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August 23, 2002/Elul 15 5762, Vol. 54, No. 49
Opposing voices question war with Iraq
DAVID TWERSKY
New Jersey Jewish News
WHIPPANY, N.J. - In a recent story, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tells United States Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.) that Iraq's nuclear weapons program is being funded by Libya and that the two countries are sharing nuclear weapons technology.
Like Germany in the 1930s, Saddam Hussein's Iraq is getting around the sanctions imposed upon it, rearming and preparing for a reckoning with the nation's "enemies."
As war talk intensifies and plans leak, those who are anti-war are coming out of the closet. Given Saddam's depravity, they're not so much "anti" as "Let's think about this before we rush to war without our NATO and Arab partners at our side."
The president has the least support among liberals like Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker, everyone at The New York Review of Books, the dominant chorus at Foreign Affairs quarterly, and The Washington Post and The New York Times editorial and op-ed pages.
The latest reports include stories that the Reagan administration didn't flinch from supporting Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war - even after it knew he was using chemical gas against Iranian troops. Translation: We're as bad as Saddam, or at least implicated in his ruthlessness, so let's get off our high horse and stop painting a picture of "good" (us) vs. "the axis of evil" (them).
Democrats - the majority of whom opposed the use of force 11 years ago - have moved over to "maybe yes, maybe no" fence-sitting. Convince us, they tell the White House.
More of a surprise were the oppositionist voices from within the president's own party. House Majority Leader Dick Armey said we must not "try to act against Saddam Hussein, as obnoxious as he is, without proper provocation."
Joining Armey against a go-it-alone strategy was Brent Scowcroft, who served Bush's father as national security adviser during the last Persian Gulf war.
Now comes Thomas Fried-man's Aug. 17 column in The New York Times bemoaning the lack of Bush "bumper stickers justifying war with Iraq."
Last time out, the previous Bush administration had an even harder time selling its war against Saddam. And the case should have been a slam dunk back then. Iraq had invaded another country, and all its neighbors were trembling with fright.
Does that mean the naysayers have it? Not at all.
It is with some relief then that we find some voices articulating a reasoned rationale for regime-change in Iraq.
Writing in The Washington Post on Aug. 14, Atlantic Mon-thly editor Michael Kelly argues that there is more than enough justification for America to wage war against Iraq.
"The evidence linking Iraqi state support directly to Al Qaida and the attack of Sept. 11 is not conclusive but strong, in the form of a reported meeting in April 2001 between Sept. 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi diplomat in the Czech Republic. ... Moreover, Hussein's regime persists in an aggressive campaign to acquire weapons of mass destruction."
The last charge, "Iraq's persistence in its weapons program," Kelly argues, is sufficient "provocation," because it constitutes a "clear and massive" violation of the 1991 cease-fire.
We think the problem isn't marketing; it's how we think about power politics and American interests. The post-Sept. 11 world is not only about Islamist terrorism still trying to overthrow the decrepit regimes ruling most of the Arab/Islamic world. It is further complicated by the approaching acquisition by at least two countries of nuclear weapons and missile systems capable of delivering nuclear, biological, and chemical warheads over long distances.
So the question is: What will the world look like once Saddam's Iraq and Islamist revolutionary Iran have nuclear weapons?
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