Friday, Sep 5, 2008
Yet something profound has happened in the last decade of war. Nothing really went as predicted by most who were doing the predicting: The costs to the American public in 1991 weren't bank-breaking, the environment survived, chemical and biological weapons weren't used, no significant terrorist attacks occurred, Israel was not dragged in, there were not tens of thousands of coalition body bags. Those who stated that the value of air power was exaggerated and that the war would drag on Vietnam style were proven wrong. High-tech weapons worked, and the U.S. military performed brilliantly. Air power won in a magical display. The hyper-professionalism of the U.S. military was repeated again in Yugoslavia and in Afghanistan.
Yet despite the U.S. military's performance, Saddam Hussein also won by losing. He could say to himself and to the Arab world that he survived the best that the entire world could throw at him. We may have followed a brilliant choreography, accumulating impressive statistics, flying invisible airplanes, but we completely failed to understand our opponent. We ended up with an incomplete victory that left U.S. forces cemented into the Saudi desert, where radicals and fundamentalists like bin Laden were spawned because we were "defiling" the holy places. We maintained a sanctions regime for more than a decade, doing no perceptible harm to Saddam Hussein or his regime, and allowing the evil ones the opportunity to manipulate their isolation to kill the most vulnerable of Iraqi society in order to make a point. We have been bombing the country under the mini-wars of 1993, 1996, and Desert Fox in 1998.
There was, and is, some fiendish Iraqi prestige in being the victim and in defeat by a form of warfare that they portray as both distant and inhumane. Yours is a society that cannot accept 10,000 casualties, Saddam bragged before the Gulf War, baiting the United States to fight the Iraqi version of some ancient grotesque grinding land battle. Saddam was right. And it's not a bad thing. But I think we are also a society that really can't stomach preemption. The very reason that the World Trade Center was so outrageous, like Pearl Harbor, is that it is just not the American way.
The Bush administration in the past year thought it had a free ride on Iraq after Sept. 11 and it has learned a lesson about its own citizenry and this country anew. I think that despite the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, this administration now realizes that they cannot just act because they want to.
Of course we need to win in the immediate sense and we need to win in the long term. Would an Iraq war be complicated in terms of our allies and coalition partners? Sure. Is there a possibility of a quagmire once we defeat Iraq on the battlefield? There is. Will there be loss of life: American lives, Iraq civilian lives, and Iraqi military lives in what will transpire? There will be. Could it be some spark for a broader war in the Arab world or even for World War III? It could be.
Boy, if you try to cover all of the bases of what could happen, and only take action when we can control the outcome, it seems like there would never be action. The wonk in me says that smart people in uniform and in the intelligence community are thinking through these issues, that they are doing the best that they can do to cover all of the possibilities, to try to create the best outcome. But the American in me also says that they have failed so many times in recent memory and have so many strikes against them that I don't trust them.
And here's where I come back to Rumsfeld and his arrogance and that of the administration: I'm sure that there are brilliant insiders with great insights and ideas. I am not in the least bit confident that they are being heard, any more than I think the administration hears the debate in the news media or hears Al Gore or cares about the roots of terrorism or has a vision or a plan to not just eradicate the current generation of terrorists, but also to create the conditions under which future generations will have reasons not to pursue this line of business.
As a "normal" American, an American who likes to win, who is as competitive as the next guy, as an American who likes to believe that we are on a global mission and have a superior system of government and life, what I think viscerally is that we should kick their butts. But the bottom line is we should not go to war merely because the President or Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld says we should. Nor should we go to war with Iraq merely because the regime is evil and they are developing weapons of mass destruction. Nor should we even go to war with Iraq because Baghdad is connected to bin Laden.
Yet to put my two hats back on --policy wonk and American -- let me say that I also don't want to have my life or the lives of my children in the hands of a bunch of flunkies in security guard uniforms at airports. I don't trust them one bit and I believe that terrorists will always seek to go after our weakest points, not the places in our defenses that we've beefed up. I also don't trust my government. I don't blindly believe that they know what is best. I won't pledge allegiance like some Stepford citizen. I firmly believe that the public doesn't know enough and doesn't pay enough attention to war because the military has become so good at what it does that the price of using it is virtually free for most Americans.
As a patriot, as a supporter of the military, as an air power advocate, as a human rights professional, I believe that the war against terrorism is overstated. It is not the core United States national security interest today. If we hope to secure our pride and economy, and our way of life, if we hope for physical security that comes not merely in projecting power but also in making those around us feel secure in their lives, we have a lot of other work to do in the world, work that is pushed aside because we are at war. After Sept. 11, it should be clear that some people are just plain evil. Some hate us for good reason. Some are just confused. Most have hopeless lives and think rightly or wrongly that it is our fault. But we are not doing very well at convincing them or the world that we are good friends and good neighbors and that we are not the root of the evil in their lives.
What makes me uncomfortable about a war with Iraq on the one hand is war, an eye for an eye; it is the oldest story that there is. I worry that we are taunting tomorrow's warrior to find the next World Trade Center equivalent because of our arrogance, because of our military superiority, because of our seeming indifference to the views of others. On the other hand, what makes me uncomfortable specifically about Iraq is the question: Why now? What compelling evidence is there that we must take action now, that Saddam is an immediate threat, that he is not adequately stuck in a box? Why isn't the policy of "containment until regime change" adequate enough as a way of avoiding war? If there is evidence, we certainly haven't seen it.
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