« Critical Evolution | Main | Back »

August 26, 2002

The Case Against Attacking Iraq

Attacking Iraq is not a decision that can be reached lightly. Beyond the risks to our soldiers, sailors and airmen, an attack on Iraq offers the potential for numerous dire consequences in the war on terror. First and foremost is the damage such an attack would do to the alliances we've developed with other nations over the past decades. Virtually none of our allies advocate an attack on Iraq, while examples of allies urging us to stay our hand are legion. Europe, Russia, our Arab allies, China, and others have all urged us to refrain from launching what they see as an unnecessary war. If we do attack Iraq despite their admonishments, we can expect to lose at least some of their support in our war against terrorism. This is no small thing, as even as powerful as we are, we cannot win this war on our own. No matter how skilled our intelligence agents are, there are too many hiding places for terrorists around the globe for us to go it alone. Our intelligence services must have the assistance of allies to have any hope of tracking down terrorists. And the blocking of funds to terrorist groups requires the support of our allies as well. The Treasury Department cannot block terrorist funds without allied support. Allies serve too important a role for us to discard their support lightly.

This is not to suggest we allow our allies to hold veto power over our actions, but we do have to address the question of how our allies will react when determining whether or not to take an action. If the negative repercussions among our allies caused by a particular action are high enough, that action’s positive consequences may not be great enough to justify taking the action. We need to have reason to believe the positive results of our actions will outweigh the negatives. In the case of Iraq, we need to be certain we’re not going to lose the intelligence and financial support of our allies in exchange for removing Hussein from power.

Nor should we underestimate the importance of retaining the moral high ground in this war. As long as we hold that high ground, it is harder for terrorists to hide or for their allies to support them. Even regimes devoted to supporting terrorists for years have chosen to at least hide their activities as best they can, as such support is now commonly seen as grounds for a regime change such as that in Afghanistan. This comes back to our first point as well, as our allies help maintain that moral force. Without that moral force, our enemies might find it easier to act in the open, providing more blatant and more substantial aid to our terrorist foes. Our attack on Afghanistan was justified in the eyes of the world by the September 11 attacks. An attack on Iraq cannot currently be justified in self-defense. Alienating our allies over Iraq could well eliminate the advantages we now hold in being seen as acting in our own defense. Is the elimination of Saddam Hussein worth those consequences?

One of the critical questions not addressed in the rush to go after Iraq is how many things we can do at once? There will be American forces in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future. Adding that commitment to our forces stationed in the Balkans and in Korea means the U.S. military is already stretched pretty thin. Invading Iraq would effectively preclude American action elsewhere for at least six months to a year, and probably longer, as a success in Iraq can only be attained by maintaining a presence there long enough to build real democratic institutions. Therefore, attacking Iraq is also a decision to ignore other parts of the world. That means a conscious decision must be made that Iraq is the greatest threat facing America right now, and that we can afford to ignore other areas while we remove Saddam Hussein from power and rebuild a nation. The idea that Iraq is the greatest threat to America right now does not seem to follow from the available evidence.

Iraq, after all, is hardly the sole state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Libya and Syria have been players in that world for many years, and Iran and Saudi Arabia are strong supporters of both anti-Israel and anti-American terrorist groups as well. Iraq may have weapons of mass destruction, but the September 11 attacks demonstrated that terrorists don't need access to such weapons to launch a devastating attack on the United States. The elimination of Iraq might prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction, but our primary goal should be the prevention of any terrorist attacks. What is so different about Iraq as opposed to these other countries that justifies removing Hussein while leaving so many other sponsors of terrorism in power? This is not to suggest that since there are many sponsors of terror we can't act against only one. We can hope that removing Hussein could serve as encouragement for the other players to curtail their activities, but there's certainly no guarantee they would do so. Are we willing to then remove the mullahs from Iran and the House of Saud from Saudi Arabia? If not, then attacking Iraq is not really a solution to the terrorism question.

Attacking Iraq could also increase terrorist attacks against the United States in the future. An American invasion of Iraq would almost certainly rouse more young Islamic males to join al Qaeda and similar organizations, acting as a recruiting drive for them. This infusion of fresh blood would allow al Qaeda to sacrifice many of their new soldiers in diversionary attacks, diffusing our efforts to locate and eliminate terrorist cells. The rage an American invasion in Iraq might raise in the Arab world could even create new terrorist groups dedicated to avenging the perceived insult. Even with a like number of terrorists, a large group of smaller terrorist organizations would be far more difficult to stop, because they would have virtually no connections to one another and therefore elimination of one group would have minimal effects on the aggregate ability of terrorists to strike at America. Certainly we can expect there to be a continued flow of recruits to al Qaeda for the foreseeable future, but acting to both increase the flow and to disperse their destinations is not in our best interests.

Possibly most important of all, an attack on Iraq is by no means certain to succeed. While Hussein's forces are in worse shape than they were in 1991, Hussein has learned a few things from that fight. The latest reports suggest Hussein plans to withdraw his troops into the cities of Iraq, forcing us to dig out his army one house at a time. There is a way to overcome this, by simply bringing in artillery and leveling the cities holding Iraqi combatants. But the cost in Iraqi civilian life would be massive, creating an even greater world outcry against the United States and raising the legitimate question of how many innocent Iraqis we're willing to kill to remove Hussein. Some will die in a war no matter what we do, as that is the nature of war, and it is not a war crime as long as American forces do what they reasonably can to minimize civilian casualties. But razing cities to the ground to root out enemy forces arguably goes too far, and the outrage generated by such destruction would likely be sufficient to force American political leaders to require house-to-house fighting to take the Iraqi cities. Such an operation would be slow, brutal, and would result in many American casualties. I don't believe those casualties would be sufficient to turn American public opinion against the war, but there is a threshold of American casualties we should be prepared to tolerate to remove Hussein from power. City fighting could easily exceed those limits, because it's slow pace and steady casualty rate would be a nightly drain on American resolve, as pictures of the battlefield and coffins being shipped to America assailed us every day from CNN.

Hussein also knows that this time he has nothing to lose by using weapons of mass destruction, so we can expect him to unleash chemical and biological weapons against us both in the field and, if he can find a way, on the home front. While American forces are trained to operate in a chemical environment, such training is unpopular and frequently is not emphasized by units, therefore widespread use of weapons of mass destruction by Hussein could easily cause significant damage to our forces. Those weapons Hussein chose not to use against our troops would be great weapons for him to sell or simply give to Islamic terrorist groups, who would then possess their own stockpile of weapons of mass destruction for use against the United States. Hussein may have considered giving such weapons to terrorist groups already, but his self-preservation instincts make that less likely than people might think. As a secular dictator, Hussein is hardly a model of the ideal government dreamed of by al Qaeda fanatics, and he knows that. Handing people who would like to see him removed from power weapons of mass destruction could be an unwise maneuver, and Hussein's instincts for self-preservation likely will stay his hand as long as he thought he could remain in power. But an American invasion with the stated goal of removing him from power would remove that incentive, and is likely to lead to the proliferation of Hussein's stockpile to groups far more likely to use such weapons. While sanctions have not proved effective against Hussein, the threat of death seems to have, at a minimum, kept Hussein discreet, and may be more effective in keeping his weapons of mass destruction away from terrorists than an invasion.

Even in a best-case scenario, invading Iraq will set us against our allies and raise many recruits for Islamic terrorist groups. It may eliminate one threat against the United States, but we don’t know that as a fact. Mohammed Atta’s meeting with Iraqi intelligence in Prague is an interesting piece of evidence, but it is hardly sufficient to demonstrate Iraqi involvement in the September 11 attacks. While Saddam Hussein does possess the motive and the ability to strike at American interests and probably America herself, there is no evidence he has done so. Taking him out as a preemptive measure without proof he’s acted against America doesn’t make us any safer from Islamic terrorism, and may well place us in greater danger.

Eliminating Saddam Hussein would be a service to mankind. The man is unquestionably evil, and his removal from power would be a good thing for the Iraqi people and for the Gulf region as a whole. There is no way to be certain how many lives might be saved by removing Hussein from power. But the issue in question cannot be whether or not removing Saddam is a good thing, as that is not at issue. The question at hand is whether or not the elimination of Hussein would be the best way for America to protect herself from future episodes of Islamic terrorism. Knowing what we know now, there is no evidence to support such a conclusion. Islamic terrorism has emerged from many sources, and most of those are centered in Saudi Arabia, not Iraq. Our limited resources can be better spent fighting terrorism in places far more likely to produce attacks on America than Iraq. For the time being, it is in our best interests to focus on fighting terrorism, and attacking Iraq would not help us towards that end.

UPDATE (10/13/02): I see this post, which drew little comment when I posted it, has now drawn some interest from someone who opposes the war. So in fairness, I should note here that, while this post represented by best effort to develop a good case against the war, it didn't convince me. I believe that this case, while valid, is not sufficient. I don't want to go to war with Iraq. But I think it's the best option we have remaining.