« The Hammer pounds away | Main | Zimbabwe's descent into hunger »
March 24, 2003
Undecided about war
For a liberal, the Iraq war poses a dilemma.
It is not difficult to debunk most of the pro-war arguments. Saddam has no link to Al Qaeda. He has supplied money and sanctuary to other terrorists, but never actual weapons. His nuclear program was dismantled by 1998 and he is not even close to a workable chemical or biological weapon; and there is no reason to believe continued aggressive inspections cannot prevent him from ever acquiring them.
But one pro-war argument is harder to refute; that of human rights. Pro-war propagandists have taken advantage of this, putting up gut-wrenching photos of children gassed by Saddam; graphic human rights reports of people being tortured; bitter remarks by Iraqi expatriates at the peace movement's apparent lack of concern for them.
The left's argument against this - that Saddam was considered a US ally during his worst atrocities - is true, but doesn't make a case against war. The US was wrong to support Saddam during the 1980s, but that is no reason to support, or even tolerate, him now. One can even regard the present war as an act of atonement on America's part for its earlier support of Saddam.
On the other hand, most leftists find it hard to believe that the likes of George W. Bush have any genuine concern for human rights beyond propaganda shock value. Hasn't America backed brutal dictators, including Saddam, time and time again? Doesn't it continue to support Israeli savagery in the occupied territories? Would it really give a rat's ass for human rights if Iraq didn't have large oil reserves? These are legitimate points, but they are not arguments against ousting Saddam.
We have to look at the practical side of things here. Is the world a better place with a war or without one? A war, even in the worst-case scenario, is unlikely to last more than a few months. Saddam is 65 years old; if left alone he might survive in power another 20 years. For most of the last decade, his regime has killed 3,000 political prisoners a year; over a 20-year period that would be 60,000 dead, nearly all civilian. That's assuming he doesn't engage in another Anfal campaign, or attempts another war.
What would be the alternative to war? Maintaining the sanctions is not an option; as leftists have been the first to point out, the death toll from the sanctions exceeds 500,000. But lifting the sanctions would give Saddam the funding he would need to rebuild his armed forces. What would happen then? Quite aside from fears over WMDs, we could expect Saddam to slowly but surely chip away at the no-fly zones. His troops would attempt to retake Kurdistan, and he might continue airstrikes against restive Shi'ites in the south. What then? Should Saddam be permitted to retake Kurdistan, and probably engage in another round of mass killings? To stop him would probably require the use of military force - in other words, war.
The left's only real argument against war is that it would cause massive civilian casualties, more so than would die if Saddam held on to power. But so far that doesn't seem the case. Even the Iraqi government gave a casualty figure of only 200 for the first three days of "shock and awe" bombing. Military casualties have been less than 100 on the US side; even if the Iraqi side were ten times that, that is still less than 1,000. Any war Saddam were to fight against the Kurds would easily have a much higher civilian death toll.
Ultimately, the real reason most leftists oppose the war is not really about Iraq, but about America. Leftists, remembering Vietnam, remembering Nicaragua, remembering Angola, remembering Chile, cannot trust the United States to be the policeman of the world. A world where the US intervenes anywhere it sees fit, accountable to no one, is a spectre that is driving the street protests. Today it is Saddam's regime, despicable and impossible to sympathize with. But tomorrow it may be Iran. The day after that, Cuba. The humanitarian argument can be used again and again to justify the armed overthrow of any regime ideologically unacceptable to America. The Right will continue to win these arguments as long as it can wrap itself in the mantle of humanitarianism. In order to defeat it, the Left must come up with an alternative other than the status quo.
International law already states that genocide is a matter of international concern. It has usually been the Left that has responded in outrage to the great powers' willingness to tolerate cruel and despotic regimes. Leftists have supported wars that overthrew regimes like that - the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979, the Tanzanian invasion of Uganda in 1982, the RPF's overthrow of the genocidal Rwandan regime in 1994. In all three of these cases, the regime carrying out the liberation was far from a saint and had committed their share of human rights abuses. But because there was no risk of their establishing a global hegemony, they didn't provoke the ire the US is provoking.
Genocide is already a matter of international concern, and foreign military intervention is justified if it is happening. What we should do here is broaden the definition of genocide. Acts of extreme cruelty, carried out by a state authority without a democratic mandate, are enough justification for foreign intervention. This should require the permission of the Security Council, but without veto power, which would otherwise paralyze it.
Posted by Tyrone at March 24, 2003 01:47 PM