The Mother of all Posts
Where are/were Saddam WMD programs? And what the bigger issue is.
Kenneth Pollack thinks he knows the
answer. Interesting conclusion:
The war was not all bad. I do not believe that it was a strategic mistake, although the appalling handling of postwar planning was. There is no question that Saddam Hussein was a force for real instability in the Persian Gulf, and that his removal from power was a tremendous improvement. There is also no question that he was pure evil, and that he headed one of the most despicable regimes of the past fifty years. I am grateful that the United States no longer has to contend with the malign influence of Saddam's Iraq in this economically irreplaceable and increasingly fragile part of the world; nor can I begrudge the Iraqi people one day of their freedom. What's more, we should not forget that containment was failing. The shameful performance of the United Nations Security Council members (particularly France and Germany) in 2002-2003 was final proof that containment would not have lasted much longer; Saddam would eventually have reconstituted his WMD programs, although further in the future than we had thought. That said, the case for war—and for war sooner rather than later—was certainly less compelling than it appeared at the time...[my emphasis]
The point still stands that the world was dangerously ignoring Saddam Hussein. One thing that was ridiculously overblown by some people was the comparison of Saddam to Hitler. Yes, both were mass-murdering dictators, but Saddam doesn't even approach the persistence and scope of the Holocaust. Saddam is also in a very poor position to threaten any sort of world war given that the list of powers with stronger militaries than his army at his peak include India, China, the United States, Russia if it remobilized, and, of course, the combined forces of NATO. The only real comparison, and the most alarming one, is that most of the world has not shown any resolve in policing Saddam. He was pretty much ignored in his use of chemical weapons on his own people in the '80s. When we invaded in Desert Storm the world was surprised to find that he was close to manufacturing nuclear weapons, which should have surprised no one given the Osirak program that was made with assistance of
France,
and destroyedby Israel after the international community refused to take action, for which it was widely condemned. Fast-forward to 1998, and Operation Desert Fox.
I think that Clinton should have gone further than he did in Desert Fox, But I think it was a case of running into the
same problem that Bush did. Most of the same countries opposed the war, and no one supported taking major action against Saddam, including the Republicans who were too busy criticizing him for distracting the U.S. from...the Lewinsky scandal. The reason the war was launched was that Saddam had shuttered the UN inspections, and his cooperation had reached record lows, to such an extent that the UN withdrew its inspectors to let the United States and Britain bomb Iraq into compliance, briefly returning on a bluff by Saddam that resulted in more stonewalling, and the second removal of inspectors, concluding with a formal report by the UN that the situation on the ground was unacceptable. After the report was released Desert Fox began.
It lasted three days, and created the spectacle of the world criticizing the US and Britain for forcing Iraq to cooperate with the UN in accordance with resolutions passed unanimously by the UN Security Council. Saddam crossed a red line then just as much as Hitler crossed a red line when he began rearming the German military, and in both cases the world marched on by. In hindsight, the only extreme response that should have been on the table in 1998 should have been a decapitation nuclear strike on Baghdad, anything to send the message that there are punishments for flouting international law and military-backed international resolutions. The ultimate disgrace is that Desert Fox ended on what was likely a compromise of future military action as necessary and constant vigilance from the forces in the Gulf region. The result of this compromise was international foot-dragging, repeated complaints about the presence of US troops in the Gulf, and the failure of the UN to take any sort of action on Iraq until Bush went to the UN with the offer of not going to war if inspections were effectively reinstated. When they turned out to not be effective, there was more foot-dragging and a general refusal from
certain members of the Security Council to finish the job.
People wonder why tragedies like the Holocaust, Rwanda, Kosovo, 9/11, Bosnia, and the gassing of the Kurds happen. They happen because the world-at-large doesn't have the morals or the initiative to raise a finger against any scum on the planet with a government title before his name. They happen because so many "responsible" nations would rather irresponsibly ignore a clear threat to humanity and international peace and security than make any serious effort to prevent future conflict and massacre. And they happen because time and again no one has meted out consequences for the crimes and violations of the worst of the world in the highest of places. Only when everyone around the world agrees that the end of the Gulf War should have been to kill Saddam will we really have anything approaching world peace.
