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Wednesday, September 25, 2002 Why are we in Iraq?Andrew Sullivan put his finger on something that's been irritating me about the war debate over the last couple of weeks. As much as Saddam richly deserves to be removed, no one has really explained -- or even debated -- the essence of our attack on him (which has already started), or its place in the so-called War on Terror.Sullivan and all the other conservative hawks are right that Saddam is a Hitler-modeled tyrant who a) has weapons of mass destruction, b) wants more of them, and c) would use them on us. It's useless and silly to argue otherwise. But we've known that for a long time. The question, as most ordinary people in the nation know and even Tom Friedman pointed out last week, is: What changed? Why are we after him now? Is it because of last September's national wound, and because George Bush has declared a War on Terror? Unless Saddam was invovled in September 11, those reasons are a little vague. Sullivan lacerates Maureen Dowd for avoiding the basic point in the war debate -- i.e., Is he a threat, or not? -- but I'm afraid Sullivan is guilty of the same sin. We know he's a threat! Come on! We've known that for years! It's not even worth arguing about. For years, though, he's been "containable," and I'm afraid our new case against Saddam is nothing but a trumped-up version of the old case, which is strong but not quite a reason for war. The real reason to go after Saddam is that he was probably involved in September 11. I think he was, and so does the Bush administration. So why don't we hear more about it? There's an eerie bubble of silence on this question that reaches even to Sullivan's lively warblogging. Laurie Mylroie published a book in 2000 about Iraq's complicty in the first World Trade Center bombing, called Study of Revenge. Astonishingly few people on the left even know about this book. Talking to a writer for The Nation last week made me realize that the whole question of Saddam's involvement in September 11 is not even on the anti-war movement's radar. This writer had never heard of the book, never even heard of the theory. The theory is: Before the 1990s, loose or unaffiliated terrorist groups were nonexistent. Terrorism was always committed by fronts for governments or political movements. Only since the Gulf War, when Saddam had every reason to fight back secretly, have "loose bands of terrorists" been doing bad things to us. And it seems that Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, had links to Iraqi intelligence. In particular, Iraq probably provided him with a false passport, belonging to a man who disappeared while Kuwait was occupied. There's continuity between the ’93 bombing and the 2001 attacks; al-Qaeda was certainly involved in both -- not to mention the embassy bombings in Africa, the Cole attack, etc. So al-Qaeda may have been operating in the 1990s as a front or at least a secret partner of Saddam's. I think that's compelling, in theory, but Laurie Mylroie's book is turgidly written and incomplete. It's not a case, on its own, for war. Still, Paul Wolfowitz blurbed the book, and Dick Cheney and Paul O'Neill both sat on the board of the company that published it (the American Enterprise Institute). The Bush Administration knows and approves of Mylroie's theory, which was written to criticize Clinton's response to terrorism. I can only assume it was a starting point for the war plan that's currently taking shape in the air over Iraq. So why isn't Saddam's complicity a larger part of the public debate? In a year since the New York attacks, has the CIA not found new links between Saddam and al-Qaeda? Debkafile seems to have its own intelligence (see the 9/24 report), whatever that's worth. (UPDATE: As I wrote this, the White House was already releasing a few tidbits.) So why wouldn't the Bush administration decimate the anti-war movement by suggesting that Saddam was involved in September 11? I can think of four reasons. 1) The CIA has proved Mylroie wrong, and Saddam was not involved. 2) The CIA has learned that other countries were also in the background -- Iran, Saudi Arabia -- and the Administration would rather not put journalists on the case, because we don't want to go to war with the entire Middle East. 3) If Laurie Mylroie is right, then September 11 was an indirect consequence of the first Gulf War, and this is embarrassing to George Bush, Sr. 4) The War on Terror is a convenient political tool. If we end it early by conquering Iraq, we can't go on using it to extend American power. I gravitate to 2) and 3), but 4) isn't out of the question. Let's look at the one big imperialistic reason for conquering Iraq -- oil -- and figure out if an oil-interested American administration would give up a valuable (but vague) reason to wage war in the Middle East. This will inflame conservative warbloggers, but let's just have a look: Iraq has almost as much oil as Saudi Arabia. Opening those reserves to Western investors would put serious pressure on the price of Saudi oil. It might take a few years, but cheap oil flowing from a reconstructed Iraq would free the U.S. from having to be friends with Saudi Arabia. It could also crumble OPEC. Could our Texan president and oil-connected Vice President (and oil-tanker-named National Security Advisor) be ignorant of these advantages? Of course not. Are they a reason to go to war? Thinking about it makes me sick. The other side of the oil question is that most of OPEC would rather not see Iraq liberated. As long as Saddam is there, the flow of Iraqi oil stays low, because Saddam has no infrastructure and suffers under our sanctions. So the Saudis and their neighbors have a money interest in keeping a tyrant in place. That's moral? No. In fact, if you reduce the whole thing to oil interests, ours are better. But I think the reason to invade Iraq is larger and simpler than oil -- I suspect Saddam declared war on us (or continued a war) when the World Trade Center collapsed. But I don't know that, and I'd like to hear it debated. Without that debate, our administration lacks the moral stature to wage a real "War on Terror" that doesn't look suspiciously like oil profiteering. And going ahead with the war in Iraq, alone, will be an act of arrogance that sets a dangerous precedent for the future American empire. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:56 PM | |
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