The Redhunter

Authors David B Rivkin Jr and Lee A Casey review the history of UN Security Council resolutions against Iraq from the Gulf War to 2003, and how the UN found Iraq in "material breach" of all of them. But, they conclude, at the end of the day

None of these justifications(for OIF) depended on the actual existence in Iraq of WMD stockpiles, and the use of military force was not, therefore, “illegal.”

In this connection, it should be emphasized that at no time was it the responsibility of the U.N. inspection teams, or the United States and its allies, to establish that Saddam Hussein retained a WMD capability. The onus of proving that he had fully disarmed was always on Saddam. This was the price of an armistice, and of keeping his odious regime in power following Iraq’s defeat in the first Gulf War. From a legal point of view, his failure to meet this burden fully justified military action.

If the police get a search warrant for your house on a reasonable suspicion that you have illegal narcotics, and you refuse them entry, they have the right to gain entry by armed force. If, upon inspection, it turns out you do not have any narcotics, it does not at all invalidate the initial search. Not a perfect analogy, but it works.

More to the point, as Rivkin and Lee stress, the terms of the 1991 cease-fire were that a) Saddam declare his WMD, and that b) it was his responsiblity to destroy them, and c) that it was his responsibility to provid proof that he had done so.

Saddam never complied with b or c. Yet this has been forgotten in today's debate.

No, WMD was not the Only Reason

We have also allowed the left to make the argument that WMD was the only reason we went into Iraq. Rivkin and Lee remind us of the other reasons that were made:

1) Saddam had proven himself to be an aggressive and unpredictable actor in a highly important and vulnerable area of the world

2) He had had WMD capabilities (including a mature nuclear-weapons program) in the past

3) He had already deployed and used WMD against both Iranians and Iraq’s own citizens

4) He had sheltered known terrorists and aided active terrorist organizations

5) He had never fully cooperated with the U.N. inspection teams. In other words, Saddam Hussein was a dangerous man behaving as if he had something to hide.

Continuing on this, they make the point that John McCain made at the 2004 Republican National Convention; the sanctions and no-fly zones had not created a "stable status quo", as so many assumed. Quite the contrary, it was all falling apart.

...the U.N. sanctions regime was crumbling. Indeed, by the end of Bill Clinton’s second term, Britain and the United States were the only permanent members of the Security Council who supported continuing (let alone tightening) the sanctions against Saddam Hussein’s government. Partly for commercial reasons, partly driven by reflexive anti-Americanism, partly because of Saddam’s Oil-for-Food bribes, and partly in simple diplomatic exhaustion, France, Russia, and China were eager to grant the regime in Baghdad a clean bill of health. And in any case, even if an all-out U.S.-led diplomatic effort could have resuscitated the sanctions policy for a time, it was fundamentally unsustainable for the long haul. Even the most targeted sanctions would have hurt individual Iraqis more than Saddam, whose allies had made adroit use of Iraqi suffering, some real and some exaggerated, to advance their agenda.

They also point out that for all their squawking about the need to keep the no-fly zones in place, neither France of Germany ever offered to help pay for them. The US and Britain bore their cost, which was about $1.5 billion per year.

Further, although this is not pointed out in the article, the sanctions were breeding resentment and anti-American sentiment throughout the Arab world. A bit of review is necessary here. The purpose behind the sanctions, and the "Oil for Food" program, was to provide Iraq with enough food, medicine, and general goods to keep it's people healthy and reasonably well off, but to also prevent Saddam from rearming. To make a long story short, Saddam stole money from the program, and connived with corrupt UN officials, both of which kept the Iraqi people hungry and without all the medicine a society needs. As always happens, it is the weaker members of society who suffer; the very young and the very old. By the late 90s it the criticism that the sanctions were "killing Iraqi babies" had some truth to it, even if it was Saddam who was indirectly doing the killing.

All of this lead to increasing sympathy for Iraq, and by extension Saddam, throughout the Arab world. Classical military/political philosphers like Machiavelli could have told us this would happen; that people will forget what caused the initial offense and fixate on long-term suffering. The threat that Saddam posed in 1991 was subverted to the immediate pictures on TV of suffering Iraqis.

Saddam Unleashed

Once the weakening of the sanction started, the legality of the no-fly zones would be questioned, say Rivkin and Lee. And I think they are right. It would not have been long before the entire thing fell apart to the point of being pointless. And once Saddam was free, does anyone doubt that he would reconstitute his programs, especally pursuing a get-out-of-jail-free nuclear weapon?

Rivkin and Lee belive that Saddam may in fact have been bluffing all along(or much of the way), much in the manner of Nikita Khrushchev in the late 1950s. The Soviet leader claimed that his factories were churing out ICBMs "like sausages out of a grinder." With no satellites in those days, and limied U2 reconnisance, we had no way of knowing the truth. When it came out later that they had few if any nuclear missiles of intercontinental range, we at last saw through the bluff.

It is unwise in the extreme to make a fast grab under one's jacket when confronted by a police officer. If you are shot, you have no one to blame but yourself. Likewise, if you threaten the United States (or any other country) with weapons you do not have, and we attack you, you have no one to blame but yourself.

But many on the left have forgotten all this. They are fixated on the failure to find WMD, our support of Saddam in his war with Iran (justified, read this), and treating the entire war on terror as if it should be a police action.

What about September 11?

The left would have us believe that President Bush said that Saddam was behind the terrorist attacks of Sept 11 2001. This is not the case. As Rivkin and Lee point out, what the administration did say was that Saddam had extensive ties to terrorism, which he did. Among other things, he provided sanctuary for Abu Abbas, the man who planned the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruize ship Achille Lauro and subsequent murder of Leon Klinghoffer, and Abu Nidal, who planned the 1985 attacks on El Al airline ticket counters in 1985 in Rome and Vienna. It has also been widely reported that Saddam paid $25,000 each to families of Palestinian suicide bombers. His support of terror has been amply documented by many people.

But what worried the administration, and anyone else who thought about it, was not whether Iraq was behind Sept 11 or not. What was important was that the attacks changed our entire perception of the threat from Iraq and other countries.

...September 11 fundamentally shifted our strategic calculus of what constitutes a tolerable threat level. The attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and potentially the U.S. Capitol or White House dramatized the extent of American vulnerability and the degree to which America’s will had been underestimated by its enemies. Osama bin Laden considered the United States to be a “weak horse” doubtless in part because Saddam had survived a decade despite what he must have taken to be America’s best efforts at stopping him. In any case, once al-Qaeda showed that entities in the Middle East could successfully attack the American homeland, the danger of allowing Saddam to endure was substantially magnified. Regime change in Baghdad had been an avowed American policy since the Clinton administration, but its execution gained urgency after September 11, which dramatically altered our geopolitical paradigm and provided a powerful justification for acting immediately....

Saddam's regime was not going away anytime soon. His sons, Uday and Qusay, were in their late 30s in 2003, and one of them (probably Qusay) would undoubtably take power when Saddam died. The idea that we could contain Iraq for 40+ years is not believeable.

Consequences of Defeat

The consequences of defeat in Iraq are unacceptable. Even if the jihadists did not seize total power in Iraq, they would be emboldened, and would spread their terror to other Arab/Muslim countries first. The governments of these countries would react by cancelling democratic reforms and instituting harsh repressive measures. It should go without saying that US prestige would be severely damaged, and one wonders at times if this isn't just what the left wants. Perhaps it is a return to Carterism that drives the extremists who have taken over the Democrat party.

Today's paper brings news of more car bombs in Baghdad, sobering news, certainly. The terrorists in Iraq will continue their attacks for some time. Years perhaps, certainly months. Yet just as the war was as good as over for the Germanys with the successful landing at Normandy, if current trends continue the war is lost for the jihadists.

The administration was caught asleap during much of 2005, and allowed the critics to get the upper hand. They are fighting back now, and hopefully it is not too late. They ought to take a page out of this excellent article in National Review for their next broadside.