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Essay on Iraq
By Noel C. Ice
03/22/2003
I recently had the opportunity to send an email to my daughters,
the majority of whom are presently in college and are (or were), more or less, against
the war in Iraq.
Because I am very sympathetic to their point of view, but reached a different
conclusion, I wrote them several emails, primarily addressed to the one in
Italy, who has been almost terrified by the anti-American sentiment of those to
whom the welfare of the Iraqis is at the bottom of their agenda, and not
risking having their world disturbed is at the very top. This is human nature,
and reversing that order of priorities would be against it. I took these
emails, and concatenated them together to form one long essay. That is why the
structure of this essay is not ideal, and why there is some repetitiveness.
Also, this is not the type of essay that I would write for a magazine. It is
more self-indulgent than that type of essay would be, and so I apologize in
advance for the fact that it was not written necessarily to advance a clear
point of view, but rather to explore and probe and speculate. I do have
opinions, albeit some tentative, which I hope are expressed sufficiently
herein, if not always expressly. Well, this essay is what it is. It will
displease some, and I hope that even those it pleases will find some things
objectionable.
1. Whether the War is Good for Us. The Consequences of Being
Wrong From the Perspective of Recent History. It may be that the consequences
of the war in Iraq
to the United States
are not good. The law of unintended consequences has a way of operating such
that when major governmental actions are taken, even with good intentions, the
results are often not as anticipated, and not uncommonly achieve the opposite
result of the ones wished for. There are examples of social legislation that
can be given, both at home, and on a grander scale abroad, but I will let you be
the judge of that. What is clear is that we never know the outcome of great
undertakings with anywhere near the certainty that we all would prefer to have.
All we can do, is make careful judgments, act when we have to, where, on
balance, action seems preferable to inaction, knowing all the time the limits
of human prognostications. In the case of the war with Iraq,
it is hard to predict the outcome of American intervention. It may very well be,
and I certainly hope, that we will be safer as a result. I am not prepossessing
enough to know the answer to this question with the confidence that I have heard
expressed by those who are both for and against the war. We could be opening
Pandora’s box, but we could also be infinitely improving the lives and general welfare
of the overwhelming majority of the 25 million Iraqis who are at present dually
oppressed both by the Saddam regime and by U.N. sanctions.
I tend to think that we could have done much better on the diplomatic
front, but I can see reasons why a different approach than the one we took might
have made matters worse too. If the United
States could have achieved unanimity in the U.N,
then this war could have been averted. We tried, but we should not be surprised
to find that unanimity on fundamental principles is difficult to achieve, no
matter how clearly those principles have been articulated. Resolution 1441 was
not ambiguous, but acting to enforce it was something the U.N. was not willing
to do. There is precedent here. Recall how the League of Nations’
failed to stand up to Mussolini in Ethiopia,
followed hard by its somnolence during the rearming of the Rhineland
in 1936, followed by its acquiescence in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia
in 1938. In the case of the U.N., the League’s successor (version 2.0), it was
not particularly effective in preventing “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia, and was completely
impotent when it came to Kosovo, where Milosevic’s Serbia attempted to
depopulate what was practically a country, in a manner reminiscent of the Kamer
Rouge emptying Phnom Phen of all living things, a travesty and blot on the
conscience of the world, which the U.N. also set by an watched safely from a
distance. What did the U.N. do to Pol Pot and his Kamer Rouge to prevent the
“killing fields”? Sanction them? The U.N. also failed to prevent a much larger
genocide in of Tutsis in Rwanda.
Arguably, the reluctance of the U.N. to finish the Gulf War led to the one now raging.
So there is at least some reason to wonder whether something sufficiently close
to unanimity in world opinion can ever be achieved, if force or other
unpleasantness is required in the process, though one may still hope.
This is not a world of our own creation. It is as we find it, and
we have to deal with it. And so, it is probably unfortunately the case that
force is occasionally necessary to avert evil. That having been said, it is
important to note as well that the reluctance to use force to forestall
something worse is understandable, given the profligate and pointless use of
force that history illustrates at every turn, as well as the operation of the
law of unintended consequences, which holds that when governments undertake
grandiose projects, the results are all too frequently unforeseen and unwanted.
However, in the case of Iraq,
as in the other large scale endeavors by governments to make the world a better
place, reasoned judgment is what is called for. So too, in the case of those of
us doing the judging of the relative advisability of the war in Iraq,
reasoned consideration by the critics is called for, not blanket condemnation. Like
it or not, inaction is not the answer to all of the world’s problems, even if
acting sometimes makes them worse.
It is fairly clear to me that if the U.N. had come together sooner,
then the bloodshed and repression in the Somalias,
Bosnias,
Kosovos, and Rwanda’s
of the world could have been stopped at once. And, to return to the subject at
hand, Iraq
could have been disarmed without war. In the event, the lack of unanimity among
the members of the Security Council meant that the United States and Britain,
with the support of some 40 other countries, had to enforce Resolution 1441
without the backing that would have made the invasion probably unnecessary.
Could French inaction and prevarication have brought “peace in our time”
to Iraq, with less
destruction? Maybe. It is possible, but far from certain. Did the failure to
stop the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936
result in the loss of less lives? In 1938, did Chamberlain’s concessions to Hitler
bring “peace in our time” to Europe? We know the answer to those last two questions,
though at the time the positions in favor of inaction taken by the Western
European powers were very popular.
If England
had done nothing in 1939, when Hitler invaded Poland,
would less lives have been lost? We will never know to that question. We do
know that the War cost around 50 million lives, approximately twice as many as
were lost in WWI (give or take a few tens of millions!). But we also know that Hitler
could have been stopped easily, if we had stood up to Mussolini when he invaded
Ethiopia, signaling
that the League of Nations would keep the peace by force
if necessary. There is little doubt among historians that Hitler could have been
stopped easily if we had used military force to prevent him from remilitarizing
the Rhineland in 1936. (There is always some doubt, but,
in this case, not much.) By the early 1930s, we knew or certainly should have
known, as a metaphysical certainty, that Hitler was a megalomaniac, that he was
evil, and that his racial policies were the very reification of evil, though
that troubled only a few people, mostly those related to the people affected,
which tells you something about the fallen state of human nature, but I
digress.
According to noted historian Martin Gilbert,
Hitler’s generals told him that he dare not remilitarize the Rhineland, in
violation of two treaties, because France could and would crush the German
military, which was not prepared (at that time) to defend Hitler’s decision, if
resisted by force. (Recall that Germany
had been defeated not that long ago, and like Iraq,
Germany was
required by the terms of its surrender to disarm.) Hitler responded, “The
French won’t lift a finger.” He was right. (This, of course, makes me wonder
whether the consensus of opinion among politicians and generals means much,
since this sort of thing, Hitler being right and his generals wrong, and the
reverse, was repeated often in WW II. It makes me wonder now too whether our
generals and President know what they are doing. Somebody seemed to have gotten
things wrong in Viet Nam.
It never hurts to question the opinions of the elite. After all, they are often
wrong.)
In defense of the French, something that is not easy to do at the
moment, I am moved to point out that the jokes going around about how many
people it takes to defend Paris are not quite fair,
considering that they lost 1.3 million people defending it in WW I. The second
time around, I guess they figured it was just not worth it, and who knows
whether less than 50 million people, or less than 6 million Jews, would have
died, if everyone had done the same. It is hard to play these counter-factual
games. Could the Holocaust have been avoided? If not, would the number killed
have been lessened? I don’t know how people know these things. The only
counter-factual that I know of with relative certainty, is that Hitler could
have been stopped with less loss of life to everyone, had the world had the
gumption to stop him in 1936 (or before), instead of waiting until 1939. That
is one counter-factual that is so universally recognized that it is my leitmotiv
throughout this essay.
In defense of France, who I think got it wrong both this time (in
Iraq) and in WW II, the French lost a quarter million people in the First
Battle of the Marne during WW I. (There were two Battles of the Marne.) Over 1
million people died in the Battle
of the Somme. An excellent discussion of the Battle
of the Somme is found on http://www.firstworldwar.com/battles/somme.htm:
Despite the slow but progressive
British advance, poor weather – snow – brought a halt to the Somme
offensive on 18 November. During the
attack the British and French had gained 12 kilometers of ground, the taking of
which resulted in 420,000 estimated British casualties, including many of the
volunteer ‘pal’s’ battalions, plus a further 200,000 French casualties. German casualties were estimated to run at
around 500,000.
Whatever the reason for French reluctance to resist the
remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, whether it was the fact that they
lost over 1 million people in the prime of life fighting the Germans less than
two decades earlier, or whether it was cowardice, call it what you like, the
decision was fateful, and led to a much worse war. But who would have known
that at the time? One thing is clear, in the case of the continued
militarization of Iraq
between 1992 and 2003, France
made its position unmistakable: that, indeed, it was not going to lift a finger to disarm Saddam by any means other than
sanctions against the Iraqi people. In this case, France
was acting just like Hitler said France
would act in the case of the remilitarization of the Rhineland
in 1936, perhaps with the same consequence, but for George W. Bush.
Incidentally, my opinion on sanctions is that they are worse than
outright violence, but that is debatable, and in any case is not the subject of
this essay. I have to ask, however, who do we expect will be hurt by France’s
policy the most in the long run? In other words, will more Iraqis be hurt by
sanctions than will be hurt by a relatively swift war? I tend to believe the
latter to true, but this belief is premised on the war being relatively swift,
as I hope and still expect it will be.
Moving from French (and British) inaction in 1936, we jump two
years ahead, to 1938. (We will skip the failure to prevent the Anschluss for
the moment, though it too was in violation of the terms of the WWI surrender.) Hitler
could have been stopped then, I believe, if Chamberlain had threatened and then
followed through with force in the event that Germany
invaded Czechoslovakia.
Speaking of Czechoslovakia, perhaps their horrific
experience of Soviet forced domination for 50 years is why Vaclav Havel and
almost all of the other former East European Soviet satellite states support
us). But West continental European opinion (with the prominent and outspoken
exception of those few early followers of Winston Churchill) was against using
force against Hitler until it was too late. The position against the use of
force in Iraq
is the same now as it was against Germany
then. Whether the present situation is analogous, or not, we will never know,
because the U.S.
chose not to wait. You may know the answer, but I don’t. I strongly suspect
there is a viable analogy here. In fact, as indicated above, this suspicion is
my leitmotiv, but I admit to not knowing for sure. Even though I do not know
for sure that the President it right, I come down on the side of supporting his
decision, for the reasons here advanced, mostly. In 50 years, maybe we will
have a better idea of who was right. Too bad we don't have the luxury of
checking out the future before committing it to the past.
I recall with dismay that we did not stop Pol Pot, Mao, or Stalin. Maybe
we couldn't. While we were busy not stopping them, they killed untold millions
of their own people. We did stop Hitler, but we waited too long, with the
result every school child knows. We waited too long in the case of Japan,
perhaps with better reason. But that is hindsight. We waited to long to stop
Milosevic, and some would argue that hindsight really was not needed to
recognize him for the monster that he proved to all the world to be.
How many lives would have been saved had we been able to stop Pol
Pot, Mao, Milosevic and Stalin? Russia
and China are
too big to give that possibility much thought, but the killing fields of Cambodia
could have been prevented had not the anti-war sentiment left over from the Viet
Nam debacle paralyzed not only the U.S.
but apparently the rest of the world. In fact, it took North
Vietnam to put a stop to the excesses of the
Cambodian communist regime. Now there is an irony for you.
We sat by and watched, and, in the case of some intellectuals,
praised, Stalin, as he “liquidated” (his term, in translation) millions and
millions of his own people. True, the brutal totalitarian Russian imposed
communistic, repressive, colonialist, regimes that comprised the former Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe (Czech
Republic, Hungarian, Bulgaria,
Latvia, Romania,
etc.) finally came to an end on their own, without war. But my God, it took 50
years of nuclear terror and brinksmanship to do it, and that was not a picnic either,
though the young will not recall it. The brutal repression of both economic
prosperity and freedom for the poor unfortunates whom we did not aid was a sad
thing to watch, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, invaded by
Russia because the Russians had WMD, called nuclear bombs, something Saddam, if
left to his own devices, would love to get; and, as we know, he has weapons
almost as bad, which he declared at the end of the gulf war, but which he now
claims to have conveniently “lost.” We did beat Milosevic, finally, but not
until after he had first killed and “ethnically cleansed” who knows how many.
The countries we were unable to help, have on the whole paid a price in lives
totaling tens of millions, not thousands. Why does the world protest the loss
of a handful of lives and seem to be able to contain its indignation when the
lives lost are in the millions? Perhaps a psychologist could tell us more about
the answer to that question than a political scientist.
Korea. Can we invade every country that
brutalizes their own people? I wished we could. But we can’t. In the case of Kim
Jong Il, the megalomaniacal leader of North Korea,
for example, it is too late. Apparently, while Clinton
was getting his cigar smoked, North Korea
manufactured a couple of nuclear bombs, even though we asked them pretty please
with sucre on it to not build any. So it is probably too late for those poor
miserable people starving to death in that country, while just across the
border, the same people (Koreans) live in relative prosperity. Ah yes, the
“Worker’s Paradise,” which in common with all communist countries known to
anyone ever, share two telling characteristics: (1) the workers living there
don’t want to live there and are shot when they invariably try to leave
(something no democracy has ever been know to do), and (2) no workers not
already living there ever want to move there (a problem that most democracies
have in reverse). Are people clamoring to be admitted to Cuba
and North Korea?
How about Iraq?
The Containment Option. In
the case of North Korea,
we did not back up our request with the plausible threat of force, and now it
is too late. Probably we could not have backed up our request with the
plausible threat of force, even if we had wanted to, so my criticism of the
previous administration should perhaps be muted to some extent. But did we do
all that we could have? Were we forceful enough? In the event, we will now have
to go the containment route, presumably; or, if you prefer, the route of mutual
assured destruction as our best hope of deterrence. Not a pretty picture. How
does one know what it takes to deter someone like Kim Jong Il who actually
kidnaps Japanese and South Korean actors so that they can star in his home
movies?
Containment was the
other option in Iraq.
A nuclear Iraq?
Now there is something even more frightening than a nuclear Kim Jong Il, who at
least has to account to the Chinese, a country big enough and powerful enough
to contain him (probably) if it is of a mind to, which presumably it will be,
since China’s
own self-interest is definitely at stake here. However, in Iraq’s
case, we can say that for sure that a nuclear Iraq
is not going to be something we have to worry about for a while. We can thank
George W. Bush for that. Whether it will be worth the price is something you
can dicker over, but one thing is sure: when this is over, it will be many,
many years before Iraq is a nuclear power, and I, for one, do not believe that
makes the world less safe or that it is a bad thing.
You can argue that if we had just appeased Saddam a little longer,
that the whole world, after 12 years already, would eventually have been
willing to do something about the situation, and that this decision would not
have come too late. The world never came to terms with Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot, with
results that every school child should be taught in grade school. True, as
adumbrated earlier in this essay, in the case of Russia
and China there
was little we could do. Perhaps it is too late to stop Kim Jong Il. The Chinese
could stop him if they would. Would there be marching in the streets of New
York, Chicago
and San Francisco
in that event (!)? Somehow I doubt it.
But we really ought to stop madmen when we can. And Saddam is
stoppable. We can stop Saddam, and furthermore, with little loss of life, if we
are lucky. You can also argue that the French, for economic interests, or out
of an inferiority complex, or for some other mysterious reasons (after all they
are “the French”), would never have agreed to do anything about Saddam.
Whatever their reasons, they made their intentions in this regard very clear,
of that you have to admit. As I mentioned above, Hitler was right in1936 when,
against the advice of his generals, he said the French would not lift a finger
to stop the re-militarization of the Rhineland, contrary to two treaties,
despite the fact that the French had overwhelming military superiority at that
time, something they would not have three years later, when it was too late.
Maybe, despite the fact that the French apparently lied to Colin Powell about
their intent, they might have come around, and then we would only have had to
convince the Russians and the Chinese. Meanwhile Saddam would have had months
to prepare further, our political and military position and that of the British
would continue to deteriorate, the Arab street (a medieval street born or the madrasahs,
religious fundamentalism, and ignorance) would have made things even more
untenable. Maybe not. Consequences are often very hard to predict when events
of great magnitude are embarked upon. All one can do is to use one’s best
judgment, realizing, at a minimum, that their are limits on our ability to
predict the future, but at the same time, having the courage to take a risk in
support of a worthy cause.
I don't really know the answer to all of the questions I have
posed. That is, in part, why I am posing them, and giving my honest opinion,
faulty though it might be. Fortunately, I didn't have to make the decision to
go to war. But I can definitely see the U.S.
side to the argument. And even if the judgment of the administration turns out
to be wrong, we can safely say that it was not made lightly, or in ignorance,
or out of stupidity; and that it is certainly not clearly the case (as some of
the idiots protesting have implied) that Saddam is good and we are bad. That is
sick, but you see that kind of attitude among the fringe element organizing
some of these marches. Will human nature never change. Probably not. I wonder
sometimes if anyone, including myself, has a clue about what makes the world
tick.
1A. A Post-Modernist Digression.
What do Words Really Mean? [Section 1A can be skipped. It is mostly
ranting.] Here follows (until section 2) a diversion, which I would be well
advised to have omitted from this essay, because it complicates unnecessarily a
fairly straight forward argument. But
I make it anyway, because I think along unfamiliar lines at times, and as it is
the nature of my thought, and as I cannot resist. Matthew, Chapter 5, verse 39,
states with unmistakable clarity “resist not evil,” but instead to “turn the
other cheek.” Should we take that literally. Or should we claim to take it
literally, but construe “literal” as meaning “in the total context,” and therefore
as meaning something other than its “plain” meaning suggests.
I am amazed at the casuistic arguments that clever people are able
to bring to bear to convince other people that words mean the precise opposite
of what they say. Some of these people are in the pulpit, others are and have
been on the Supreme Court. We are all post-modernists, like it or not. It is
the only sane alternative sometimes.
Accordingly, I cannot, or at least don’t, believe that “evil should
not be resisted,” and biblical literalist that I am not, will construe Matthew,
Chapter 5, verse 39, as meaning turn the other cheek if you can, or if doing so
will not result in greater evil, or if you don’t know whether resisting evil
will work. Am I a hypocrite? Who isn’t? But I am troubled by the fact that I can’t
take the Bible “literally” here, without giving the word “literally” a meaning
that is not literal. I note the fact that pacifists do take Christ’s injunction
literally; and, believe it or not, I have a lot of sympathy for them. Unlike
me, they don’t twist words, and have the courage to be mowed down, presumably
without offering any resistance; but they also have the . . . (the word I need
escapes me) to sit by and watch while others are being mowed down too. Whether
that is a form of courage, depends, I suppose, on how “courage” is interpreted,
as well as one’s state of mind as a pacifist. As my citation of Matthew 5:39
indicates, we are fairly flexible when it comes to the question of what words “really
mean” or if (according to some radical post-modernists) whether they mean
anything; just as we are flexible, and selective, in our choice of scripture to
quote as being illustrative of this point or that, truth be known. I, however, despite
it all, and somewhat contumaciously, hold on to the notion that words mean
something; though, in sympathy with post-modern thought, I recognize that the
meaning invariably lies within a range of some sort, which, it is true, does
makes life even more difficult to understand than it would be if words really
did have the precision that they will never have.
As for me and my now very small household, it is very hard to sit
back and “not lift a finger” to resist evil when evil clearly manifests itself.
That course, despite Christ’s injunction, just does not seem to be the right
thing to do. When the people being mowed down are the “neighbors” whom you are literally
admonished to love, admonished by both the Old Testament (Leviticus 19:18) and
the New (Matthew 22:39) ‑neighbors who, by my liberal, selective, and not
quite literal interpretation of the Bible, include the Kurds, the Cambodians,
the Kosovars, the Bosnians, the Tutsis, the Somalis, the Afghanis (at least
those who do not happen to be Islamist fundamentalist fanatics), and, lest we
forget WW II, the Jews; or for that matter, the Palestinians if it comes to
that, and so far the Israeli response to the Intifada has not come anywhere
near that level‑, then it seems to me that we should do what it takes to
stop their being slaughtered, if they are, even if that requires forceful
resistance and even sacrifice.
Why does not the rest of the Arab world understand this? They are only
human, and they don’t know any better, perhaps. Like much else in life, the
answer is probably more complicated than that. Given the course of the 20th
Century, we cultural descendants of Europeans are certainly in no position to
condescend to the so-called unenlightened.
As we know, many Moslems have been educated to be religious
fanatics, like Cromwell’s Puritans, who slaughtered the Irish indiscriminately
(perhaps one-fourth of the population), and sold almost half of Ireland
to the Puritan invaders, simply because the Catholics did not worship the same
Christian God in the same way. That story continues: religious fundamentalists
in sole possession of the truth, people whose God they fully expect to damn all
others and to support them alone in a time of need. Much of Islam is going
through a period that much of Christianity went through. Thankfully, our zeal
for slaughter in the name of religion has abated of late, but only recently. What
zeal motivated Stalin? Not religious zealotry. Ideology, perhaps. The next best
thing?
In the case of the madrasah inculcated Islamists, as well as the
poverty stricken un-indoctrinated rural Arabs, they have not had much
opportunity to hear the other side of things, and the dictators who control
most of them do not go out of their way to disabuse them of their ignorance. Pride
may have something to do with it, humiliation that they could not take care of Saddam
and others like him in their part of the world themselves.
It is a little noted fact that Saddam has killed more Moslems that the
rest of the world put together, Christian, Jewish or otherwise. It is fundamentalist
religion that instructs them that God is on one side and not the other, which
is unfortunate if that side is not yours, and even more unfortunate if there is
a dispute over exactly whose side he is on, a dispute which can only be
resolved, supposedly, by wars of mutual annihilation, sometimes call Jihad, and
at other times Crusade, between those he favors and those she does not, as if
anyone really knew, and as if the outcome really would contribute to the answer.
We have our own fundamentalist that believe the same thing the Islamists do, in
the sense of knowing that God is on their side alone. I suspect that they would
react the same way the Islamist are doing under similar circumstances (and
have, for many centuries past), only God's name would be spelled differently, he
who has no name “I am who I am.” The God without a name is the God of everyone.
2. Will the Liberation of Iraq Make Life Better for the Average Iraqi
(who is not a Ba’ath Party member)? If we win, and win quickly, will the
life of the average Iraqi improve? If you think it will be worse, read no
further, and don’t talk to me. That question is off the table, as far as I am
concerned, as being so obvious as to be beyond cavil. There can be little doubt
but that the average Iraqi’s life will improve by every humanitarian measure
conceivable. It will improve politically and economically, with the lifting of
sanctions, if for no other reason. That is for certain. Health will be improved
as will education, I imagine. Fear of torture and murder without trial will be
considerably lessened. No question there. Obviously, there will be less brutal
repression. That too is a certainty. And for those of you who would give your
life to keep our own government from reading your email, conducting warrantless
searches of your private affairs, not being able to pack concealed heat, etc.,
for what would you give you life if you lived in Iraq
under Saddam’s regime? This should be a question for the Iraqi people to
decide, you might say. Oh, really? And just how are they going to be in any
position to make that decision under the present circumstances, without being
killed with 24 hours of posing the question.
Although I have quite a bit of doubt about whether the present invasion
is good for America,
simply because I am not that prescient or self-confident in all of my opinions.
Of one thing I am virtually certain, however. What we are doing is good for the Iraqi people, even if it turns out to
be not good for us. I say “virtually” certain, because I recognize that
Saddam could, all on his own, kill (or cause to be killed) enough Iraqis to put
my premise in doubt, in which case, one would still have to wonder whether
someone capable of doing that was not so dangerous that the war was necessary nevertheless,
and ultimately beneficial to the Iraqis left. But I have no doubt at all that
the Iraqis will be better off even if tens of thousands of innocent (in my
opinion we are all metaphysically innocent, but no matter) Iraqis are killed in
the process. If the number is more than that, then it may not be worth the price.
What price freedom and prosperity? The estimates of the number of civilians
killed in the first Gulf War are very hard to come by, believe it or not. They
range from 1000 to 5000. by
credible scholarly sources, but I suspect that the number was higher. We may
never know. If all goes well, the number this time will be less. At least that
is our objective. If we are talking about 100 innocent Iraqis killed each day
the war continues, then we are talking about the number that Saddam was killing
before breakfast each morning, prior to the war.
Whatever the number is, it is a drop in the ocean compared to the number
that have died as a result of sanctions, torture, mutilations, and the senseless
wars in which Iraq was clearly the aggressor (Iran, Kuwait, Kurdistan). According
to Compton’s Encyclopedia and
Encarta, the number killed in the Iran-Iraq War was around 1 million. According
to the 1987 War Annual: 300,000 Kurds were killed between 1983 and 1987, and
the Washington Post claims that another 70-120,000 Kurds were killed
between 1987-89. A very good source (one of the very few) for wartime casualty
statistics is http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatx.htm,
which I trust to be fairly reliable only because it cites its sources for most
all of its statistics. Whatever the number of people who have died as a direct
result of Hussein’s leadership, it is large enough to shock my conscience, and
I am not easily shocked.
Iraq
is a country of about 28 million people. According to various sources, between
1 and 3 million Iraqis have fled the country since 1990. That could be 10% of the
country! These figures are cited by both sides of the political spectrum as
being either evidence of Saddam’s brutality or the result of United Nations
sanctions. Whatever the reason, if Iraq
would disarm, or if Saddam would just kill himself, his family, and a few
hundred of his closest friends, I presume the flood of refugees/émigrés would
end. Same result if we win the war. Again, for whatever reason, it appears as
if as much as 10% of the country have been forced by (the existence of)
Saddam’s regime to leave, and another 5% have died as a result of his wars
against his neighbors (not us), none of which have been defensive or in
response to credible threats (Iran,
Kuwait, Kurdistan).
When 15% of the population of a country, any country, are either killed or
forced to leave as the result of the actions of a brutal dictator, you have to
wonder whether something ought to be done to stop it if stopping it is
possible, as it seems that it is in this case. It seems clear to me that he
wont’ be, and certainly to date hasn’t been, stopped either by sanctions or by
saying “pretty please,” or even, as the French would have us do, saying “si
vous plait, avec sucre.” Stopping it requires doing it by force when and if
(and only when and if) force becomes clearly necessary, as appears to be the
case at present, though reasonable minds may differ on that, as they did in the
early 30’s.
The comparison between the number that are going
to die if we don’t eject the present regime in Iraq pales in comparison
with the number that have already died because we did not do something about this
sooner, and I believe will pale before the number of Iraqis who will die if we continue
the approach we have taken heretofore, which has been basically to do nothing other
than sanctions, such as oil for food, the food money ending up in large part in
Saddam’s bank account. Again between 1 and 3 million people out of a country of
28 million, though still alive, have either left or been displaced. How many more
will be displaced, murdered or die for economic reasons if we do nothing? How would that number compare against the loss
of life that this war will bring? This is the relevant question. Ask
yourself how many lives is it worth if they die for no other reason than to rid
themselves of a brutal dictator? How many lives was it worth to rid the world of
Hitler? Do you know how many that was? 50 million, by most accounts, give or
take a few 10s of millions. Ditto for Stalin in the case of the Soviet
Union alone, in his own country to boot, and to his own people, by
the way. Did you know that? Untold millions of Chinese died in Mao’s “cultural
revolution,” for no apparent reason other than fanaticism. Ditto in Cambodia
under Pol Pot. Would it have been wrong to have stopped Stalin or Pol Pot if we
could have? Is it wrong to stop Saddam if we can?
In any case, the idea that the Iraqi people will suffer in this war
on a scale worse than they have already suffered under this regime (1.5 million
killed, countless wounded, and not by us, 3 million who have fled the country),
or that they will suffer more than is to be expected if we do nothing, is
ludicrous. If a few thousand Iraqis die from our bombs, it will be less than
the number that will die in gulags, prison camps, firing squads, and as victims
of torture, if we do nothing, and probably in the roughly the same time that it
will take us to conclude the peace and win the war. The Iraqis may not realize
it yet (how could they, they have been kept in ignorance), but we tend to treat
countries we conquer pretty well; just ask the Germans and the Japanese, the
Kosovars and the Bosnians. (The movie “The Mouse that Roared” was a parody of
the United States
tendency to reward the people it beats in war.)
If you want (perhaps selfishly, but certainly understandably) to
worry about America,
I sympathize with you; but don't pretend, with false sanctimony, that you are
worried about the Iraqi people. If we win, it will be the best thing that has
ever happened to them, most likely. And that is true even if some have to die
in the process. We are doing our best to keep that number as small as possible.
That is who we are. There have always been good wars, where people fought for
liberty, and the fact that people died in them did not make it not worth it.
The American Revolution, maybe, the American Civil War, maybe. The Hungarian
revolution, though it failed. The Czech uprising, though it failed. The desire
of the Bosnians to be free of Serb oppression. Are there any others? Is freedom
ever worth the loss of live? If so, how many? Millions, maybe not. A few
thousand. Perhaps. I suppose it depends on how much things like this mean to
you, or how much we can expect they will mean to the Iraqis. Perhaps more than
you would suppose. They are human too, and Saddam's oppression has not please
everyone in that country who has had loved ones murdered enduring it.
2A. Second Digression: The
Protestors. [Section 2A can be skipped. It is mostly ranting.] I ask you,
were tens of thousands of people marching in the streets of Europe,
Chicago and San
Francisco as a result of the millions of
Iraqis dying, being gassed and tortured, or being forced to leave their homes
(ethnically cleansed from Kirkuk,
in the case of the Kurds)? No, but they marched when Saddam invaded Kuwait,
and not in support of the Kuwaitis, and they are marching now; and, honestly, I
don’t think it is in support of the Iraqi people. If you were an Iraqi who is
not in the Ba’ath Party, and would not be shot for saying so, would you want
Saddam to pack it up. At what price?
If people are marching in the
street because they are afraid that the U.S. will be less safe because of this war and because
it will cost a lot of money, then they could be right. If they are marching
because they are afraid that the cost of a few thousand American and Iraqi lives
is too much to sacrifice in order to free that country from the reign of one of
the most brutal repressive regimes that the world has ever known, and to improve
the economic life of the Iraqi masses many times over, then I totally fail to sympathize
with what strikes me as selfishness and lack of altruism. An Iraqi life is worth
as much in the eyes of God as is an American’s. Although there are exceptions, for
the most part, I despise people who in the name of peace alone would not lift a
finger to save the lives of millions who need help, if to do so might cost the lives of many times less.
I, for one, would willingly give my life to free my own country of a regime as bad
as Saddam’s, especially if the economic effect would mean that the lives of the
poor would almost certainly be improved by the lifting of sanctions, and the stopping
of the siphoning off of money to support government cronies and to build an arsenal
of terror to be used against internal dissenters. I would give it to save Iraq
from the same fate if called upon. Would that, or would that not, be the obvious
and decent thing to do?
The Countries Opposing the
Liberation of Iraq by Force Why is the much of the world not behind the United
States and Great
Britain. A simple, perhaps simplistic,
answer about why much of the world is against us is because much of the world is
both ignorant (the masses marching) and selfish (the leadership). It is not
their problem, and they are not and cannot solve it without risks that they
don't want or need to take. Perhaps it is not our problem either. The nations
of the world have NEVER acted sensibly, and probably never will, at least not
with unanimity. That is why the world allowed for the creation of Hitler,
Stalin, Milosevic, Hirohito, Pol Pot, Mao and Saddam. The few people and
countries that stood up to them were not evil. In fact it was and is the
opposite. It is not wrong to oppose ruthless, brutal dictators, especially if
they are in the “killed over million of our own” club (countries like Cambodia,
Russia, China, Germany, possibly Serbia, and definitely Iraq if you count
people lost in ruthless, senseless, naked aggression (1.5 million fighting Iran
and the Kurds) or the 3 million who, though still alive have been driven out).
It is not always in our best interest to resist people like that, but it is
certainly not wrong to try, and whatever your doubts about the wisdom of the
war, whether it was really necessary or in our best interests, doubts which I
share, one thing is certain, if we win, and win quickly, the better off the
Iraqis will be. We beat Germany
and Japan and
did we then proceed to oppress them? We finally beat the Soviet
Union, and have done what since? Given them billions of dollars in
aid.
Perhaps a more
sophisticated, and at least a more charitable, answer to why the French and the
Germans are against this war is that while we in the United States view WW II
as being the result of inaction and appeasement, for which America had to come
to their rescue, they are still in shock and awe of the 100 million (or so
lives) that 20th Century warfare cost Europe. In my opinion, Britain
is on our side of the argument, despite its losses in prior wars, thanks to
Churchill’s influence.
In the case of the Arab countries, their opposition is in part a
matter of simple ignorance of who we (the United
States and Britain)
are that explains why they are not behind the United
States and Britain.
It is as easy to march in the streets of Jordon and Egypt as it is for us to
march in New York, Chicago and San
Francisco, but when Basra was liberated last time, the Shia Arabs
were marching in the streets for us; ditto for Kuwait, for sure. But no marches
here at home, and few in the Arab world, in support of the Kuwaitis and
liberated Shiites. And I don’t recall any marches against Hussein before we
liberated those people. Again, those were the countries where Saddam's
brutality made a difference (unlike Aman and Cairo,
Chicago and San
Francisco). Unfortunately, when we gave Iraq
back to Saddam at the conclusion of the Gulf war, based on his promise to
disarm, he slaughtered thousands in Basra,
and did not disarm. Naturally the Shia's (or Shiites) of southern Iraq were
chastened, and are still living in terror of reprisals, reprisals they have
experienced first hand many times, which partially explains why they are not
dancing now, that and the fact that Saddam has his own storm troopers
thoroughly infiltrated into Basra, apparently shooting anyone who tries to
surrender, or even smiles on what is supposed to be a cloudy day.
We would all prefer not to have to resist force with force. So powerful
is the urge on the part of those of us who know that the evil of war is so
great as to be avoided at almost all cost, that we tend, naturally enough, to
put faith in appeasement and good will over common sense and experience. That
is why Churchill was a voice crying in the wilderness, until Hitler invaded Poland,
forcing Europe to finally wake up from a lying dream, to
find it replaced by a nightmare that it had every reason to have anticipated
all along. To be honest, if I had been alive then, and had a memory of WW I, I
am sure that I would not have wanted to believe Churchill, and probably would
not have, until, like the rest of Europe, the truth, no
matter how unpleasant, had to be faced. Is Saddam Hitler. Actually no. He is
more like Stalin, but that thought does not ease my conscience any.
The Professors and the Media.
There is mounting published evidence that there is, in fact, a liberal bias
in academia as well as in the news media. Until recently, in the case of the
media, this really was not a matter for serious dispute. Jack Germond, a former
member of the McLaughlin Group, and one of my favorite liberal journalist, says
“of course most journalists are liberals. It is silly to deny it.” The same is
true of teachers at all levels of education. With the advent of cable, the FOX
network, and talk radio, I am no longer so sure that there is a liberal bias in
the media (disregarding ABC and CBS, which are resembling the dinosaurs more
and more every day); or if there is, it is not nearly as obvious as it used to
be. Well, a correction was long overdue.
Why it is that, throughout history, members of definable groups,
whether it be the media or the academy, all seem to sing the same tune
politically? I could be wrong about much that I have and am saying, but I am
quite sure that this unanimity in political opinion is not because these groups
have a monopoly on the truth (as some religions claim to have). The media and
the teaching profession were not always almost always liberal, by the way. At
one time, they were almost uniformly conservative. I believe that these groups,
like others, come to a political consensus because they talk to, and socialize
with, only each other. One trend is in vogue for a while, and then when a
certain catalyst of natural contrariety is reached, as eventually always
happens, and may be happening now, the group all believes the opposite of what
it believed before. These opinion swings are not solely the result of a
continued Hegelian progress toward enlightenment.
[Addenda: Since writing this essay, the war in Iraq
has been won, “relatively” bloodlessly. Relative to what? To what it could have
been. To what it had been under Saddam’s regime, without the U.S.
there, and with U.N. sanctions very definitely affecting causing at least some
Iraqis to die. In any case, I have been told (I have yet to verify my source,
that “the UCLA Faculty Senate has voted 180-7 to condemn the war, making it the
first university to do so since Iraq's
liberation.” 180 to 7? In view of the outcome as of 4-15-03, is the issue really that clear? The 180 could
still be right, but my God, how can they, as a group, be so sure of themselves.
Is the issue really that uncomplicated?]
Whenever I see that sort of behavior, unanimity in thought among
people who work and socialize primarily with each other and with others like
them (which is everybody; I know that), I get very suspicious that the reasons
for their opinions have less to do with who is clearly right than with an
inability to see the other side, probably because they are not exposed to it.
In the case of the media and academia, conservative view points are considered
bad form, at the moment. That, plus the fact that if you openly espouse
a conservative viewpoint, your prospects for tenure in college are fairly
remote, and your likelihood of landing an anchor position on the CBS news is
nil. The opposite has been, and, I fear, will someday be true as well. I
believe that the climate of opinion on campus and in the
media is beginning to change and will continue to. At some point the bias will
shift the other way. And I will still be complaining, but from the other side.
But that’s me.
The professors and media journalists, unlike the Islamists, may not
be motivated by hatred and religion, but there may be a little “ressentment” at
work (there is a French spelling that Nietzsche uses, which escapes me, and
that is the word I want to use). Also, I don't think that these people always
appreciate the depths of their own ignorance, perhaps because by comparison
with the rest of the world they know so much more. This make them
over-confident that the rest of the world (or at least the United
States) is always wrong. Perhaps it is that
their lack of real world experience, and their basic rational approach to life,
makes them insensitive to the fact that others live a different world, some in
a fantasy world, and insensitive as well to the fact that human beings, on the
whole, are largely irrational, and often not nice, tending
to believe whatever they are told by whomever they are around, and motivated,
as Nietzsche would say of those lacking real power, by ignorance, hatred,
religion and resentment. All of which is ironic, if I am right, that the elite
are no different.
Our academicians still resemble the rest of the world’s groupings
in that they tend to agree with each other to an extent far beyond that which
one should reasonably expect from truly independent intelligent people, which
makes me suspect that rather than thinking independently, they are merely repeating
what they have been told by their peers to be the received wisdom (revealed
truth), received/revealed only to the super-educated. This is, of course, an
over-generalization, and not quite true; and, further, may be changing. I do
not have the time here to give this issue the attention that it deserves. The
issue is more complicated than I have presented it as being. I know that.
Nevertheless, there is some truth in it.
Interestingly, professors have not always been liberal. In pre-war Germany,
as elsewhere, including the United States,
they were mostly conservative or even reactionary. Ditto (until recently) for
the Supreme Court and the Federal bench in general, that bastion of freedom and
liberalism wherein we repose so much confidence as a counter-weight to
democracy. You want an activist Supreme Court? There have been many. An
activist court gave us Dred Scott and opposed the New Deal, but I digress.
Whatever motivates college professors, it is a fact that they tend to vote for
the same people (as do, or did, virtually everyone working for ABC, NBC, CBS
and PBS, according to polls). I repeat, this is probably not because they are
so much smarter than the rest of us. If they were, they would differ more with
each other, as truly smart people tend to do. Further, I see a shift in this
trend, and I view that shift as a good thing, because I, for one, would like to
hear as many sides to every political argument as can be presented, provided
that they are presented honestly and thoughtfully, and not out of ideological
allegiance.
The Conservative Conspiracy.
Lest you think that the war is a conservative conspiracy, I direct your
attention to the fact that many conservatives (Pat Buchanan for one),
consistent with their principles (America
firsters) are against it. Why? Because altruism is not a basic conservative
principle, though, ironically, it might as well be, in many cases, because the
results are often the same or better than when altruism is the motivating
force. Just my opinion, the opinion of an altruist. Jacque Chirac, in case you
didn’t know it, is a right-wing conservative, not a bleeding heart liberal. He
is probably thinking not about the Iraqis, but about France.
Like Buchanan, he does not think his country’s national interests are
threatened, and therefore, why get involved? Chirac probably figures France
will be better off if it does not get involved in liberating Iraq.
And he may be right. Pat may be right too. Many conservatives support the war
because they think it is in our interests, and that is why they support it.
Good enough. However, Tony Blair is the
liberal leader of the British Labour Party. Don’t forget that either. In fine,
this is not simply a liberal-conservative thing.
I count myself as a Chris Matthews or Jack Germond liberal, and am
not afraid to use or claim that term, partly because I know what the word means
historically; but I have to react against liberalism as it is “preached” today,
if only because so much of the liberalism that is so popular is sanctimonious
poppy-cock, which I believe if fully implemented the way the Al Sharptons of
the world would like to see it, would make life worse for everybody, rich and
poor. If and when things swing the other way, I probably will too, contrarian
that I am.
3. The Facts, Like it or
Not. One thing is obvious now, and of this I have little doubt. Even if the
handful of inspectors who admitted they were being lied to only had a few more
years to search a country the size of France for a few thousand tons of
anthrax, nerve gas, poisons and chemical weapons (which Iraq admitted it had,
but claim to have lost) would have found them without being able to freely
interview anyone who was not in mortal fear of death and torture if he or she
told the truth, and even if, hope triumphing over experience, Saddam in a
sudden about-face would then give those weapons up and simultaneous begin for
the first time to treat his people as human beings; even if all this were true
(and how one could know it to be true or even likely is beyond my small abilities),
the fact is that this is no longer an option. Further, it does NOT mean that
trying to (a) liberate the Iraqi people, and (b) disarm the country so that it
cannot threaten us or its neighbors, is evil or stupid or ignorant, even if in
theory it might turn out to be wrong, or not the best of all possible
solutions.
What is obviously true, whatever
you believe about anything else I have said, is that once it became clear that
America was going to start this war, anything that France or anyone else in the
U.N. did to oppose it was mere posturing, and, principled or not, the result
was and is that more Iraqi lives are
going to be lost, because less would be lost if the U.N. had backed us.
Right, wrong or indifferent, we were going in, and at that point, in made no
sense to undermine our position, unless our position was overwhelmingly clearly
wrong, and that is too much to say. Wrong maybe, but if so, the matter is
hardly that clear. I hope that if I have succeeded in nothing else, I have
convinced you that there is a valid American administration side to the
argument, with clear historical support, even if wrong. If we were totally and
extremely out of line, that might have been different. We might have been and
may be wrong, but given all of the arguments in favor of the U.S.
position, it cannot be said that our position was that far out of line with
reason and principle. That being the case, it is obvious to anyone with the
sense God gave a board, that the failure of the U.N. to carry out the commitment
it made in resolution 1441, is, in view of the United States and Great
Britain’s commitment to carry it out alone if necessary, was both stupid and
inhumane, and will without question result in the loss of additional Iraqi
lives, to the extent that matters to you. If we had been able to go in, with
the U.N. solidly behind us. The war really would have been over in a matter of
days.
In short, anything that we do, the U.N. does, or the marchers do to
give encouragement to the Iraqi Ba’ath party or to the people that it deludes,
to make it and them and the Arab street, think that Iraq can possibly win this
war, thereby enabling Iraq to continue to harbor nerve gas, anthrax, saran,
etc. and to continue to murder and torture its own people by prolonging the war
for longer than would otherwise be the case, is certainly cruel to the Iraqis
themselves, who will have to endure a longer war than otherwise. It is for their
sake, not necessarily my own, that I support what we are doing at this point, and
I, for one, don't want to do anything to make the lives of the Iraqis worse off.
If, after the war, we oppress them, colonize them, brutalize them,
make them worse off economically, rape and pillage, deny them basic freedom of
religion, etc., (I am VERY confident the precise opposite will happen --what do
the professors think we are going to do?) then I will march in the streets, and
hope you will join me. But in the mean time, I trust the basic good will of the
American people, the people who reconstructed Germany
and Japan, the
people who invented the Marshal Plan, the people who would bring freedom and
prosperity to Afghanistan
if they are allowed to. This is not evil. It is its opposite. It is not bad for
the Iraqis, it is good for them.
By the way, ask yourself this: are the Kosovars better off because
of our invasion? The starving Somalis? The Afghanis? Should we have protested
against those wars? Is this war to be distinguished? If so why? Because of the
risk to us, or because of the risk to the Iraqis? That is the question I pose.
4. Summary. In summary, I
don’t know whether the war is good for America
or not. I suspect not. I also suspect that it might be in our national
interests after all. But both are only a suspicions. That it will be good for
the Iraqis is not a suspicion, it is a conviction. My only reservation is that
Saddam is such a psychopath that he just might see to it that the Iraqis die by
the hundreds of thousands. I don’t think that will happen, but if it does, I
admit, in advance, that I have been totally wrong in supporting the war once
the U.S. committed to it.
I, for one, am not so sure that this war is in our national
interest. But of one thing I am certain, unless Saddam manages to slaughter
enough of his own people before the war is concluded, the Iraqi people are, on the
whole, going to be better off by several orders of magnitude when they are freed
of this monster who has been ruling them uninvited for all of these years, years
that have costs them millions of lives, millions of wounded, and millions of refugees.
(Between 1000 and 5000 Iraqis civilians were killed in the Gulf War, depending
on whom you believe.) So although I regret the loss of a single life, I do not grieve
for the Iraqi people as a whole, since, on the whole, their lives are about to be
improved considerably. Since the Iraqis themselves have no voice in this decision,
one must ask the question for them. Will they be better off without Saddam or not?
And if the answer, which should be obvious, is “yes.” How many lives would be worth
ridding them of him? If you say “not one” then this dialog should not begin. I have
nothing to say to you, nor you to me. The same if you say 100, or, for that matter,
to take the opposite extreme, say that, like WW II it is worth 50 million. Personally,
I think a few thousand is a small price to pay, a million would be too many. My
best guess is that the number is going to be in the thousands, as in Afghanistan.
That is a price which in my opinion is worth paying, without question. It would
be nice if the price were free, but freedom has never been
for free. I would pay it if it were I that was asked, and I do not think that
my humanity is so unlike the Iraqis that I cannot extrapolate by attributing
similar motives to them, even if they value freedom somewhat less than others,
as we have been told.
If our national interests are not at stake, why should we care
whether the Serbs slaughter the Kosovars, the Hutus the Tutsis, the Somalis
each other, the Sunnis the Kurds and the Shiites? The Germans, the Jews? Maybe
it really is none of our concern, but is it worth marching in the streets to
protest these attempts to stop genocide, all in the name of peace, where peace
is all but certain to be of no avail? In my opinion, the necessity for going to
war may be an honest subject for debate. There are people, who despite the
lessons of history, still believe that even though appeasement in all of the
cases mentioned above made matters worse, it might make matters better this
time. The triumph of hope over experience. I am in favor of hope and have
sympathy for those who have it, in spite of the last 100 years, and respect
good solid arguments that there might have been better ways to achieve what we
are about to achieve. But I also know that Churchill was right and the rest of
the world was wrong, and I know that the similarities are striking. I do not
dismiss history lightly.
Even if history does not always repeat itself exactly, there are
themes that seem to persist through out it. One must be aware of those themes,
if one is going to make the most reasoned decision possible on a matter that is
of the utmost importance to so very many people.
I hope we will soon know the answers to many of the issues of I
raised. That is all I have to say on that subject.