It’s been hinted at earlier. If the US takes out Saddam, then you will see a full scale attempt to create an independant country out of Kurdistan. One slight problem is that Kurdistan contains a nice big chunk of Turkey.
Not saying it would happen, but Iran just might be tempted to go after Iraq. Or maybe just encroach on some border areas. They don’t even have to be overly greedy, and just take clear control of areas that are in dispute between the two countries.
China Guy has it right, in part, but IMHO it is just the tip of a very bad iceberg.
Attacking Iraq is the type of foreign policy that not only makes me afraid, but makes me very angry. I can’t see it as a well-thought out exercise. I can’t see it as anything that will have any long term benefits.
Destabilization of Saddam and his party would probably at least partially involve backing the Kurds. This would only serve to destabilize our close ally, Turkey. Making the Kurds more powerful will only lead to military operations against them in Eastern Turkey. And so forth.
Jordan is already hurting economically and socially due to Israeli-Palestinian unrest. An NPR piece today chronicled the manifold ways that Jordan would be unstabilized by American action against Iraq. Iraq is a friendly neighbor to Jordan and the Jordanian people are sympathetic to the Iraqis. Any US action would be perceived very negatively, especially if Israel is involved. Add to this things like Iraqi oil exports to Jordan which are basically singlehandedly supporting Jordan’s economy. King Abdallah would be compelled to fall in line behind the US, which would make him grossly unpopular and lead to economic ruin. If he doesn’t, US economic aid is in jeopardy. So damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Similar things about Saudi Arabia. Attacks on Iraq may be popular with the Saud royalty, but they won’t be popular with your average Mohammed Q. Public. The Sauds are clinging tenuously to power now, and further unstabilitization would not serve our purposes.
I think I read a Washington Post article a month ago or so that states that the US may not even have enough munitions to attack Iraq within the next six months or so. Supposedly we are using daisy cutters and smart bombs faster than we can make them. All this does is give Saddam more time to put rebar over his bunkers and his WMD.
Civilian casualties will be far greater in an action on Iraq than on Afghanistan. Saddam has and will use human shields. He knows how to work media outlets. He has sympathetic ears. It will be ugly, and there are no ways to guarantee that we will ever get Saddam dead or alive. Or that the person that will replace him will not pursue WMD.
The other power party in Iraq are the Shi’ites. As in the same brand of revolutionary Shi’ites that run Iran. So getting rid of Saddam means replacing him with Khomeni. Do we really need another anti-American fundamentalist Islam state in this world?
The US can’t go it alone without allies. It costs too much both economically and in a human dimernsion. The US can’t remain on top in a global economy if it must do everything by itself. Building coalitions is more important than ever before and I can’t see how attacking Iraq would ever win us more friends.
Add to this that the “war on terrorism” is now nebulously defined and can be expanded to include things like domestic economic stimulus and the war on drugs. When are we finished? When every member of al-Qaida is in prison or dead? When will we be adequately assured that it terrorism is unlikely enough that we can stop? Can this ever be accomplished militarily? Will attacking Iraq further our goals in the long term? Open ended military campaigns have brought down states far greater than America, and I fear that expanding into Iraq will only take one step in that direction.
I am very jet lagged, so this may be incohesive or not understandable. But reading all this news about Saddam, UN inspections, tactical nukes, ventures into Iraq, flares of violence throughout the region, and prolonged bloody “mopping up” operations in Afghanistan makes me upset and angry. All I want is a government who will talk about a long term goal or a long term picture. I see none of that talk right now.
What is most worrisome is not just that Saddam developed and used weapons of mass destruction, but that he has shown himself willing to be bombed, to have a no-fly zone imposed on his air force, and to lose billions of dollars in sanctions, just so that he can keep inspectors from nosing around.
This is a fanatical devotion to the creation of those weapons at all cost, and not just one more weapons program that he would like to have. Anyone who is willing to suffer so much to retain such weapons intends to use them. At the very least, as a means of blackmail.
The U.S. government estimates that Saddam will also have The Bomb in 2-5 years.
This can simply not be allowed to happen. Period. It would be hugely destabilizing in the Middle East. Israel would be under constant threat of nuclear attack. And Saddam could funnel the bomb or materials to make another one to terrorist organizations for use against the United States.
Then there is the Korean missile factor. In case you haven’t figured out why North Korea is part of the ‘axis of evil’, it’s because NK is selling long-range missiles to Iran and Iraq. North Korea already has a missile that can hit the west coast of the U.S., and they will have a missile that can hit anywhere in the U.S. within five years. They intend to sell that missile to Iran, and probably Iraq.
So, if nothing is done about this ‘axis’, five years from now we’ll be fighting a war like the one we’re fighting now, and suddenly Los Angeles will vanish and Saddam will claim that five more missiles are ready to be launched against U.S. targets unless hostilities cease immediately. And then he’ll have free reign against Kuwait, the Saudis, or anyone else his twisted mind seeks to attack. Or maybe the next launch will come from Iran straight into Tel Aviv - Iran’s foreign minister is already on record as stating that a nuclear attack on Israel is not only justified, but desirable.
If these regimes aren’t toppled or reformed NOW, the world will be a far more dangerous place five to ten years from now, and the end result will be hundreds of thousands of dead people under a mushroom cloud.
Sam Stone:
I maintain that if one is dumb enough to build a nuke and threaten to use it, then we have justified an attack. I think the best option is to radically increase intelligence gathering, nuclear buy back programs, whatever inspections can be allowed, and as a final resort surgical operations against facilities involved.
I think the scenario you present is implausible. I can’t see how an unprovoked attack on Israel or the US will give any regime more power to demand an end to military action or a change in US or Israeli policy. What I can see is how such an attack will cause the threatening country or region (eastern Afghanistan) to become a giant parking lot. I think everyone in the world knows this and it is kind of the reason that nuclear deterrence has worked relatively well for the last 60 years.
I think Saddam is crazy. I think something needs to be done to contain him and to prevent him from getting WMD. I think the same about North Korea and Iran to a certain extent. But I can’t see how a military operation against him (or the heads of Iran or North Korea) will do anything to increase our long-term security. We replace the relatively remote possibility of them acquiring a functioning weaponized NBC agent of proven utility with the IMHO almost definite long term instability of close allies and drop in world support for US operations. I can’t see how this will make me, the end-user, any safer in the long term.
The real question is of course how can Bush make me safer in the future. I think the only way is through diplomacy – make the region more pro-Western and Iraq will be compelled to follow. Surround Iraq with pro-Western countries, and Iraq may follow in line. I don’t think this is such a stretch – Khatami in Iran doesn’t seem like such a bad guy and he is very popular with the Iranian people. A few more years and the revolutionaries will start to see their power erode (hopefully). I honestly think that working to win friends in the region will do far far more than bombs can ever accomplish. Call me naieve or whatever.
I don’t think ‘diplomacy’ is going to make anyone who currently hates the U.S. change their minds, unless it is of the gunboat variety.
I don’t know if you saw this, but a Gallup poll in Kuwait showed that 77% of the population has a negative attitude towards the United States, and only 9% think the war on terror in Afghanistan is justified.
This is a country the United States SAVED FROM EXTINCTION just ten years ago. And they hate you. How do you explain that? The people there are rich, they are modern, they are educated. Their very lives were saved by the United States. They owe everything they have to the United States.
If THEY hate the United States, just how are you going to change the minds of other radicals in other countries? I’m not sure it can be done.
The Arab world is still very close to its tribalist roots. Their hated of us has little to do with anything specific the U.S. has actually done, and more to do with resentment for being the little guy and hatred of outsiders.
The Palestinian situation is a smokescreen as well. Kuwaitis hate Palestinians so much that they practiced ethnic cleansing against them, forcing them all out of the country.
Explain Kuwaiti hatred, and explain how you would get those people to like us, and then maybe we can talk about the other countries in the region.
Can we agree that Iraq launched an unprovoked missile attack against Israel during the Gulf War? Are you confident that Iraq would not have used nuclear weapons, had such weapons been available?
(I realize that your last comments were addressed to Sam Stone)
If 'if’s and ‘an’s were pots and pans… Such speculation is useless at best. Do you think it really would have been that easy for you to say “I’m the President, and I say we declare war on Iraq”? The ‘Vietnam syndrome’ was still a force to be reckoned with, even if Reagan had already started chipping away at it with follies like Grenada. And how about big business’ influence in Congress? Do you think Bechtel would have allowed a source of its profits to be threatened so easily? Reagan knew whose side he was on, and it wasn’t the Kurds in Halabja.
Because the “right thing” only becomes the “right thing” when it suits US interests. Back in the eighties, the “right thing” was supporting Saddam Hussein against Iran in their eight-year war. The “right thing” was to continue chemical and biological weaponry shipments to Iraq even after it became clear Saddam used them on Iraqi civilians. The “right thing” in 1991 was to allow a popular uprising at both ends of the country to be crushed because it wasn’t a military coup, with an accompanying decrease in the potential for Saddam’s replacement to be as friendly to the US. The whole “remove Saddam because he possesses weapons of mass destruction” argument rings completely hollow to me because it’s quite clear US companies supplied him with the damn things in the first place. Not to mention the fact that the US’ own stores of such weapons far outstrips anything Iraq has or had.
So it’s morally OK to possess them, but not to use them. Am I understanding you correctly?
The thought of George W. Bush having his finger on “The Button” scares the living shit out of me, too.
I think that was the original intent of the sanctions, as well. Cripple the country economically, the thought went, and Saddam and his government will topple like a house of cards. Ten years on, he’s still in power, and the economy is a total shambles. The only people seriously affected are the Iraqi population, with a death toll thousands of times that of Halabja.
How moral and humanitarian is that?
Kuwait is a monarchy. The ministers are, as I understand, appointed personally by the emir. A legislature does exist, but has only been around since 1962. Voting requirements, which cover men only, include a minimum age of 21, a literacy test, and proof of ancestral residence before 1920. The upshot is that it’s a system where only a small minority of the population has a voice in the country’s political life. Essentially, the US, claiming to be the defender of democracy, came in to prop up a highly undemocratic regime. What’s not to hate? And it has plenty to do with US intervention in Middle Eastern affairs. That “little guy” complex you talked about is a crock.
This I really don’t understand. Do you expect that attacking countries more will make them suddenly lose their hatred for us?
What are the details of the poll? What was actually asked, and how was it interpreted by those who answered? I suspect that negative attitude is more about the perceived U.S. tendency toward self-righteous indignation and knee-jerk reactionism than it is hatred for everything American.
This, I think is my concern as well. After reading Robert Kaplan’s The Coming Anarchy, I have to question whether or not it is reasonable expect Western-style democracy to work in the third world. Of that list, throw out West Germany and Japan as a basis for legitmate comparison–they were highly industrialized nations that had for all intents and purposes evolved beyond ethnic warfare at the end of WW2, not to forget the Marshall Plan.
In order for any government to work, the citizens of the country have to be able to defend the government from dangers internal and external. I don’t know much about Iraq’s internal structure other than the current military dictatorship. If we chop of the head, will twelve feuding little general’s heads grow in its place, biting at each other until there’s only one again? I fear Afghanistan will fall into that pattern first unless we stick around to help keep the interim government stable.
I think eventually we’re going to find that the modern solution of getting in and getting out with a “clean exit strategy” (that is, without getting our hands too dirty with local politics) is frequently penny-wise and pound-foolish. Of course, seeing as how we wouldn’t be particularly fond of a powerful country intruding on our internal affairs, much of this may have to be low profile or covert in order to maintain the proper perception that we’re friends working toward a common goal rather than a master and slave. Perhaps we should prove to ourselves (and the world) that we can actually improve the situation of Afghanistan in the long run before we presume to dictate to the world that we know what we are doing.
Saddam may be insane, but he isn’t the only one, and nobody wants another Rwanda.
lucwarm:
“Unprovoked” maybe, but not irrational. Saddam had his reasons – he hoped attacking Israel would have forced an Israeli response, which would have shattered a fragile Arab-US coalition.
The fact is that nukes or other weapons of mass destruction would have been very effective in doing this. Yet, Saddam had WMD, and he had used them. Sure, there are problems getting effective distribution with chemical weapons on a Scud. But effective distribution is moot – a coffee can filled with Sarin would have sufficed to draw an Israeli response. He didn’t do it though, as he knew he would have faced massive crushing retribution by either the US or Israel or both. Deterrence at work.
Sam Stone:
I am aware of the numbers of pro-US people in Arab countries. I am aware how abyssmally low it is not just in Kuwait but in our other staunch allies like Egypt and Jordan. As Olentzero has pointed out, polling the populace of Kuwait (or any other Arab nation) will not give you any idea of how the regime is run. Remember that there is nothing close to a democracy (yes point at Iran and Yemen but really come on) in the Arab/Middle Eastern sphere.
I agree with you that some of it lies in the Arab tribalism/cabalism/nationalist-religious jingoism. But this IMHO doesn’t explain all of it. I would add those socioeconomic ills that plague most developing countries, all of the unemployment/health/social strife/population bulge coupled with perceived postcolonial injustices and an anti-Muslim/Arab foreign policy of the Western world. Whatever.
Ya know, the Japanese and the Germans hated us in November 1945. The Vietnamese hated us through most of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Reversals of public opinion came very quickly with changes in economic wellbeing. A bit of diplomatic and economic engagement can go a very long way by alleviating some of the ills plaguing developing countries – unemployment is of course a big one. Get the angry unemployed 23 year old Arab out of the coffee house where he is plotting revolution and terror attacks and into a job where he is programming for a US company and his opinions will change pretty quickly. We do a half-assed job of this in places like Jordan and Egypt. And I am an ardent Israel supporter. Countries like Jordan should be richly rewarded for promoting peace and falling in behind America in most situations. Again, it comes around to Olentzero’s points about supporting corrupt regimes, but IMHO basically all the regimes in the region are corrupt. So take your pick. Maybe a Marshall-type plan for the region would promote political reform with economic growth. It certainly can’t hurt as much as prolonged military action, and it would be of comparable costs in my estimation.
I explicitly chose Kuwait because the standard “unemployment/health/social strife/population bulge” mantra just doesn’t apply.
Forget about the other countries - trying to plug the whole Muslim world into one formula just leads to confusion. Let’s start with Kuwait. Why do they hate us? Just what have we done to Kuwait? They aren’t poor, they don’t have high unemployment, and U.S. policy towards them involved not just saving them from Saddam, but putting out the fires that Saddam caused. That was a monumental task, which saved the environment and economy of Kuwait after Kuwait was saved from an expansionist dictator.
Why do they hate us?
Oh, and here’s a link to the Gallup Poll of Islamic countries: http://www.gallup.com/poll/summits/islam.asp
But it does apply to Kuwait, Sam. The regime in Kuwait is pro-America, and falls in line pretty well I suppose. But the people of Kuwait are not part of the regime for the most part. Many of the people are imported laborers, mostly Palestinians. While they may be employed, they have no rights, they have no vested interest in the regime, and have been oppressed by it.
According to the CIA factbook only 45% of the population is actually Kuwaiti (and only 32% of the 15-64 age group!), and the only ones that can vote are males who have been naturalized for 30 years or who have lived in Kuwait before 1920 and their male descendants. They vote on a parliament with no political parties. They also have a very significant growth rate and incoming migration rate.
I’m no Kuwait expert, but I think that the only thing which separates Kuwait from the rest of the Arab world is the low unemployment rate. Everything else is the same. The average worker is no better off than to be in Kuwait than to be elsewhere, barring a few things like sanitation and communication. These are the exact people who comprise your survey and these are the exact people who we should target for economic aid.
Well, you didn’t exactly answer my question (whether you are confident that Iraq would not have used nuclear weapons had they been available), but I’m assuming from your response that you are fairly confident that Iraq would not have used such weapons against Israel.
I do not share your confidence, but there’s no point in debating the matter - it’s purely a question of how you assess the Iraqi leadership.
I guess I shouldn’t have expected for you to actually read and address my post, but did you even look at the link you provided? You can’t get the poll results from that point unless you get a paid subscription. Why don’t you take a look at:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr020305.asp
According to that data, 38% of Americans have an “unfavorable” view of Kuwait, while 42% of Kuwaitis have an “unfavorable” view of America. And they give themselves a 4% error. So basically by Gallup data we “hate” them as much as they “hate” us, though frankly I think it’s an illogical leap to assume that an unfavorable opinion of America necessarily means a person hates Americans and vice versa.
Incidentally…
Did Bush, or anyone in his administration, at any stage, outline why Iraq, North Korea and Iran would be specifically targeted?
Additionally… Bush said he would go after anyone who is, or harbours, terrorists.
Remember the anthrax outbreaks a while back? The type of anthrax used in those attacks had been weaponised. The countries who have successfully developed weaponised anthrax are:
What strikes you a little odd about that list?
Finally, I support the destruction of any government that commits mass genocide on its civilians, if for nothing else, then the name of humanity.
Sam Stone said:
Gotta cite for any of this?
Jojo: Your wish is my command:
Article about testing of the Shihab-3 missile in Iran (North Korean-designed) http://www.meib.org/articles/0008_me2.htm That article also says that Iran will have an ICBM capable of hitting the United States by 2010. Isn’t that lovely? Especially from a country that probably already has nuclear weapons, and is on record as saying it sees nothing wrong with using them to achieve its aims.
The same article says that the Shihab-4 missile will be ready by 2003-2004, and that one will be capable of hitting anything within 2000 km. Well within range of Israel and other western Allies.
Here’s a recent article that says Iran has supplied Hizbullah with up to 10,000 short-range missiles, and also mentions their long-range missile program. You’ll notice that North Korea helped in designing all of them. http://www.israelinsider.com/channels/security/articles/sec_0186.htm
Here’s a good description of North Korea’s long-range missile program, including their 12,000 km range ICBM’s: http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/opapers/op2/lrdes.htm#s3
For more information on Iran’s missiles, just go to Google and type “Shihab Missile”, and you’ll get a zillion hits.
From an article in the Washington Post:
From another article:
So the United States, which possesses one of the largest, if not the largest, nuclear arsenals in the world has gone on record as saying they see no problem with using nuclear weapons to achieve its aims. Lovely, indeed.
Tell me, Sam, what difference is there between Iran saying such a thing and the United States saying it? Is the mass murder of Iranians or Iraqis that will inevitably result from the US use of nuclear weapons justifiable by asserting that it will prevent the possible mass murder of Americans by the same means sometime in the future?
I think the US needs to take a long, hard look at the weapons it used, like depleted uranium shells in Serbia and Iraq, and Agent Orange in Vietnam, before it goes around howling about other countries that may use, or may develop, weapons of mass destruction.
The difference, Olentzero, is that the U.S. is a stable democracy with solid control over its nuclear arms and a belief in the rule of law, while Iran is a radical theocracy run by fanatics in a relatively unstable government.
Notice the U.S. is not planning on going to war against Russia, or China, or France, or other stable, responsible governments that have nuclear weapons. But Iran, Iraq, and North Korea have proven themselves to be unreliable and operating outside the confines of international law. All three deal with terrorists and supply weapons to them. In the case of Iraq and Iran, they have demonstrated quite recently their willingness to use weapons of mass destruction not just to defend themselves, but to attack others.
In case you missed it, the Iranian foreign minister recently called upon the Arab world to launch a nuclear strike against Israel as soon as it possibly could. Last time I checked, Iran was under no threat from Israel.
Saying that it’s okay for Iran to have nuclear ICBM’s because the U.S. has them is like saying that it’s okay for criminals to have guns, because the cops have them too.
OK, a few questions.
Where is my control over the US’ nuclear arsenal? If that control is solid, shouldn’t I have a part in it?
As far as I understand it, Iran also believes in the rule of law, although that law is quite different from the law the United States observes. Our erstwhile allies Kuwait and Saudi Arabia use the same laws as Iran, too. Why isn’t Bush threatening them?
It seems to boil down to whether the national government is friendly towards the United States or not. Well, boo hoo. The Soviet Union wasn’t completely friendly towards the US and it possessed nuclear weapons for 45 years. The US didn’t overtly threaten them with nuclear attack, did it? Or was that because the US and the USSR were more or less evenly matched, meaning both countries would get blown to hell if anything started?
Iran doesn’t have the capability to attack the US like the USSR could. So that makes it OK to go on public record and rattle the nuclear saber? Because the US far outstrips Iran in destructive capability?
Unreliable, eh? Let’s see… Iran had a revolution that overthrew a US puppet government in 1979, and Iraq was a reliable enough ally for the US to ship conventional and biological weapons to until around 1990, when Saddam started talking about how the US was flexing too much muscle regarding oil supplies. IOW, they told the US where to shove it. Is that what makes them unreliable? Their unwillingness to completely bow to US demands?
I refer you to my earlier post about the US’ reaction to the massacre of Kurds at Halabja as to why the US don’t have a whole lot of room to talk about who deals with terrorists.
And this justifies the US threatening to do the same to Iran?
And where exactly did I argue it was OK for either Iran or the US to possess nuclear weapons? We all know what the damn things can do, and the technology has advanced by light-years since the last two demonstration against civilian populations. The use of nuclear weapons is nothing less than mass murder. Just as the 3,000 victims in New York and Washington did not deserve to die because they had nothing to do with the offenses, real or perceived, of the US government against other countries, neither do millions of Iranians and Iraqis deserve to be annihilated because they have little or no voice in the actions their own governments take.