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Page Not FoundWe need to be united in the fight against fascism and repression.
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Page Not FoundWe need to be united in the fight against fascism and repression.
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September 27, 2002
Action, Inaction, Reaction
The risks of inaction,” argues Vice President Dick Cheney, in a typically flawed justification for war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, “are greater than the risks of action.” But war aimed at “regime change” is not the only choice. During the ’90s, U.N. inspections had eliminated more than 90 percent of Iraq’s arsenal and capacity to manufacture and weapons of mass destruction, before U.S. abuse of inspections to spy on Saddam precipitated the inspectors’ withdrawal in 1998, according to former U.N. inspector Scott Ritter (interviewed by William Rivers Pitt in the new book War on Iraq). Inspections and destruction of prohibited weapons, even if an imperfect process, remain a viable option to contain any potential threat from Saddam. Equally serious, the Bush administration still has not demonstrated the risks of not going to war immediately (what Cheney dishonestly labels “inaction”). The White House has offered no credible evidence that Saddam has any militarily significant capacity to produce or deliver weapons of mass destruction against countries in the region, let alone the United States. Yes, Saddam is a reprehensible tyrant, who has tried in the past, with varying degrees of success, to develop biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, to conceal those efforts from inspectors, and to use some of those weapons. But what’s new? He was doing much of that, with the knowledge of U.S. officials, when he was fighting Iran and receiving aid from Washington. There is no imminent threat. British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s dossier, even if taken at face value, shows the need for renewed U.N. inspections, not war. Despite attempts to link Iraq to 9/11, there is no known tie—and much known hostility—between Saddam and al-Qaeda. The main risk of new U.N. inspections is undermining Bush’s case for war by showing that Saddam really doesn’t have weapons that pose a threat. But the risks of Cheney’s “action”—that is, war—are enormous. In attempting to justify a war that is both “pre-emptive” and aimed at “regime change,” the United States is opening two broad new justifications for international aggression, setting a dangerous precedent, and violating international law. War risks massive civilian casualties in Iraq and heavy American military losses in anticipated block-to-block urban combat in Baghdad—not to mention the complete destabilization of Iraq, divided between antagonistic camps of majority Shi‘ites, northern Kurds and Sunnis linked to Saddam. The U.S. insistence on war and eliminating Saddam, whatever the United Nations does, increases the likelihood that he will use whatever weapons he does have and direct them toward Israel, which has vowed to retaliate. Turkey and Iran almost certainly will be drawn into the fray. The risks of exacerbating the existing conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians, as well as India and Pakistan, are immense. War would only foment more anti-American terrorism. The rising tide of distrust and antipathy toward the United States in Europe and elsewhere risks intensifying political conflict within regions far removed from Iraq, making the United States an isolated rogue state. The economic costs in oil price spikes, deepened global recession, and years of occupation and reconstruction of Iraq would be extremely high. The new national security strategy issued by the Bush administration is ominous not only in its argument for pre-emptive attack, but in its imperial ambition for American power to enforce a “single sustainable model for national success.” Europeans, not to mention much of the rest of the world, are squeamish about America imposing that single, increasingly discredited model of unregulated, untempered capitalism on them—especially by an arrogant military power that ignores international institutions when it can’t use them as a fig leaf for its own designs. War on Iraq is likely to trigger a much more widespread and diverse opposition to American imperial power, heightening tensions around the world.
In short, Cheney is dead wrong. The risks of his kind of action are much greater than the risks of a much smarter kind of action—international cooperation in monitoring and containing any potential threat from the Iraqi regime. Return to top of the page. |
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