Iraq Roundup for College
Students
by Adam B. Kushner
Any demographer can tell you why
there are more commercials for Viagra during the evening
news broadcasts than for Play station: young people–even many thirty-somethings–simply
don't follow current events. Yet, by the unwritten rules of
suffrage, people older than 18 are expected not only to understand
the world, but also to elect representatives based on that
understanding. So as the Iraq war–a divisive issue for
next year's election–fades slowly into memory, it's worth
reminding youths what it was all about. Here, then, is a refresher.
The administration of President Bush cited three justifications
for going to war. The primary one was that Iraq was a rogue
regime and that overthrowing it would enhance America's national
security. To that end, the White House argued that: Saddam
Hussein was an irrational despot with designs on Middle East
(and perhaps world) domination; he had an ongoing weapons development
program, including biochemical and nuclear weapons; he could
unleash his arsenal on the battlefield in as few as 45 minutes;
and Saddam was cooperating with the terrorists of al Qaeda.
Since the war ended, most of the claims have been discredited.
True, Saddam has hoped to dominate the Middle East since the
1960s. But his biochemical weapons development program ended
during the last inspection regime before 1998 (he may have
had a few leftover stockpiles from the Iran-Iraq war and the
Kurdish genocide of 1988, but today's inspectors have failed
to find even those). There have been no signs of a nuclear
weapons program. A special commission in England learned that
the rapid-deployment claim was manipulated by the Prime Minister's
office. And although a large majority of Americans came to
believe that Saddam Hussein helped al Qaeda orchestrate the
9/11 attack, even President Bush has denied as much.
The second argument for war was to credibility to the United
Nations. The Bush administration argued that resolutions such
as 1441, demanding intrusive weapons inspections in Iraq, would
be worthless if they weren't backed up by the credible threat
of force. In a sense, the United States hoped to use the UN
resolution and impending war as a deterrent to other rogue
regimes. Most international observers believe America's credible
threat recently helped convince Libya to allow inspections.
The third point said that the Iraq
was a fundamentally liberal project, and that spreading democracy–at the point of
a gun, if necessary–should be the goal of every human
rights advocate in the world. This was a humanitarian war to
remove a genocidal tyrant. Since the war ended (and the administration
failed to prove the national security argument), the White
House has cited this case most frequently. Of all the arguments,
the third has been the most resonant. It fits into America's
grand narrative of fighting for freedom, and dovetails neatly
with 50 years of Cold War foreign policy.
But there are problems. Critics say that the United States
is not investing nearly enough money, troops, or time into
the reconstruction of Iraq, without which there will be no
democracy. Despite promising to show resolve in the face of
frequent guerilla attacks, the Bush administration is now preparing
to pull most peacekeeping troops out of Iraq before the election
next November.
Another logical flaw with the humanitarian case for war is
that Iraq was not the only despotic regime around. If the White
House really cared about liberal democracy and human rights,
it would also invade Iran, North Korea, Egypt, China, Saudi
Arabia, Zimbabwe, Syria, Myanmar, Jordan, and a handful of
other countries. If Iraq becomes, in the coming months, the
constitutional democracy that the U.S. hopes for it to be,
President Bush may find a slippery slope from Iraq to Pakistan.#
Adam Kushner has been a contributor to Education Update since
his undergraduate days at Columbia University. He is now a
professional journalist.
