February 20, 2003
Hon. Richard G. Lugar
1180 Market Tower
10 West Market Street
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Dear Senator Lugar:
I write in the hope of giving you this letter when you speak about Iraq at Franklin College on Friday. As spokesperson of the group of Indiana citizens that met Lesley Reser on January 23rd to urge inspections not war, I appreciate your interest in our views. We are very grateful to Ms. Reser for her attention and kindness. She is a superb representative both of you and of your constituents.
Following that meeting, we requested to meet you in person the next time you were in the state. We certainly understand that the current visit was fully scheduled months in advance and look forward to seeing you on another trip. But since war may begin before your next visit, I respectfully ask that you give this letter your personal attention.
President Bush said Tuesday that he can ignore the concerns of fourteen million people who marched worldwide last weekend to express their opposition to war. He has also said that if the United Nations Security Council refuses to endorse his plans, he will consider it ñirrelevant.î But he has never said that he could ignore you. Nor could he.
I firmly believe that if you were President we would not today be on the brink of attacking Iraq. I believe you would have led the nation in a more complex and mature effort to curb weapons of mass destruction globally, to combat terrorism, and to address its causes. Yet I have listened to you in the past weeks with respect and interest but also the sense your true voice was strangely muted. I will be eager to hear your address Friday.
As the arguments for war disintegrate even as they are advanced, only one grows in power. War, say many, is inevitable.
The last refuge of the dishonest advocate is not patriotism; it is inevitability. How can we apply that word to our own free choice to attack a nation that poses no imminent threat to us? Yet Æ as bemused commentators note in admiration Æ inevitability has been the Bush AdministrationÍs strongest argument from the beginning. It allows us to enter a semblance of diplomacy that offers others no alternative. Some refuse. Most dangerous, however, is its foreclosure of alternatives for us too. As Holocaust survivor and philosopher Hannah Arendt once insisted, we must think what we are doing.
War advocate Thomas Friedman warns: ñYou canÍt go to war on the wings of a lieî (The New York Times, February 19, 2003). That is Mr. FriedmanÍs term for the alleged link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. He expressly compares it to the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
How then does Mr. Friedman justify war? He carefully avoids claiming that Iraq currently has significant weapons of mass destruction. He says only that left to itself it would acquire them in a matter of years. He forgets that tough inspections could thwart a nuclear program even in the absence of full Iraqi cooperation, as Mohamed Elbaradei told the Security Council on February 14th. He neglects Saddam HusseinÍs long and bloody record as a rational tyrant whose worst acts came only after signs of U.S. indifference. John Mearshimer and Steven Walt Æ among many Æ have made a compelling case for containment.
Among those who advocate war, only a few have Mr. FriedmanÍs honesty to admit that their motive is not weapons of mass destruction. Instead he claims that years of American occupation will create a vibrant democracy, transform the Middle East, and save Arab and Islamic youth from the temptations of anti-American terrorism. Nothing could be less certain.
The missionary case for war fails both in cold logic and in international law. You will recall the words of Justice Robert Jackson in his opening statement to the Nuremberg tribunal: ñOur position is that whatever grievances a nation may have, however objectionable it finds the status quo, aggressive warfare is an illegal means for settling those grievances or for altering those conditions.î If we violate this standard, so will others. A nuclear war between India and Pakistan, for example, would be a global catastrophe outweighing even the best of all possible outcomes in Iraq.
Last August you asked President Bush to fulfill several vital conditions before taking the nation to war. I review your Indianapolis Star article and the PresidentÍs response in my letter to you of January 23rd, which I take the liberty of attaching. After months of overriding these concerns, Secretary Rumsfeld himself now reportedly keeps a list of the ways a war could go tragically wrong. The New York Times suggests that the function of this list, leaked long after a decision for war is supposedly irreversible, is simply political insurance so that the Bush Administration can claim it anticipated the dangers. Yet if the warÍs authors themselves acknowledge such terrible risks as the use of weapons of mass destruction and the danger of regional escalation, it is the decision to go to war that should stand in doubt.
When the Senate debated Iraq resolutions last fall, you played a crucial role in narrowing their scope. You rightly insisted that no ground apart from IraqÍs fulfillment of disarmament requirements had legitimacy as a cause for war.
If you hold this standard as a matter of substance as well as one of rhetoric -- as I believe you do, then the question is not whether inspections can be made to fail, but whether they can be made to succeed. Yet today the Bush Administration devotes its diplomatic energies to setting a trap not only for Saddam Hussein but also for inspections.
To date Saddam HusseinÍs defiance of President Bush has consisted precisely in his compliance with the Security Council. We were sure he could not admit inspectors. Then we expected a flashpoint over presidential palaces. Now Æ after Hans Blix openly challenged Secretary PowellÍs evidence suggesting Iraq was evading inspectors Æ we have pressured Dr. Blix to administer new tests. These include destroying the Al Samoud missile, which marginally exceeds permitted range.
Eventually Saddam will comply with our wishes by refusing our demands. We have done our best to persuade him that war is inevitable. Why then should he surrender weapons that conceivably might deter us when concessions have not -Æprecisely the logic dear to our own hawks? And, if war is inevitable, will he not want the weapons themselves? The new demands, if Baghdad rejects them, may be a politically useful demonstration. They are not a test.
A true test demands true alternatives. There is no alternative for us unless there is one for them. The Security Council must make demands that are stringent but unprovocative and indisputably possible. The demand that Baghdad surrender weapons whose existence is in doubt, or provide complete documentation that may have been lost by chaos not design, does not qualify by this standard. The Council must couple its demands with a pledge that if Iraq meets them, the Council will not authorize war. Its member states, including the United States, must solemnly commit themselves to abide by this pledge. Under those circumstances, Saddam Hussein might spare himself and the world from war. It is not a beautiful bargain, but realism and conscience demand it. (I say this without prejudice to my skepticism that war would be justified or wise, even in the absence of full Iraqi cooperation.)
This week, The New York Times reported that Americans living abroad face a sharp rise in hostility. The almost universal sympathy we enjoyed following September 11th has given way to bewilderment, criticism, and growing anger. This anger extends far beyond the bastions of Islam. A tempest builds in Latin America, once Mr. BushÍs proclaimed focus, where deteriorating economic and social conditions are driving millions to despair.
Our new isolation is the gloomy triumph of an Administration that believes only in hard power. In their vehement worship of hard power, these officials exceed the bounds of the American tradition. Those who fail to resist this vision risk standing with the current Administration at the bar of history.
With best wishes,
Respectfully yours,
David Keppel
David
Keppel is a writer and peace activist who lives in Bloomington. He is a member
of the advisory boards of The Council for Responsible Genetics (Cambridge,
Mass.) and Peace Action (Washington, D.C.). He is a featured contributor
to grassrootspeace.org and MoveOn (http://www.moveon.org).
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