January 23, 2003
Hon. Richard G. Lugar
1180 Market Tower
10 West Market Street
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Dear Senator Lugar:
As spokesperson for the group of Indiana citizens meeting Ms. Lesley Reser on January 23rd to urge inspections not war on Iraq, I want to thank you for your interest in our views. Many of us met Ms. Reser in August and were deeply impressed by her alertness, courtesy, and concern. We are grateful to her for meeting us again at this critical moment.
With diverse representation, our delegation is one of hundreds associated with MoveOn.org in its campaign to let the inspections work. Groups are meeting every Congressional office in the nation at this time. We are delivering a petition with 312,713 signatures nationally and 4,215 in Indiana in favor of continued inspections and against what threatens to be an essentially unilateral and preemptive war.
We feel privileged to be contacting you. As Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, you have a unique opportunity to influence the President. You also have a depth of understanding rare in either Congress or the Executive. We hope you will be willing to take risks to bring your wisdom to bear on this fateful decision.
Last summer, you published an article in The Indianapolis Star outlining conditions President Bush must fulfill before going to war. Yet today the sheer momentum of deployments and the agenda of administration hawks have brought us to the brink of war - while those conditions are more distant than ever. The truth is, the closer we get to war, the less sense it makes.
You asked the President to win the support of the American people. Yet two-thirds of the country opposes war without UN backing. You asked for allies. Yet our allies want to give inspections time rather than use them as a mere pretext for war. You asked for an honest accounting of costs. Yet the White House fired its economic advisor, Lawrence Lindsay, so it would be free to revise estimates downward. Meanwhile, William Nordhaus, writing in The New York Review of Books, estimates the true cost as possibly $1.6 trillion. You asked for a clear plan for a post Saddam Iraq. Yet the noble rhetoric of the London conference cannot hide deep divisions that bode strife and a turbulent occupation. You asked for a broader effort to bring peace to the Middle East. Yet that conflict grows only more dangerous - and might explode in an Iraq war.
Your article did not discuss the humanitarian crisis caused by war itself. A secret United Nations study - leaked last December to The Times of London - estimates 500,000 serious injuries and three million infants and mothers so malnourished as to require therapeutic feeding. The study, prepared for Under Secretary General Louise Frechette, points out that Iraqi infrastructure would be a likely target of US attacks. The devastation would make it all the harder to help endangered civilians.
We should remember that we condemn weapons of mass destruction and terrorism because of their toll on the innocent. It would be a bitter irony to kill or debilitate large numbers of civilians in a preemptive war. Before President Bush launches an attack, you should urgently inquire into its likely human cost. Failure to heed this cost will, in the eyes of many, legitimate terrorism against us.
New since your article, of course, is the crisis with North Korea. It underscores the irrationality of attacking Iraq. The Bush Administration's double standard - at least apparent diplomacy for North Korea, war for Iraq - will convince the Muslim world that weapons of mass destruction are no more than a pretext for oil. You may disagree, but you must admit this perception is a political reality, which will sharpen anti-American hate.
Both North Korea and Iraq are crises substantially of the Bush Administration's making. Its Nuclear Posture Review threatens US nuclear attack even on non-nuclear states - a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. If the Bush Administration attacks Iraq, other countries will accelerate their effort to develop weapons of mass destruction in the hope that actual possession will buy them security (like North Korea) rather than vulnerability (like Iraq).
The greatest danger is that the Bush Administration, seeing this double standard, will ultimately attack North Korea as well - as Senator McCain begins to suggest in his January 20th Weekly Standard article. (The Korean strike would probably be massive bombing rather than invasion.) Not only would a two front war unleash global turmoil; it would also utterly fail to curb the global threat of weapons of mass destruction.
You know - but the Bush Administration appears to forget - that the proliferation crisis goes far beyond the so-called "Axis of Evil." It is no accident that North Korea obtained its uranium enrichment technology from Pakistan. A US attack on a fellow Muslim country could bring fundamentalists to power in this nuclear nation. It would surely increase the risk that terrorists might gain access to Pakistan's nuclear materials. Nor is Pakistan alone. This month Brazil's new minister for science and technology said that as long as the US pursues new nuclear weapons, Brazil should seek them too. The Bush Administration's scorn for arms control has already proven disastrous. Attacking Iraq in the name of "counter-proliferation" will only make it worse.
The Bush administration invokes the September 11th tragedy to justify its first strike policy. But will this war make a new September 11th - perhaps with weapons of mass destruction - less likely, or more so? You may have seen the poster with bin Laden in place of Uncle Sam, saying, "I want you to attack Iraq." Striking Saddam - who has notably chilly relations with Al Qaeda - will hardly deprive terrorists of access to these weapons. What it will do is further shred the fabric of law and legitimacy that are vital to deter terrorism. Societies such as Egypt and Indonesia will become increasingly polarized, their civil society impotent, their harshest repression inadequate to the task.
Both critics and advocates of the Iraq war sense that this is a decision not only about the future of Iraq but also about the future of this country. Should we become an undisguised empire? Advocates cite our unprecedented global dominance following the collapse of the Soviet Union. They argue that raw power can defeat global chaos - and secure our disproportionate wealth in a finite world. They magically exempt us from the law of collapse that applies to every other empire in history. They forget - or fail to care - that empire corrupts democracy. Most of all, they fail to understand the two thousand years that separate us from Rome. True, we are more powerful. But we also have unprecedented vulnerabilities that even a garrison state cannot protect with sheer force. We cannot afford a "war of civilizations."
The coming weeks are vital. Nominally, the debate will center on the weapons inspectors' January 27th report. That report is likely to come in shades of gray. The Bush Administration may claim that ambiguity is itself grounds for war. Even if it prevails to this effect in the Security Council - which is far from certain - coercive diplomacy should not be mistaken for true support. The difference will become apparent if war and its aftermath go badly.
What would it mean to give inspections a chance to work? Hans Blix has suggested that inspections will grow more effective with time. The point should be obvious. Meanwhile, inspectors on the ground will severely constrain Iraq from pursuing new programs. We should use this time to regain perspective and develop a diplomatic plan for regional security. Resolution 687 called for no less.
Naturally you have been cautious about openly disagreeing with a President of your own party. But your actions today, as Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, will shape your place in history. I urge you to take a bold initiative to bring the nation back from the brink of a disastrous war.
With best wishes,
Respectfully yours,
David Keppel
