The Redhunter

Was the invasion of Iraq worth it? There can be no denying the difficulties we face in Iraq; the continuing insurgency and failure to create successful Iraqi security forces are but a few. The war has cost us friends abroad and made international diplomacy more difficult. It may well cost Bush a second term.

Yet for all that, I maintain that yes, the war was worth it. Not only that, but in the words of former Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey "Twenty years from now, we'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who says it wasn't worth the effort."

1) The entire "sanctions regime" with its "no fly zones" was simply untenable over the long term. The situation unstable and bound to fail sooner or later. There are several reasons for this:

The first is that memories fade. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait becomes ancient history, while the suffering of the Iraqi people because of the sanctions dominated the Arab media. Saddam and his regime seemed to prosper under the sanctions while his people suffered. Because of this resentment towards the U.S. had been building throughout the '90s. There were many who felt that it would be better to significantly ease or even end the sanctions altogether.

And indeed under the UN sanctions the Iraqi people were suffering. At the end of the 1991 Gulf War economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq, the idea being that Saddam would not be able to rebuild his military and WMD programs. So that the Iraqi people would not suffer, the UN set up a program called "Oil for Food". Iraq would be allowed to sell limited amounts of oil, with the proceeds going for necessities such as food and medicine. As it turned out, much of the money was diverted to either military uses or for building more palaces for Saddam. It is also suspected that Saddam bribed dozens of people, including across the world under what is becoming known as the Oil-for-Food scandal.

By the late '90s a campaign to end the sanctions was in full swing, the claim being that they were killing thousands of Iraqi children every year. And these claims may well have been correct. Those who opposed the invasion need to explain how they could justify the continued suffering of Iraqis under the sanctions.

The "no fly zones" in the north and south were designed to protect ethnic minorities (Kurds in the north, Shiites in the south). Saddam had massacred these people in the past and would have done so again but for our protection. This protection could be rescinded at any moment. All it would take is a new US president or Congress to say "this costs too much, we need to scale back." The lives of the Kurds and Shiites hung on the will of the "international community" to maintain these no-fly zones. Given that Saddam was 66 years old when captured, he may well have lived another twenty or more years. The idea that we could have kept this up for that amount of time is not supportable.

We now suspect that many officials were making millions through the Oil-for-Food scandal. They knew that we would discover their corruption in the aftermath of a war.

Lastly there is greed. Germany, France, and Russia did much business with the Saddam Hussein regime. They stood to make more money if the sanctions were eased or ended. A war would end their profits. During the '90s France and Russia proposed several times that we weaken the sanctions. As time went on the pressure to do so would have simply grown.

2) Weapons of Mass Destruction. The report issued by David Kay left no doubt that Saddam was trying to reconstitute many of his programs. It is likely that in the early days of the invasion he moved his weapons to Syria, and that this went undetected because the U.S. 4th Infantry Division was was not able to move in from the north and cut off a northern escape route.

And let us be clear: It wasn't just that the US and UK alleged that Iraq had WMD. Every intelligence service on the planet thought Iraq had the stuff. The difference is that most other countries thought that he didn't have enough to be a threat, and/or the threat could be contained by the "sanctions regime".

Regardless of the status of his WMD programs before the invasion, does anyone doubt that Saddam would have acquired such weapons if he could have? The idea that inspections could have forever ensured that he would not have been able to acquire such weapons is untenable and a risk that responsible people cannot take.

3) Far from "rushing to war", we let a situation simmer for twelve years before deciding to invade. A case can be made that we should have gone on to Baghdad in 1991 in the aftermath of the Gulf War. Saddam had the next twelve years to come into compliance with UN Security Council resolutions. Rather than comply, he spent this time subverting the will of the UN. Finally, in 2003, the Bush administration decided to bring matters to a head and resolve the situation one way or another. So let's not pretend that all of a sudden, out of the blue, George Bush up and decided that Iraq was a problem. Saddam had more than enough time to decide whether he was going to comply with the Security Council resolutions. Bush simply decided that in the aftermath of 9-11 the then-current situation was intolerable.

Security Council resolution 1441 gave Saddam one last chance to comply with previous UN resolutions. Under this resolution inspectors did not need to prove that Saddam was rearming. Rather, he had to prove that he had destroyed the weapons that he'd admitted to having in 1991. Noone seriously disputed that Iraq was in violation. The only question was what to do about it.

In early 2003 we had good reason to believe that Iraq did in fact have stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.

4) Does anyone doubt that given half a chance Saddam would have built chemical, biological or nuclear weapons? If the sanctions had been lifted the first thing he would have done would have reconstituted his programs, with the priority being to bo obtain nuclear weapons. Once he had atomic or even hydrogen weapons an invasion would be out of the question.

5) Iraq had a history of successfully deceiving inspectors. During the initial inspections in the aftermath of the Gulf War it was revealed that Iraq was much closer to having a nuclear bomb than anyone had suspected. Had he not made the mistake of invading Kuwait, he likely would have had a usable weapon in 1992 or 1993. Hans Blix himself was forced to admit that he had been deceived. Given this, would it really have been responsible for our government to have assumed anything but that Saddam had once again been able to stymie instep?

6) Inspections could not possibly have succeeded. Those whose battle cry was "let the inspectors do their job" don't know what they're talking about. The job of inspectors is not to "ferret out" hidden programs. Those who think that inspections are like police searches do not understand the concept of inspections or what they are designed to do.

Inspections are designed to verify. They can only be successful when both sides want to make them work. They would have been successful in Iraq if Saddam had agreed to cooperate.

7) Saddam was 66 years old when captured. He may have lived another twenty years. His sons were under 40 years of age. This regime may well have remained in power for another 40 years. It is unbelievable that we could have kept him contained for this amount of time.

8) In fact the Iraqi people were suffering under the sanctions, because Saddam was stealing the Oil for Food program money and using it to build more palaces. In a way the anti-sanctions protesters were right, Iraqi babies were dying due to the sanctions. But the solution was not to lift the sanctions but end the regime.

9) Libya renounced it's WMD program and submitted to complete and verifiable inspections. Muammar Gaddafi saw what happened to Iraq when Saddam Hussein challenged the U.S. and did not want that fate to befall his own country. Libya is even more vulnerable to invasion, a fact that no doubt weighted on Gaddafi's mind. While the negotiations with his regime over WMD had started long before George W Bush came into office, it was the invasion of Iraq that prompted Gaddafi to act.

10) Links to terrorism. Yes, Saddam did have links to terrorist groups. And yes, despite some of the very bad reporting, the 9/11 commission found that Iraq and Al Qaeda did maintain contacts. Although they may not have had a formal relationship, they may well have coordinated efforts to some extent. We have recently learned from Russia that Saddam was planning attacks on U.S. soil.

For example, Saddam paid the families of suicide bombers in the West bank up to $25,000 as "compensation" for the loss of the family member. While terrorism He harbored Abu Nidal, a notorious Palestinian terrorist.

Far from being a "diversion" to the War on Terror, the invasion or Iraq was an important battle in the War on Terror.

12) Saddam tried to kill a former president of the United States, George G H Bush. In my book this alone qualifies him for elimination.

12) A successful democracy in Iraq will prompt other countries in the region to liberalize. Once people see that dictatorship is not necessary, they will put pressure on their governments to reform. Iran and Saudi Arabia are the two countries most in need of liberalize.

13) If there had been no invasion, the message would be that UN sanctions are empty words. Saddam had already violated over a dozen of them. The on-again off-again bombing campaigns were not working. Security Council resolution 1441 gave him a last chance. By almost all accounts he violated it, too. To have continued with the sanctions and inspections would have let dictators around the world know that such resolutions were not to be taken seriously.

14) No we didn't invade to steal their oil. The best refutation of this that I've seen are the June 19 and 20 postings by Kat-Missouri. Yes oil is a factor. Saddam invaded Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990 to steal their oil. Certainly oil played no little part in our decision to drive him out of that Kuwait. Had all this this occurred among poor African nations it would have been relegated to the back pages the papers. But what's so wrong with defending vital natural resources?

15) We can walk and chew gum at the same time. There are those who maintain that we should have concentrated on "more important" threats like North Korea or Iran. But as a threoretical one can always claim that there are "more important" threats. Surely with our resources we can handle more than one international crisis at a time.

It is also interesting that the same people who say "well why don't we invade North Korea/Iran?" are often the same ones who call Bush stupid. Apparently it never occurred to them that different threats are met with different strategies.

Lastly, as Andrew Sullivan put it: "Shouldn't we be threatening North Korea with war rather than Iraq, they ask? Er, no. The reason we're about to go to war with Saddam is precisely to avoid the possibility of Saddam becoming Kim Jong Il. Once Saddam gets a nuke for sure, we're completely screwed."

16) Finally, let's not forget that many things are going right in Iraq. Chrenkoff, Defend America and the CPA websites document the progress that has been made. And al Qaeda may well have turned the Iraqi people against them. |