Perspectives on Iraq
My friend, Dan, sent in a link to a BBC piece on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs, and then wanted to know what I thought about it. Here is what I wrote back to him:
Dan,
I did watch it. And I would tend to agree that Iraq almost definitely has a sizable chemical/biological capability. There is a great deal of evidence for this. The U.S. is actually in an especially good position to know what Iraq has, since the U.S. provided the materials in the first place.
http://www.cryptogon.com/images/cdc_letter.gif
Yes, Hussein is bad. Yes, he deserves to cook in a pot of boiling oil in Hell, etc. Yes, Hussein is psychotic. BUT: I don't think he's suicidal. If the U.S. pushes him into a corner, and he knows there is no way out, what will he have to lose by lobbing every egg he has? Consider this quote from Hussein: "It is me they want. I am the defiant spirit. But I tell them, 'before you feed on me, I will feed on you.'" He will have exactly nothing to lose, and he will use every weapon at his disposal. If the U.S. (and God forbid, Israel) responds with nuclear weapons, well... I mean, what else is there to say?
There is talk,
in and around U.S. foreign policy circles, of using nuclear weapons, not to
accomplish any tactical or strategic military goal, but to demonstrate that
the U.S. has gone off the rails and will annihilate anyone who would dare resist:
Somebody said that the time had come to "flip" Iran (presumably
from a low-growth theocracy to a high-yield democracy), and Dimitri Simes, president
of The Nixon Center, said no, this wasn't the moment for flipping. It was the
moment to consider dropping a nuclear bomb on Afghanistan -- not for any
strategic or tactical purpose but for the "very strong demonstration effect"
that the explosion was likely to make on the rulers of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya,
and Lebanon. He thought that altering the terrain of Central Asia might persuade
Saddam Hussein to obey the instructions of the United Nations, and when asked
by a fellow discussant whether he knew that he was talking about the obliteration
of an unknown number of miscellaneous Afghans, Simes observed that the NATO
victory in Serbia was not won against the Serbian military "but because
we were effective against the Serbian civilian infrastructure."
I don't buy the "appeasement" argument that is swirling around. That analogy is absurd. The U.S./U.N. grip on Iraq over the past 12 years amounts to genocide, not appeasement. There was no similar response to Germany at all as Hitler meandered across Europe.
When the depleted uranium dust settles, and the thousands of civilian bodies in Iraq are counted (or not, as they may be bulldozed into mass graves like in the last war), the question will be: Who's next? There will be no end to this thing, Dan. Wherever there are resources to be stolen by the U.S./U.K. there will be terrorists that need to be dealt with.
And if we, as people of the world, start to squeal too much about the expansion of Pax Americana, more buildings will fall, chemical/biological weapons will be released, or worse. The voices opposed to the "program" will be drowned out by people who want to be saved from the terrorists. There is nothing new under the sun, my friend. The Reichstag fire is THE key event to keep in mind. Nothing that is happening (in terms of problem-reaction-solution style perception management) is at all different from what has happened in the past. Now, however, we are dealing with global scale events and technologies that have the capacity to exterminate life on this planet.
"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
"They Thought They Were Free," by Milton Mayer
That's it. Sorry for the long rant.
-Kevin