Prevailing View on Iraq at Pomona Ignores the Reality of Saddam's Threat
By Conor Friedersdorf
Contributing Writer

The Pomona College community has rightly raised the issue of war with Iraq in recent classes, lectures, and newspaper articles. This is encouraging; the issue should be subject to the rigorous scrutiny that academia purports to demand before conclusions are reached. But while Pomona has raised the issue of war with Iraq, it has not meaningfully engaged that issue. The community has concluded that the United States should not take action against Iraq. Admittedly, there are compelling arguments against war. But that conclusion was more informed by a knee-jerk reaction toward the liberal position than by careful analysis of the issue and successful challenges to contrary arguments. In fact, arguments for war have gone unchallenged while erroneous and intellectually dishonest arguments against war have been asserted. It is time for the Pomona community, and liberals everywhere, to meaningfully engage this issue.

Most perplexing are those who decry U.S. action with appeals to the sanctity of International Law. Many muddy issues surround the Iraq question, but the legality of U.S. action is not one of them. In 1991 the United States led a United Nations-approved international coalition against Iraq. Whatever U.S. motives for heading that coalition, it is beyond argument that the Persian Gulf War was precipitated by Iraq’s unlawful and unprovoked invasion of Kuwait.

At the conclusion of that war, Iraq signed a legally binding treaty as a condition of ended hostilities. In simple terms, Saddam Hussein said he would do certain things as a condition of remaining in power and ending military action against his nation.

Hussein has since repeatedly violated numerous conditions of that treaty. He has kicked weapons inspectors out of his country for a period of years. He has sold oil on the black market (outside the ‘Oil for Food’ program). He has illegally shot at American and British planes patrolling the no-fly zone that the treaty established. He has failed to destroy his arsenal of weapons.
The international community disputes none of these things. That the treaty Hussein signed to cease hostilities has been repeatedly broken is beyond question. Thus, military action can legally be reinstated; hostilities can be un-ceased.
Next is the problematic contention that the United States should not take action without backing from the United Nations. Consider that U.N. backing cannot come if any permanent member of the Security Council vetoes such action. Now ask yourself if that standard of “justified action” survives a principled test. A hypothetical is useful here: say Russia initiates a genocidal campaign in Georgia. And say China, which signed a friendship pact with Russia not so long ago, finds it in its national interest to veto any action to stop the Russian genocide. Should the world stand by and let the genocide occur because of a principled commitment to taking action only when the U.N. says it is okay? The point here is not to assert that the hypothetical is analogous to the Iraq situation. But it does debunk the argument that the U.S. should in all cases only take action if the U.N. says it’s okay.

So why should the United States pursue regime change in Iraq? There are several compelling reasons. Hussein is a dictator with a history of unprovoked aggression who is in possession of chemical and biological weapons. (He has used both in the past.) His demonstrable capacity for launching unprovoked attacks and using horrific weapons should trouble us, particularly when scientists who have defected from his nation tell us he is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, and our intelligence tells us the same. None of these are grounds to launch war, except that Hussein is continually violating the legally binding agreements designed to stop him from further aggression.
If force will not be used to enforce agreements designed to prevent catastrophe, why establish those agreements in the first place? If force is not justified in this extreme case, when is it justified?

A simple and compelling argument goes like this: Hussein is not spending billions to develop weapons, and risking deposition for flouting weapons inspectors, for no reason at all. He would only go so far to obtain weapons if he had the intention of using them, or attempting to hold the world hostage to his demands while threatening to use them.

Some argue that Hussein wants to stay in power, if nothing else; they argue that he knows if he did launch an attack he would be quickly ousted by the global community, and thus we can count on him not to launch an attack.

Forget the fact that there are countless historical examples of attacks that run contrary to the self-interest of the aggressor (Pearl Harbor, for one). Even current Hussein-specific behavior runs counter to this thesis: Hussein tried to have Bush Sr. assassinated; a rational actor motivated primarily by self-preservation would never have ordered such an attack.

If action is legally justified and would result in an avowedly dangerous enemy losing power, what are some compelling reasons for the U.S. not to take action?
One argument is that we should always avoid war whenever possible, since loss of innocent life on both sides is inevitable. Proponents of this argument must demonstrate that a diplomatic solution is possible, or that even without a diplomatic solution the aggregate loss of innocent life that war would probably entail outweighs the loss of life that inaction would probably entail.

Appeasement versus action; pros and cons. It’s reasonable to think of World War I as a case when diplomacy should have triumphed, and World War II as a case when Chamberlain’s appeasement had disastrous results. In other words, neither position is always correct. But those who contend that war should be avoided whenever possible have not as yet offered a compelling case that the Iraq situation is more like the former case than the latter.

Another argument against war is that it is not in U.S. interests. That the animosity that results will outweigh any good that is done. That we should focus our resources on Al Qaeda. That Hussein just doesn’t pose a threat to us.

These are the most compelling arguments against war, but they still require evidence demonstrating them to be correct. Thus far the anti-war tendency has been to assert these points as self-evident. In truth some of the weakest arguments at Pomona owe their flimsiness to their perceived self-evidence, to assertions untested by critical thinking. Rigorous argument is an idea’s best crucible.

Finally, a related note on the Democratic response to the Bush administration.

Congressional Democrats continually call for Bush to “make the case” that we should go to war with Iraq. Oddly, at one point they claimed to be waiting impatiently for Bush to send them a resolution.

If I were a Congressman, I would remember that Congress has the ability—in fact the responsibility—to write resolutions. That it is a function of the legislature.

If I were a Congressman, I would use the myriad resources at my disposal and research the hell out of the Iraq situation. It’s perhaps the most important of our time. I would study the issue carefully, consider all the evidence, and decide for myself under what circumstances the U.S. should attack Iraq, detailing my assertion through meticulous and reasoned argument. Yet Senate Democrats wait passively to be convinced?

Presidents are said to have the power of persuasion. This does not mean that Congress is absolved of its responsibility to research and make tough decisions. Congress’ approach should not be to wait idly to see how convincing the President is before they decide an issue. God forbid he’s right but has a bad day.

What seems oddly lost in this debate is that whether or not war is the right thing to do is independent of U.N. backing, and is particularly independent of the cognitive and oratorical skills of George W. Bush.

Liberals and Democrats (the audience of this piece) and conservatives and Republicans must start to engage one another’s arguments. This article is a severely abridged catalogue of hawk-and-dove assertions, a hopelessly incomplete analysis of the flaws and strengths of both sides. It is critical of liberal arrogance because that is the particular poison Pomona suffers from. It is not intended to be balanced or conclusive.

But I hope it stirs a more robust debate in one liberal, largely Democratic, supposedly academic community. A community that, thus far, has failed miserably in raising many of these questions. That has failed, as a result, to approach a well informed, rigorously tested, intellectually honest position on the Iraq question.