Thu 29 Jul 2004
Gary Lapon ‘05 has questions. I can’t post to the WSO site, so I’ll answer here.
i have two questions for those who supported/support the war in iraq, mainly out of curiosity at this point because my mind is boggled: do you really believe that the war was fought primarily to help free the people of iraq from the dictatorship of saddam hussein?
Mostly Yes. Of course, I don’t know what was in George Bush’s mind and heart when he ordered the attack, so there is a problem of intentionality. Note also that the Great Plan of the Neoncons is not to free the people of Iraq simply because that would be a good thing in and of itself, although it would be that. The Grand Vision of the Neocons to to free the people of Iraq as a means to demonstrating the possibility of freedom and the rule of law as governing mechanisms in the Middle East, thereby attacking the root causes of Islamofacism.
Now, the NEOCONS and their puppet Bush may be wrong in this vision. They may have been stupid in their tactics — not enough troops, too little sucking up to the French, and so on. But they do have a comprehensible worldview.
Why does Lapon think the war was “primarily” fought? To gain control of Iraq’s oil? To improve Bush’s re-election chances?
and if so, are you aware that u.s. foreign policy, particularly during the 20th century, has consisted of supporting numerous regimes that time and again have violated human rights?
Certainly the US has supported its fair share of unsavory regimes, but is this all that US foreign policy has “consisted of”? I don’t think so. WW I and II come to mind. Even in those cases where the US did support such regimes — South Korea from the 50’s through the 80’s is an example — it is not clear to me that this support, in the context of those times, was a mistake. I would certainly rather have had a child in South Korea than in North Korea throughout this period.
July 29th, 2004 at 5:58 pm
David,
C’mon you really believe the war in Iraq was fought primarily to free the people of Iraq from Saddam? The war in Iraq was fought because US intelligence (and British intelligence, and Russian intelligence, and French intelligence, and German intelligence) said that Saddam had an active WMD program. There were other reasons — a stable democracy in the Middle East would have a transformative effect on the region, slapping an American enemy around in after decades of responding weakly to antagonists, feeling swell for freeing Iraqis, and so forth — but WMD were the main reason for the war.
Here’s the point that seems lost on so many people regarding our intelligence (or lack thereof): Every intelligence agency around said Iraq had a WMD program. Now let’s assume — for a moment — an Iraq with a WMD program threatens American vital interest and that sanctions/inspections would not work in the long-term. At this point, you know the intelligence could be wrong, but which side do you err on? The side of the intelligence being right and your having not acted or the side of the intelligence being wrong and your having acted. In the former case, you’ve endangered American lives. Indeed, as Condi Rice put it, the smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud. In the latter case, you’ve removed a tyrant from power who, in light of his defiance of international norms and of the agreement that ended the 1991 Gulf war, frankly had no legitimate claim to power. And you get all the side benefits I mentioned above (democracy in the region, smacking around Saddam, being on the right side of morality, etc.).
Now you can argue my two assumptions. I think it’s a very difficult case to make that an Iraq with a WMD program doesn’t threaten American vital interests. The second assumption is easier to argue, many very smart people think Iraq could have been contained reasonably enough with a sanction/inspection regime — though I disagree with them.
The problem with many on the anti-war side is they seem to think that the fact that the intelligence turns out to have been wrong is some sort of condemnation of the war, which it is not.
July 29th, 2004 at 6:02 pm
And on a semantic note (which I didn’t want to include in my post as it would overly complicate things), obviously Saddam was removed from power to free the Iraqi people as the whole idea was to remove him from power. I’m interpreting Lapon’s question as “do you really think the main reason for the war was altruistic and humanitarian” rather than stemming from a fundamental national interest. The answer is, obviously and rightly, that we fight wars cuz they’re in our strategic national interest and only cuz they’re in our strategic national interest.
July 30th, 2004 at 9:29 am
Hey Mike,
Not that we needed to start this again, but I would like to point out that every piece of evidence that the public saw was debunked well before the war began. The large, large LARGE majority of the antiwar movement argued that the WMD programs that Saddam had were, at most, marginal. Plus, the forgotten argument of the antiwar movement was the utter confusion we had over the choice of Iraq when Iran and North Korea both had more active, more complete programs that were not being contained in any way while inspections had, as we argued and as we were proven right (yeah, it’s an “I told you so”), contained Hussein’s WMD program.
So the failure of the intelligence does show the flaws with the war because the antiwar movement believed from the beginning that the evidence was FAR weaker than presented and now, with a year of occupation, that only becomes more and more clear.
Finally, as my friend told me (remember, this is only a joke, though with a hint of truth), the only connection between Al-Qaeda and Iraq is the Q.
July 30th, 2004 at 1:37 pm
Yes, many of the people who were against the war at Williams claimed the intelligence was weak. It so happens that every intelligence gathering agency in the world did not share that view. Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
The assertion that _every_ piece of evidence the public saw before the war has been debunked is pretty silly. I mean c’mon, here’s a piece of evidence presented in Bush’s State of the Union that has not been debunked: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
The credible evidnce, prior to the war, was that Iraq had a WMD program. As I said originally, it was and is a perfectly defendable position that this program could have been contained via a inspection/sanctions regime.