As war with Iraq draws closer, the public debate here and abroad grows ever more ferocious. To focus that debate, I’ve created a list of points, in question-and-answer form, suitable for clipping and carrying in a wallet. My hope is that they will promote clear thinking on some very tangled issues.
1. Why is it essential to attack Iraq now? What has changed so suddenly?
In the last 12 years, for the first time in all history, it has become possible for determined small powers to obtain weapons of mass destruction capable of inflicting appalling and wholly unacceptable damage on a superpower. The United States rightly decided it could not permit potentially hostile small powers to acquire such weapons. Unfortunately, the first test case involved North Korea in 1993 during the Clinton administration, and the country badly failed the test.
The administration promised North Korea huge amounts of food and energy in return for a pledge to stop developing nuclear weapons. North Korea accepted the food and fuel, and kept right on making weapons of mass destruction. When this was discovered in 1998, Mr. Clinton blustered but did nothing. Today, North Korea is openly building more nuclear bombs.
Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Iraq under Saddam Hussein already has chemical and biological weapons and is nearing nuclear capability as well. Mr. Bush thus has two choices: To try to force North Korea to back down, and thereby give Saddam precious months or years to become a nuclear power in his own right, or block Saddam first and then deal with North Korea. He prudently chose the latter course.
2. Even so, what imminent threat does Iraq pose to the United States? Why must it be subjected to a pre-emptive strike when it doesn’t even have nuclear weapons yet?
Precisely to make sure it never gets them. To wait until Iraq has nuclear weapons – has become, in short, another North Korea – would be utter folly. The danger would not be from an open Iraqi attack using nuclear weapons. Rather, Saddam would probably seek to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States in one of the 20,000 freight containers that reach our shores every day, secreting them in unspecified American cities, to be used as blackmail. Or he could give one or more to al-Qaida, which would positively have to use them in suicide attacks on targets missed the last time, like the White House and the Capitol. And mark you, this applies to chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction as well as nuclear ones.
3. Well, but how many American soldiers, not to mention innocent Iraqi women and children, will have to die in our pre-emptive strike against Iraq?
This is the old fallacy of focusing on the immediate and inevitable negative aspects of policy, to the exclusion of any consideration of longer-term consequences. How many innocent American women and children will have to die in a nuclear or biological holocaust in some American city, if Saddam succeeds in planting a bomb in our midst? Doesn’t it matter?
These are some of the key considerations that must be addressed, if there is going to be any serious thought given to the problem of Iraq. Beyond question, Kim Jong Il has greatly complicated the problem by making his move – for more economic aid and a guarantee against U.S. aggression – while we are at the tensest point in our confrontation with Iraq. But he is far too wise to actually attack the United States, or one of our client states such as Japan or South Korea, and Washington clearly intends to take its time over North Korea. Once an example has been made of Iraq, then it will be North Korea’s turn.
Meanwhile, one can only admire the determination and coolness with which Mr. Bush has picked his way through this thicket of dangers. Confronted with the original North Korean challenge, Mr. Clinton used Jimmy Carter to broker a deal that supposedly stopped Kim Jong Il’s nuclear program. When he realized it had done no such thing, he dithered some more and then left the whole mess for the new Bush administration to cope with as best it could.
