we can't possibly invade everywhere on the planet. But strong international policing of WMD is possible, with our cooperation.)
The Iraq war was a huge mistake. At a cost of tens of thousands of lives, at least 200,000,000,000 U.S. taxpayer dollars and much of the respect and goodwill of other nations who matter, we have managed to make the United States no more safe than before the invasion.
The sooner Iraq war advocates stop dancing around the facts, the sooner we can acknowledge the mistake and move on with strategies that really do make the United States more secure.
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