Saturday, January 31, 2004
A Letter of Mass Delusion?
A letter from the WashPost that caught my eye:
Weapons of Mass Delusion (washingtonpost.com): "If one carries Peter D. Feaver's assessment [op-ed, Jan. 28] of intelligence overestimates to its logical conclusion, U.S. officials should be reprimanded for not attacking the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and Iran.
Contrary to Feaver's view that only war could have broken the alleged WMD risks posed by Saddam Hussein, the United States should have enforced a permanent presence of inspectors in Iraq through diplomacy, economic sanctions and, had Hussein threatened to remove the inspectors as he did in 1998, a convincing air campaign that went well beyond the Clinton administration's response at that time. Considering Iraq's frail condition, vigilant patience would have broken Saddam Hussein. The result: More than 500 young American soldiers would be alive today.
-- Bennett Ramberg
Los Angeles"
This seems like a persuasive argument, but it's really quite easy to dissect. First, one cannot carry logic to the conclusion of attacking such countries as the Soviet Union and China, because of definite Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) if the USSR was attacked and at least a probable MAD with China (the west coast would be pretty glassy in the best case); with North Korea an attack is more possible, but because of the thousands of artillery pieces pointing at South Korea's capital, the hundreds of thousands of casualties that would occur because of N. Korean retaliation make such an effort unacceptable at this time (although if diplomacy is seen to fail, such an effort may seem more plausible later, especially if the nuclear danger of N. Korea is seen to increase through trafficking of arms, etc). Iran is becoming more of a likely target by the day because of its admitted efforts to build a bomb, but it hasn't completely shut itself off from the world, and still plays diplomacy. It also has a rising opposition movement to the theocracy which shows promise, so jumping into a war that may be soon executed as a revolution seems like a poor decision. There are countries like Syria in which an argument for military intervention is more persuasive, since the military power of the country is minimal, and the risk it poses to US interests is great (terrorists moving into Iraq and Israel, support of Hezbollah, harboring of Baathists from Iraq, etc).
The second series of points made is almost as silly as the first. The United States did just what the writer claims, it attempted to enforce inspectors through economic sanctions and diplomacy. I wish the writer would have elaborated on what sorts of targets should have been hit in a more convincing air campaign (I also ask how convincing can it be when the whole aim is to only appear serious militarily?). Power plants, bridges, and other important targets would have hurt the Iraqi people, and destroying government buildings and palaces would have just forced money to be spent to build new ones, money coming from the oil for food program that should have been going to the starving Iraqis.
The most important thing to remember is that any attempt to break Saddam Hussein through sanctions would have to first break his people, forcing them to apply the direct pressure to him that we were so long afraid to use. If economic sanctions had continued, or been somehow intensified, it is certain that more than 500 Iraqi children alone would have been dead from malnutrition and disease, and thousands would have been killed by the repressive regime in an attempt to quell any uprisings from the people.
To break Saddam indirectly would have meant inflicting untold amounts of suffering on many innocents in Iraq. I like to think that our soldiers died to make men free and prevent such hypocritical atrocities.
UPDATE:
See evidence for a brewing confrontation between the moderates and theocrates discussed here. Military action in Iran seems unlikely as long as the opposition is lively.
Weapons of Mass Delusion (washingtonpost.com): "If one carries Peter D. Feaver's assessment [op-ed, Jan. 28] of intelligence overestimates to its logical conclusion, U.S. officials should be reprimanded for not attacking the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and Iran.
Contrary to Feaver's view that only war could have broken the alleged WMD risks posed by Saddam Hussein, the United States should have enforced a permanent presence of inspectors in Iraq through diplomacy, economic sanctions and, had Hussein threatened to remove the inspectors as he did in 1998, a convincing air campaign that went well beyond the Clinton administration's response at that time. Considering Iraq's frail condition, vigilant patience would have broken Saddam Hussein. The result: More than 500 young American soldiers would be alive today.
-- Bennett Ramberg
Los Angeles"
This seems like a persuasive argument, but it's really quite easy to dissect. First, one cannot carry logic to the conclusion of attacking such countries as the Soviet Union and China, because of definite Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) if the USSR was attacked and at least a probable MAD with China (the west coast would be pretty glassy in the best case); with North Korea an attack is more possible, but because of the thousands of artillery pieces pointing at South Korea's capital, the hundreds of thousands of casualties that would occur because of N. Korean retaliation make such an effort unacceptable at this time (although if diplomacy is seen to fail, such an effort may seem more plausible later, especially if the nuclear danger of N. Korea is seen to increase through trafficking of arms, etc). Iran is becoming more of a likely target by the day because of its admitted efforts to build a bomb, but it hasn't completely shut itself off from the world, and still plays diplomacy. It also has a rising opposition movement to the theocracy which shows promise, so jumping into a war that may be soon executed as a revolution seems like a poor decision. There are countries like Syria in which an argument for military intervention is more persuasive, since the military power of the country is minimal, and the risk it poses to US interests is great (terrorists moving into Iraq and Israel, support of Hezbollah, harboring of Baathists from Iraq, etc).
The second series of points made is almost as silly as the first. The United States did just what the writer claims, it attempted to enforce inspectors through economic sanctions and diplomacy. I wish the writer would have elaborated on what sorts of targets should have been hit in a more convincing air campaign (I also ask how convincing can it be when the whole aim is to only appear serious militarily?). Power plants, bridges, and other important targets would have hurt the Iraqi people, and destroying government buildings and palaces would have just forced money to be spent to build new ones, money coming from the oil for food program that should have been going to the starving Iraqis.
The most important thing to remember is that any attempt to break Saddam Hussein through sanctions would have to first break his people, forcing them to apply the direct pressure to him that we were so long afraid to use. If economic sanctions had continued, or been somehow intensified, it is certain that more than 500 Iraqi children alone would have been dead from malnutrition and disease, and thousands would have been killed by the repressive regime in an attempt to quell any uprisings from the people.
To break Saddam indirectly would have meant inflicting untold amounts of suffering on many innocents in Iraq. I like to think that our soldiers died to make men free and prevent such hypocritical atrocities.
UPDATE:
See evidence for a brewing confrontation between the moderates and theocrates discussed here. Military action in Iran seems unlikely as long as the opposition is lively.
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