USS Clueless - When should you fight a war?..... There is, for instance, a basic (and incorrect) presumption that if the goal of a war is occupation of the other nation (sometimes called "conquest") that it is impossible to achieve this without causing vast numbers of civilian casualties. It is, for example, something of an article of faith among those who have been opposing an American attack on Iraq that such a war would necessarily cause upwards of a hundred thousand Iraqi civilian casualties. (I've had seen that presumption appear in mail, and it often appears in antiwar postings online.) We can't know for certain if that's true until it's over, of course, but it is not at all clear to someone familiar with the capabilities we now have that this must necessarily be the case, and it is entirely possible that we may end up occupying Iraq without firing a shot.
That scenario is unlikely but not impossible and involved a quick coup by certain forces in Iraq itself, after which they invite the US in. I don't think anyone in our top command is relying on this, but I believe that they are actively working to try to make this happen, for it would in many ways be the best possible outcome. [...] But even if we do resort to real violence, it is no longer the case that we need to target cities, and it is not certain that conquest of Iraq will necessarily result in a mountain of civilian dead. If one is certain that this is unavoidable, it becomes more clear why one would oppose such a war. But it's not clear whether all of those using this rhetoric really believe it, or whether they're saying it in hopes of making the prospect of war less attractive to others.
Setting to one side the issue of civilian dead, and assuming that an actual shooting war occurs, how do we not target cities in this? Assuming no quick conquest (if I were them, I would immediately surrender and then resort to guerilla warfare, but that's neither here nor there), the US will still have to take and hold cities, essentially unaided. (Even if they support the fight, I somehow doubt that either Britain or Australia will want to be involved in the occupation. Technically, I suppose, it would be a UN operation, assuming that the UN approves the attack. That said, I would be willing to bet that the position of every other security council member except Britain would be that the current resolution absolutely positively does not authorize an attack, no matter what the currently applicable resolution actually says -- a masterpiece of fluff, that. So an occupation would be a UN operation, but I can't imagine the administration even conceiving of allowing anything but a proforma UN presence, if that.)
And from the comment on Mr. Willis' site: We need to occupy Iraq, and to control Iraq's oil fields, so that we can quit pretending that the Sauds are our friends, and so that we can force reforms in Saudi Arabia, and force them to stop financing the terrorists.
Well, that's blunt, if appalling. Although it assumes that we actually would force reforms in Saudi Arabia, and I suspect that once the occupation of Iraq actually begins, and the administration has to deal with that plus whatever they finally decide to do with the Korea mess, plus dealing with a second and stronger dip to the national recession, the administration will be nicely overextended, thanks. (And leave us not forget that they'll almost certainly have to commit more resources to Afghanistan, unless they want it to slide back into the morass that made it such a friendly host to Al Qaida. Not that it's far from a morass at the moment, but we can at least pretend.)
If we stand up to the Sauds now, without controlling Iraq's oil fields, then the price of oil in the world will skyrocket and our economy will go into the toilet.
It's going to do that anyway. Our economy is in no fit state to sustain a war. I'm not saying that is a reason for not going to war; I'm saying that controlling Iraq's oil fields, unless it happens overnight without a shot being fired (and it won't) will not prevent our economy from going into the toilet.
Therefore the road to peace and safety goes through Baghdad, for reasons having nothing to do with Saddam or his WMDs.
And taking that to its logical conclusion, means that the administration has been lying to us (when it talks to us at all) and the rest of the world, and the ostensible reasons for the war have nothing to do with the real reasons. Which is an utterly immoral position for them to take.
The position of the US has always been, in essence, a country can crap on its own citizens and we won't generally do anything but shake a stern finger, maybe cut off financial aid and trade, etc. And, to be sure, Saddam has crapped on the people of Iraq with vim, vigor, and rampant enthusiasm. Heaven knows, if we'd wanted to deal with Iraq for humanitarian reasons, there has been cause and more than cause (and that's fairly minor, as these things go, really).
And although we don't like proliferation of weapons, we've typically not done much beyond trade and talks to stop it -- the bribery of North Korea being a fairly typical example, and fairly typically ineffective. (The possibly mistaken attack in Sudan on the chemical factory/baby formula factory by the Clinton administration being one of the rare military exceptions.) "We're going to conquer you so we have a stable source of oil" will be, if nothing else, somewhat unusual for US policy. It's also probably not going to work very well without some sort of long term -- 10-20 years, I mean -- occupation. According to various articles I've read by people who have been in Iraq, the only thing the Iraqi people hate more than Saddam -- whom most Iraqis seem to loathe and despise for what he's done to their country -- would be the United States, for insisting on trade sanctions when the rest of the world would have let them lapse, and bombing defense installations daily, and partitioning their country. They've also been weaned, for more than a generation, on unremitting "we hate the US" propaganda; it will take at least that long to undo some of it. (And we're not talking about whether allowing unlimited trade would have been wise or not, thanks.)
To be sure, the trade goods issue is complicated. Yes, Saddam has misused the trade that comes into the country. Yes, he has misused the revenue that the UN allowed from their oil, and the people of Iraq do seem to know that. They also feel that had there been normal relations with the rest of the world, trade and otherwise, Saddam could have had his graft, and the rest of them would have had enough from the leftovers, as they did before. In their point of view, there's quite enough blame to go around. Without a fairly draconian occupation -- and the US possesses neither the means nor the will to impose such -- it's likely to be, to put it mildly, a fairly difficult experience for all concerned. I'm not certain that the administration will be willing to justify keeping 250,000 people over there indefinitely.
(Entirely a side note: to some extent, the current situation is, in a different location and on a different scale, analogous to the situation with Germany after WWI. Iraq surrendered, to the extent that it did, after the Gulf war while its armies were still near the Kuwait border, well out of sight of most Iraqis. The utter ignominy of that defeat was pretty well kept from them. The reparations, such as they were, and the resulting sanctions have battered the Iraq economy for a decade. Most of the analogy ends there, however; Saddam isn't a popular demagogue arising from the people, and apparently some part of the world isn't prepared to see his country become strong enough to be that type of threat. Mind, post-war Iraq has never been rebuilt enough to be that kind of general military threat. In theory, the coming war would be to prevent that, but in reality, you seem to say, it has nothing to do with that.)
Posted by iain at December 31, 2002 05:52 PMComments
The more I read about the Iraq situation, the more and more I become convinced that to do nothing would be fool-hardy. For one, Saddam is a megalomaniac who wants to create a Pan-Arabian empire. I think he'd have a good chance of doing it, if America would not become involved. He could use Psyops rather effectively on the rest of the Arabia. Arabia hates the US, Israel, and to an extent their own leaders. Now, Saddam has a tribal mentality.
It is a rather brutal mentality. I believe he will try to take revenge, when he has the capacity to do so, on America for the Gulf War and the years of trade sanctions, whose intended purpose doesn't work.
Now, this is where nukes are relevant. They are useful for two purposes, revenge and deterrence.
I think he could effectively deter us on a second attack on Kuwait. I'm not entirely sure how willing America is to sustain a nuclear attack on our soldiers and/or our homeland cities. It would be rather foolish to think that we can stop Saddam from nuking our cities when he has a nuclear weapon.
Therefore it is in our best interests to invade. Yes, we have to stay put, but we have done it before against another more hostile country, Japan. It is not the exact same situation, but there is a precedent for this type of occupation.
Now, if we invade take Saddam out and just take up and leave, then there will most likely be a massive civil war. There is also an extremely good chance of genocide. America will take all the blame for this genocide in world opinion. If the world can blame Saddam's starvation of his people on us, I don't see how they won't blame an Iraqi genocide on us. Now, this will be the worst outcome. It will galvanize Arab opinion so against America, that I don't see how the precarious positions of the Arab autocrats can hold. We will see revolution all over the arabian penninsula. Most likely, Islamic regimes will be established. These regimes will be even more friendly to Osama bin Laden, or another person like him, than Afghanistan ever was. To boot, they'll have more resources.
Now, if we invade and conquer, there won't be a genocide. We will lose money in the short-medium term. We will probably see a lot of our troops die. But, for the medium-long term interests of America, we have to pay the price. I believe we can change the culture of the Iraqis, again there is a precedent. Germany and Japan who were extremely warlike.
Now, these are the possibilities we face:
A nuclear attack on our cities if we do nothing and a cold war with an pan-Arabian empire ruled by Saddam Hussein and/or massive Arab casualties due to an American response.
An American invasion of Iraq, with the sole purpose of deposing Saddam. This will result in genocide in Iraq, with America taking the blame for the result. This will galvanize Arabian opinion against America, which will result in Islamic regimes all over the penninsula. Our terrorism war will take a severe setback.
An American invasion of Iraq, with a lengthy occupation. The possibility that a real cultural change happens somewhere in the Middle East. Short-medium term economic hardships. Large casualties of troops. And, a message to the world that American is not soft anymore.
That is why we need to invade Iraq and occupy. That's why I'm joining the military after college. If there are other possibilities you can think of, please let me know.
Posted by set at January 1, 2003 02:40 AM
