Why Iraq was inevitable.
Abrahamson, James L.
In this essay, Dr. Arthur Herman, author of The Idea of Decline in
Western History, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, and Gandhi and
Churchill: Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age,
assesses the invasion of Iraq from a broad perspective, one informed by
closer attention to the Clinton administration's policies, a better
understanding of the Bush administration's decisions, and
information gained from those who interrogated Saddam Hussein, studied
documents seized after his fall, or helped make U.S. policy. All that
considered, Herman argues that, "the decision to go to war takes on
a very different character. The story that emerges is of a choice not
only carefully weighed and deliberately arrived at but, in the
circumstances, the one moral choice that any American President could
make."
In his second term, President Clinton recognized that attempts to
contain Iraq had begun to collapse, and in the fall of 1998 a nearly
unanimous Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act calling for Saddam
Hussein's overthrow. Six weeks later the president attempted to do
so with a four-day bombing attack. "You allow someone like Saddam
Hussein," he warned Americans, "to get nuclear weapons,
ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons. How many
people is he going to kill with such weapons? ... We are not going to
allow him to succeed." [Herman's emphasis] With the UN
Security Council split and invasion seemingly the only--but
unattractive--option, Clinton turned aside to give his attention to an
Arab-Israeli settlement.
When George W. Bush took office in January 2001, the United States had long been effectively at war with Saddam Hussein for his failure to
honor the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease fire, impeding UN arms
inspectors, corrupting the UN sanctions regime, and making almost daily
efforts to bring down British and American planes patrolling Iraq's
no-fly zones in order to prevent further murder of Iraqi Kurds and
Shiite Muslims. With his administration divided over Iraq policy, the
president elected to do nothing--until September 11 convinced him that
he must not only respond to present dangers like Afghanistan but also
respond to future threats. He put Iraq at the top of his list. Though
American intelligence erred in claiming Iraq had stockpiles of weapons
of mass destruction (WMD), we now know that that Saddam Hussein had
encouraged that mistaken belief, prepared to resume their production
when UN sanctions weakened, and had growing ties to terrorist
organizations, to include al Qaeda.
Had Bush, like Clinton, ignored bipartisan support and turned away
from anticipatory self-defense, Saddam Hussein could have gone on
murdering Iraqis, resumed building WMD as he told FBI interrogators he
intended, and reestablished his dominance of the Middle East. He would
have demonstrated that President Bush as well as the UN would only
threaten but lacked the will to act. In response the American people
might have voted him out of office in 2004, replacing him with Al Gore,
an enthusiastic supporter of the Iraq Liberation Act, or John Kerry, who
in 1998 told a former UN arms inspector that the time had come to use
force. Having defined his job as "to secure America," Bush had
little choice but to invade Iraq, rebuild it, and begin the effort to
reform a Middle East too long supportive of violent political Islam.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/special-preview-br--why-iraq-was-inevitable-11456
By Arthur Herman
Reviewed by James L. Abrahamson, contributing editor