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The following Op-Ed piece is reprinted from the Boston Globe as a "fair use", for educational purposes. Copies of this article may be obtained for a fee from the Boston Globe on-line. This website has no authority to grant permission to reprint this article.
QUESTIONS ON BUSH'S WAR ON IRAQ
Author(s): JAMES CARROLL Date: July 23,
2002 Page: A11 Section: Op-Ed
WE AMERICANS FIND OURSELVES IN THE EXTRAORDINARY POSITION OF
WITNESSING OUR GOVERNMENT'S SLOW BUT CERTAIN MOVEMENT TOWARD A MAJOR WAR WITH
IRAQ.
Such open maneuvering, with clear statements of intention from the
Bush administration, the leaking of war plans from the Pentagon, and the
acquiescence of Congress, could not have happened when US power was balanced,
and therefore checked, by the Soviet Union, nor when that power was mitigated
by Washington's regard for world opinion. Now the only conceivable check on the
sole superpower is the will of its own people, manifest through politics, which
is why we must urgently take up the subject.
It can be agreed that Saddam Hussein is a danger to his neighbors,
an enemy to his own people, and a threat to world peace. But on this page last
Saturday the former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, expressed
grave skepticism about the Bush contention that Hussein so threatens the United
States with weapons of mass destruction that war is justified. Ritter proposed
congressional hearings to "ask the Bush administration tough
questions" about its purposes. Here are some questions that occur to me:
* Having lived with Hussein as a mortal enemy for more than a
decade, is the urgency of replacing him now a result less of real evidence of
increased threat than of the "us versus them" mind-set that drives
the war on terrorism? Is the cause of war something Hussein is doing, or is it
something we are imagining?
* Does the bellicosity of the Bush administration eliminate the
alternatives to war? For example, "containment and deterrence," which
worked against the Soviet Union and have so far worked against Hussein, depend
on the cooperation of other nations. Is Bush's chest-thumping war talk, even
short of actual invasion, destroying that cooperation?
* When the US goal shifts from one of moderating Hussein's
behavior to the openly expressed purpose of "regime change," what
does Hussein have to lose? And when Hussein knows an invading US force is
surely coming, does he not have to "use or lose" whatever weapons he
has? Isn't Washington forcing him to respond with his worst?
* What effect would a major American war against Iraq have on the
broader conflict between Islam and the West? If Al Qaeda grew out of the
humiliations attached to the Gulf War, what would grow out of the new
humiliation of a massive US imposition on Iraq, including the necessity of a long-term
occupation by the United States?
* What is the relationship between the urgent American project in
Iraq and the staggering lack of American interest in the worsening
Israeli-Palestinian crisis? Is Bush using the former problem as an excuse to
avoid grappling with the latter one? How is it in Israel's interest to invite
Hussein to unleash his Scuds again? And what is the hope for improved US-Arab
relations so long as Palestinians are left in misery?
* What does it say about the United States that we are about to
become a "first-strike" nation? Abandoning multilateralism, have we
abandoned diplomacy as well? Is war no longer a last resort, taken in
self-defense, but a routine method of getting our way, since no one can stop
us? Has the time come for us to reverse the National Security Act of 1947 and
go back to calling the "Defense Department" the "War
Department?"
* Would a war against Iraq, with its risk of inflaming the
"clash of civilizations" and its likely weakening of ties between the
United States and our allies, make our nation more vulnerable to terrorist
attacks? If the only real way to track down Al Qaeda and prevent future attacks
is through the very multilateralism that the Bush war would weaken, isn't Bush
still enacting the script written by Osama bin Laden?
* What does a longer view of war making tell us? Recalling that
Hussein began as an American client, as bin Laden did, when we were fighting
other wars, isn't he an argument for finally breaking with the myth that war
solves more problems than it creates? If we came to that conclusion, wouldn't
other forceful ways of resisting Hussein's tyranny emerge? And in the long run,
who is to say they would not be far more effective?
The obvious difference between Iraq and the United States is that
this nation is a democracy. That means that we US citizens are responsible for
the behavior of George W. Bush in ways that the people of Iraq are not
responsible for Saddam Hussein. There is good reason to believe that Bush, in
his highly personal, irrational, and thoroughly Manichaean campaign against
Hussein, has set the very world on a course toward disaster. No one can change
that course but us.