45 Questions and Answers Regarding
Intervention in General,
9-11 and Afghanistan One Year Later,
and Iraq on the Verge of War
 
By Stephen R. Shalom
and Michael Albert

 

In trying to raise consciousness and inspire activist resistance regarding the currently threatened invasion of Iraq and the on‑going "War on Terrorism," critics of these repeatedly confront variations on a relatively few themes. The following essay tries to distill these themes into a series of questions and answers. We include 10 questions and answers on intervention in general as part A, 17 questions and answers on 9-11 and Afghanistan as Part B, and 18 questions and answers on Iraq as Part C. We invite and welcome reproduction in any form true to the original intent, including printing or otherwise reproducing only part A, B, or C, or any combination of the Parts or questions and answers desired.

 

 

 

Part A. Intervention In General

 

 

A1. Do anti-war critics automatically and reflexively reject any U.S. use of force?

 

Pacifists will of course reject any use of military force. Many anti-war critics are not pacifists, however. Do they automatically and reflexively reject any U.S. use of force?

 

Consider a similar question: Should we automatically reject any Russian, Iranian, or Indonesian use of force? No doubt there are hypothetical situations one can construct where any sensible person would endorse an invasion of some other country by Russia, Iran, or Indonesia. But surely such situations would be extremely rare, and anyone making a case for such an intervention would bear a very strong burden of proof to demonstrate that in the particular case all the general reasons to be skeptical of Moscow, Teheran, or Jakarta should be set aside. And the burden of proof would be even more difficult to meet if the question were rephrased to: "Should we automatically reject any Russian, Iranian, or Indonesian use of force where that use of force is illegal under international law, or unilateral, or opposed by most neighboring countries who are the intervention's supposed beneficiaries?" Even here, nothing should be ruled out automatically, but it would make sense to have an exceedingly strong presumption against any such intervention and to insist that its advocates make an incredibly convincing case.

 

Of course, one might reply that the United States cannot be compared to these other countries; the U.S., after all, is one of the world's most advanced democracies. One notes, however, that many other nations, even more democratic than the United States, such as Sweden, don't endorse unilateral U.S. military actions. More generally, being a democracy at home doesn't necessarily prevent being oppressive abroad. Britain when it was the world's dominant power and the United States since World War II have both combined a relatively high level of internal democracy with a violent imperial foreign policy.

 

 

A2. Are you saying it's impossible that United States officials could ever act in the world out of decent motives?

 

It's not a question of what hypothetical United States officials might do in the future. It's a question of what these United States officials will do now. People can change. And governments can change. And whole systems that determine the behavior of both can change. But that's very different from saying that the same United States officials, propelled by the same institutional relations, carrying out or supporting atrocities in one part of the world are likely to be motivated by humanitarianism in some other part of the world at the exact same time.

 

Thus, if one asks what the Clinton administration's motives were in Kosovo, the claim that it was driven by concern for the rights and self‑determination of ethnic minorities is hardly credible given that the same Clinton administration was backing Turkey's much worse oppression of its Kurdish minority. The point is not (just) that U.S. concern, when convenient, for some victims of atrocities or repression (Kosovar Albanians, Afghan women, Iraqis) is utterly hypocritical, but that as a practical matter it is extremely unrealistic to expect those who turn a blind eye to, and even participate in, serious human rights violations in various places around the world to act for moral reasons to prevent human rights violations elsewhere.

 

The worst brute in the world might undergo a conversion experience. But it would surely be foolish to count on humanitarianism from a brute in the midst of a bloody rampage. Is there any reason at all to believe that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Company have undergone conversion experiences? Is there any reason to believe that their pre 9-11 commitment to greed and domination or opposition to women's rights, global justice, and the rule of law has diminished? If anything, their behavior since 9-11 in all these realms suggests that their commitment has become bolder and stronger.

 

 

A3. Where rightwing supporters of U.S. intervention claim that the United States seeks nothing but justice and humanitarianism in the world, left supporters of intervention in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Kosovo acknowledge the ugly motives of U.S. policymakers. But, they ask, isn't it possible that people or countries with bad motives might take actions that will have good results, and should we support such actions?

 

Clearly the consequences of an action are not determined by the intent of the actor. A consequence of Washington's arming and training Osama bin Laden and other fundamentalists in Afghanistan in the 1980s was 9-11, but surely that wasn't the intent of U.S. policymakers. A consequence of Japan’s attacking Pearl Harbor was that Western colonialism is Asia was fatally wounded, leading ultimately to freedom for millions of people – but few left interventionists applaud the Japanese attack. One benefits from food bought to feed one's family, even if it is purchased from a merchant whose only intent is to make a tidy profit. But the point is not whether actions taken for bad motives can ever have good results. Rather, the point is that an actor's motives tell us much about how the actor is likely to behave, and therefore help us foresee and judge likely outcomes.

 

A United States going to war for humanitarian purposes would conduct that war very differently from a United States waging war for immoral reasons. If the U.S. were acting out of humanitarian concerns, it would not have targeted Iraq's civilian infrastructure in 1991, or undertaken bombing in Kosovo in 1999 that predictably made the situation worse for Kosovar Albanians, much less risked mass starvation in Afghanistan by bombing that country. Nor would it have explicitly and blatantly refused to explore diplomatic solutions to each of these crises.

 

Pro‑war leftists sometimes write as if by their endorsing a war, their motives will determine the conduct of the war, in place of the motives of the U.S. government determining the conduct. But in the real world, when Washington (or any other state) goes to war, its motives, not those of pro‑war leftists, prevail. Sometimes we might conclude that even with the horrible ways a war will be fought, it is still worth fighting. Thus, we might conclude it was worth supporting World War II to defeat the Axis powers despite the immoral U.S. terror bombing of Dresden, the nuclear assaults on Japan, the crushing of popular resistance forces throughout Europe, and the restoration of colonial and rightwing regimes in the third world. But one can't back a Bush war without acknowledging that the war will be fought the way Bush administration motives and morals dictate (unless, of course, opposition beats back Bush’s agenda). This doesn’t mean that Bush knows what the results of a war will be – wars are inherently unpredictable and hence should be undertaken only after meeting a very high burden of proof, especially when, as here, we know that the motives of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld will be operative.

 

 

A4. Rather than saying that past U.S. crimes with respect to Iraq (or anywhere else) make U.S. action in Iraq hypocritical and inappropriate, couldn't we say that these U.S. crimes give the U.S. a special obligation to take action?

 

The United States government does bear a special moral burden in countries where it has caused great human suffering. But that doesn't mean we should ask for intervention from a U.S. government that does not recognizes any moral debt, but is instead still intent on pursuing the same immoral agenda that gave rise to that debt in the first place.

 

The Iraqi government surely owes a special moral debt to the people of Kuwait. Should we therefore urge Saddam Hussein to invade Kuwait to end a corrupt and undemocratic monarchy?

 

If there were fundamental social change in the United States bringing to office a new government committed to offering reparations for all the international misdeeds carried out by previous U.S. governments, then one might reasonably argue that some U.S. military action might set things right in some part of the world (though even in this case, there might still be many reasons to reject intervention). But when the Bush administration -- whose only criticism of past U.S. policy is that it has been insufficiently ruthless -- goes to war, it is obfuscation to treat this as reparations.

 

 

A5. Aren't anti-war people being hypocritical in condemning the U.S. for acting outside the strictures of the UN while at the same time condemning the 1991 Gulf War (which had Security Council authorization) or an Iraq war, even if the Security Council should come to back it?

 

Not at all.

 

If Bush announced that he was unilaterally abolishing all taxes on the rich, we would certainly denounce his illegal action -- legally, only Congress has such authority -- but that doesn't mean we therefore have to accept everything Congress does. If Congress went along with Bush in abolishing taxes on the rich then the action would no longer be illegal, but it would still be contemptible. To condemn illegal actions for being illegal doesn't preclude condemning legal actions for being contemptible.

 

Moreover, when an action is formally legal only because members of Congress or the UN Security Council have been bribed or coerced, withholding approval is that much more warranted. Washington used such bribery and coercion to get support for the 1991 Gulf War, and it is trying the same thing now (offering, for example, France and Russia a stake in Iraq's future oil industry only if they go along with the U.S. war).

 

Even a freely given Security Council authorization is problematic. The Security Council, after all, is an extremely undemocratic body, where certain influential players are given veto power. The Security Council puts some mild check on the prerogatives of powerful states, and therefore it can sometimes play a useful role, and deserves a degree of attention and support. But given its undemocratic nature and its susceptibility to improper influence, its decisions certainly shouldn't be above criticism.

 

 

A6. How can anti-war critics seriously equate the intentional slaughter of innocents (whether in the World Trade Center or in a Tel Aviv bus) with the unintentional and regretted killing of civilians by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or by Israeli forces in the Occupied Territories? Surely, U.S. officials don't seek out Afghan wedding ceremonies to bomb, nor do they cheer upon learning of such tragic errors.

 

The law distinguishes between premeditated murder and accidental killing. But, as Arnold Chien has noted, quoting law professor Michael Tonry,

 

"An action taken with a purpose to kill is no more culpable than an action taken with some other purpose in mind but with knowledge that a death will probably result. Blowing up an airplane to kill a passenger is equivalent to blowing up an airplane to destroy a fake painting and thereby to defraud an insurance company, knowing that the passengers will be killed. Both are murder."

 

And both are murder even if the bomber regretted the fact that innocent passengers had to die in the second example. Nor would the bomber be absolved if he expressed regret for the slaughtered passengers and then did the same thing again and again. Or say the bomber doesn't know that passengers will be killed -- the bomb may go off in the luggage hold before the passengers board -- but is indifferent to the passengers' fate. Again, it is morally reprehensible.

 

Admittedly the U.S. military could have killed more Afghan civilians if it wanted to. But that doesn't refute the claim that Washington showed a morally unacceptable disregard for the lives of Afghans. Consider some analogies. Suppose al Qaeda could have targeted a sports stadium to kill more people than in the World Trade Center, but chose the WTC for its symbolic value. Would we say that this makes the WTC attack not terrorism? Suppose a Palestinian bombed a passenger bus to kill an Israeli soldier riding on the bus, but in the process killed dozens of civilians. Isn't this terrorism?

 

Is it worse to kill a person eagerly than out of indifference? Perhaps, but that's not the relevant comparison raised by the Afghan war. Despite warnings from many food aid organizations that the U.S. bombing put hundreds of thousands or millions of Afghan civilians at increased risk of starvation, the United States continued with the bombing. So the question becomes is it worse to kill 3,000 people eagerly or to risk the lives of an immensely greater number of people out of indifference?

 

 

A7. Are you setting a standard for a just war that could never be met, that would make any war impermissible?

 

No. Our criteria for a just war are no different from those of conventional just war theory which demands that any war meet the criteria of necessity and proportionality.

 

The necessity criterion asks whether there is an alternative to war. In Afghanistan, we do not believe that alternatives were actively pursued, and advocates of war have been distinctly silent as to why various less violent options should have been rejected out of hand – such as the suggestion by the Taliban that bin Laden could be turned over to a third country, or the plea by Abdul Haq, a leading anti-Taliban Afghan figure, to stop the bombing so that the Taliban could be defeated from within with less suffering.

 

The proportionality criterion does not bar all risk to civilians. (After all, even when you build a hospital, some innocent lives are endangered.) But it does demand, among other things, that the potential harm to civilians be weighed against potential benefits of the war. There is no automatic cut-off number here, but if what makes September 11 stand out as a particularly heinous crime is the huge human toll; then a comparable toll ought to count as huge when considering Afghan lives as well. And when the numbers of Afghans put at risk is massively greater than the World Trade Center toll, the proportionality criterion is clearly violated.

 

One other principle is relevant to just war theory, the principle of universality, which says that: whatever criteria we think justify a war on the part of one country justify as well wars by other countries in the same situation. So if the United States is justified in bombing Afghanistan for providing sanctuary to terrorists, then other countries have comparable rights. Thus, Nicaragua or Cuba, which have been victimized by terrorism planned and supported by Washington, would be justified in bombing the United States. Militarily, of course, such a response would make no sense, but in terms of justice it is no more unwarranted than the U.S. action in Afghanistan.

 

 

A8. Don't extreme circumstances -- such as the need to stop genocide, as in Kosovo in 1999 -- require that we drop our objections to U.S. intervention?

 

Extreme circumstances may call for revising all sorts of general rules. But one needs to make sure that the circumstances are being accurately described, and are not just propaganda claims masking other motives and interests.

 

In Kosovo, before the withdrawal of the observers and the beginning of NATO bombing, there were serious human rights abuses on the part of Serbian security forces, but 2,000 deaths on both sides amid fighting over the previous year does not come close to the level of genocide, and violations of previous agreements were committed by both sides, according to the observers. The large scale ethnic cleansing, the driving of Kosovar Albanians out of the country, was precipitated by the bombing, not thwarted by it.

 

In Afghanistan, Taliban rule was horrendous. But before 9-11, few of those who later endorsed Bush's war were calling for the United States to go in and overthrow the government. Many called for strong international sanctions against the Taliban regime, but not American bombers. This indicates that the situation was not so extreme as to call for overruling the usual prohibition against foreign military intervention.

 

 

A9. Adam Shatz quotes Don Guttenplan saying that for a small but vocal section of American radicals, "there is only one imperialism, and if it isn't American it's not imperialism." Is this your view?

 

Not at all. During the Cold War, Soviet imperialism in Eastern Europe or Afghanistan was as much a reality as U.S. imperialism in Latin America or Vietnam. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States is far and away the world's most powerful nation and, therefore, its imperialism is far more dangerous than that of lesser powers. But lesser powers can still be imperialist and we condemn all these imperialisms: among them Iraq (in Iran and Kuwait), Israel (in Lebanon and the Occupied Palestinian Territories), Serbia (in Bosnia), Russia (in Chechnya), and China (in Tibet). Opposing U.S. imperialism doesn't mean one has to be blind to the imperialism of others. But war supporters ought to be careful that their opposition to Iraqi or Serbian imperialism doesn't lead them to ignore U.S. imperialism.

 

 

A10. Is the “war on terrorism” a just undertaking ‑‑ a just war, warranting just interventions?

 

So far the "war on terrorism" has been a massacre, as in Afghanistan and as proposed for Iraq, rather than a fight with two armed combatants battling one another. In that sense the label "war" is actually a euphemism when applied to endeavors like the "Gulf War," the "war in Yugoslavia," the "war in Afghanistan," or the currently proposed "war on Iraq," in which cases the U.S. military wipes out targets while taking virtually zero casualties.

 

Alternatively, "the war on terrorism" has been a campaign, not a violent struggle, aiming to reduce civil liberties, expand arms trade and production, and legitimate assaults on any targets deemed unfriendly. In this regard it is like the earlier Cold War. The idea is to name an enemy, generate fear of it, and then employ that fear and associated anger to justify all kinds of government actions that would otherwise be rejected -- arms deals, taxes, repressive laws, etc.

 

The massacres and policy alterations that together constitute the "war on terrorism" haven't been about reducing terrorism, by and large. First, the largest number of civilians killed since 9-11 have been Afghans and Iraqis (the latter, victims of U.S.-backed sanctions). Reducing a phenomenon rarely includes overtly expanding it. Second, the actions undertaken, even in the view of the FBI, are not only unlikely to reduce even that portion of terrorism that is directed at the United States. They are likely, instead, to fuel the resentment and grievances that lead to such attacks.

 

So rather than a just war, the "war on terrorism" is a means of rationalizing illegitimate interventions abroad and repressive and predatory policies at home, without reducing terrorism.

 

 

 

Part B.     9-11 and Afghanistan One Year Later

 

 

B1. Do and did anti-war critics care about the tragedy of 9-11?

 

Every outward manifestation that one can use to judge, says the answer is yes. Speeches, talks, interviews, and essays all evince horror at the events, pain for those who suffered, fear that it might recur and take more innocent lives. But what characterizes anti-war critics such as ourselves and those with views like ours is that our solidarity, sympathy, pain, and anger is not limited to a single day's events or to a single nation's tragedy. Iraq has lost civilians for a decade to U.S. policies. The sum total is equivalent to at least a hundred days like 9‑11 in a country with about one seventh the population of the U.S. So yes, anti-war activists care about the tragedy and also the injustice of the attacks on 9‑11, but we also care about the tragedy and injustice of attacks and more general policies of our own government against civilians elsewhere.

 

 

B2. Do anti-war critics care about the safety of the American people, beyond the level of rhetoric?

 

Anti-war critics, to our knowledge, care about the well being and fulfillment of all people ‑‑ which certainly includes people's safety. So, if 3,000 Americans die in an assault, and if there are ways to make any such future assault less likely, or less effective, and those ways don't involve grave sacrifices of freedom or other untenable costs, surely anti-war critics would support them.

 

By the same token, however, roughly 50,000 people a year die in the U.S. in industrial accidents and due to diseases produced by work in unsafe workplaces. Anti-war critics tend to be horrified by these deaths too, and to feel that any actions that can reduce these horrible results should also be undertaken, unless they have unjust and dangerous effects that outweigh the benefits.

So one might reasonably ask, not only about anti‑war activists, but also about the newsmakers and political and corporate elites, are they really concerned about the lives of innocent Americans, as they claim, or are they only exploiting fear and anger at 9‑11 to advance agendas they hold for other reasons?

 

If the anti-war movement had the power to enact legislation to reduce U.S. civilian deaths, they would no doubt act with haste in numerous ways. First and most important would be pushing through health and safety legislation, health care legislation, anti-poverty legislation, and so on. Anyone who cares about innocent American civilians dying would do that. Second, regarding death by terrorism, these activists would make changes in U.S. policy that would both make it more just and humane, and, at the same time, reduce the anger and even hatred at the U.S. that current policies induce around the world. This would reduce the pressures that produce terrorism. Third, they would withdraw U.S. participation in and support for terrorism, thereby greatly reducing its prevalence. And, fourth, they would certainly also make changes in defense procedures and information dispersal aimed at making terrorist acts harder to undertake. In contrast, the government and its supporters ignore the first three means of reducing future American fatalities -- because those methods are contrary to their greater interests in profit and power. They do pursue the fourth option, clumsily, and without much promise of success, and often counter-productively, again, because that's the mode of implementation that does most good for their top priority ‑‑ their power and wealth.

 

For example, when the Bush administration proclaimed war in Afghanistan as its prime approach to protecting Americans, anti-war critics argued that this approach would be of little value and might even drive more people to terrorism. And sure enough, the New York Times reported on June 16, 2002, based on conversations with senior government officials: "Classified investigations of the Qaeda threat now under way at the FBI and CIA have concluded that the war in Afghanistan failed to diminish the threat to the United States, the officials said. Instead, the war may have complicated counterterrorism efforts by dispersing potential attackers across a wider geographic area." Where careful police work can be effective against al Qaeda-type threats, as it has been in Germany, Spain, and elsewhere, bombing has had negligible positive benefit, as might be expected given that the terrorists did most of their planning not in Kabul or Kandahar but in Hamburg, Germany, and Paterson, New Jersey.

 

Far from being bizarre, therefore, the anti-war view was in fact similar to that of hardheaded mainstream realist international relations specialists. Thus Stephen Walt has noted "Military power is not necessary to wiping out Al Qaeda. It's a crude instrument, and it almost always has effects you can't anticipate. We're seeing that now. We didn't get Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. We're killing civilians. We're killing friendly forces. This is ultimately a battle for the hearts and minds of people around the world. When your village just got leveled by an American mistake, the conclusions you draw will be rather different from what we'd want them to be." (Quoted in Nicolas Lemann, New Yorker, 9/16/02.) What Walt fails to note is the other reasons why U.S. policymakers might prefer using bombs, even to the extent of blowing up villages and risking mass starvation and thereby creating great hatred for the U.S., rather than pursuing the alternative of following and enhancing international law and reducing just grievances of populations around the world.

 

 

B3. Do U.S. crimes justify attacks on U.S. civilians?

 

No, of course not. Just as the crimes of a leader of another country, or of another country's government, do not justify attacks on their civilians.

 

Terrorism is most frequently defined as attacks on civilians undertaken for political purposes. Terrorism is wrong if it is blowing up a small bomb in a pizza parlor or on a bus. It is wrong if it is blowing up a larger bomb in a large bus station. It is wrong if it is a plane used to take out a huge skyscraper. And it is wrong if it is a massive air force pummeling the civilian population and infrastructure of a society, or if it is sanctions denying a society the means to sustain the life of many of its citizens. Terrorism is wrong when carried out by disgruntled individuals, groups, or whole armies and governments. And it is wrong regardless of whether the motives would be worthy were the means different, or whether the motives are themselves horribly unjust, or just insane.

 

 

B4. Do you believe that al Qaeda is seeking legitimate goals through improper means?

 

We haven't talked to anyone in al Qaeda. And there is no reason to believe simple propaganda statements. We can't know for sure, therefore, their motives, but we can do our best to try to understand within the limits of available information.

 

Many of the terrorists were no doubt recruited based on their anger at the U.S. and their desire that U.S. policies should change. Some were likely concerned about policies out of true concern for suffering constituencies, such as Iraqis or Palestinians. Others might have been more concerned about less concrete matters, such as the intrusion of U.S. culture and troops in their lands. But, if we are talking about al Qaeda's leaders, those who plan and direct al Qaeda's events, it seems tremendously unlikely that they were or are motivated or even in the slightest degree moved by a desire to aid the Palestinians, the Iraqis, or any other suffering population. This is clear from the trivially simple insight that their actions could not possibly have been expected to have a positive impact on such constituencies.

 

On the other hand, a plausible motive consistent with their actions over a span of twenty years is that they want to drive American soldiers out of Muslim lands and overthrow the governments there in favor of their version of radical Islamism. 9-11's purpose, in that context, would have been to induce the U.S. into a massive response, hoping to entwine it in a battle which could be won by al Qaeda (a tremendous degree of miscalculation, there), or to so destabilize the Middle East that elements closer in ideology to al Qaeda and the Taliban would rise in prominence and power, perhaps even to take over additional states. This motive is not implausible and has not yet failed, and one doesn't know what the outcome will be if there is war in Iraq and a spillover effect. On the assumption that al Qaeda's motive for 9-11 was inducing chaos in the Middle East that might be taken advantage of by allied fundamentalists, they are no doubt now hoping for a U.S. invasion and all manner of mayhem, not caring any more about the human suffering and loss than do Rumsfeld or Bush.

 

No, in our view al Qaeda is not only using immoral and disastrous means, it also has immoral and disastrous intentions. On the other hand, Bush seems hell bent on virtually the only approaches that could conceivably bring on al Qaeda's long‑term success.

 

 

B5. Did 9-11 show that the left was wrong about terrorism?

 

What the left has said about terrorism remains compelling: (1) that many of the governments most actively proclaiming campaigns against terrorism are themselves guilty of supporting or committing terrorism on a vast scale (for example, U.S. backing for Indonesia in East Timor or for Salvadoran death squads or for Turkey's war against its Kurdish minority); (2) that military force is not the best means for eradicating terrorism and that attempting to address the underlying causes offers much better prospects of success; and (3) that terrorism is often used by states as an excuse for foreign and domestic policies pursued for reasons unrelated to the terrorism.

 

At the same time it is true that the left, like most everyone else, was surprised by the scale of 9-11. Though the potential for mass murder is still heavily on the side of state terrorists, the gap is narrower than previously assumed.

 

 

B6. "Which was the court where these guys could be summoned?" asks Todd Gitlin. "Were subpoenas to be dropped at the mouths of the caves of Tora Bora?"

 

Well, yes, they were. And then brought in by armed UN troops, perhaps, as well (assuming, that is, that a case for culpability could be made). The Afghan government could also be entreated to hand over culprits, and so on.

 

But suppose it is ascertained that bin Laden and various others were responsible, and that they were in Afghanistan, but that they couldn't be reached directly. Does it then follow that the United States should simply bomb the country, no matter the risk to civilians? Our thinking on this is straightforward. Suppose someone commits a heinous crime in the U.S. and then disappears into Omaha. We know he is there. We know he did it. If we can't get at him directly, do we just bomb until Omaha is no more? Winding up, by the way, with no evidence at all that anything was accomplished vis-à-vis the presumed culprit?

 

 

B7. Anti-war critics called for the 9-11 attacks to be treated as a police matter. But don't the same anti-war critics want to disband the CIA, etc., which would have been the ones who would have handled a police matter?

 

The main point is that the attacks should not have been treated as a justification to endanger civilians in Afghanistan, to impose draconian laws and round up innocents in the U.S. or anywhere else, to push through all kinds of military budget policies, and so on. To deal with

the attacks should have meant to determine their source by way of evidence, and to then prosecute those responsible, using mechanisms of international law and its enforcement.

 

Critics of the CIA don't reject gathering intelligence per se, they reject the CIA as an agent of corporate and geopolitical interests determining what information is worth having, and how it ought to be used. The CIA has a variety of roles: among them the overthrowing of governments that the United States doesn't like, as in Chile or Guatemala. Certainly an organization with these responsibilities shouldn't exist. There is nothing wrong with an international police organization, however, invested by the United Nations with responsibility for finding or proving culpability

and apprehending criminals --- something like Interpol. In the absence of such an international organization, the police agencies of individual nations, including those of the United States, might be loaned to the UN.

 

One can debate whether or not in our current world there should exist an agency devoted to accumulating information about circumstances around the globe, and if so what kinds of limits should constrain it. Neither discussion, however, has much to do with how 9-11 should have been dealt with.

 

 

B8. That the usual rightwing fanatics supported the war in Afghanistan is not surprising. But should the fact that the war's supporters included people who have been prominent and committed opponents of U.S. interventions abroad -- such as Richard Falk -- cause us to rethink our opposition.

 

Richard Falk's opinions deserve serious consideration. We and Falk agree on condemning Bush's militaristic, unilateral, and aggressive approach to the world, as well as on rejecting his attacks on civil liberties at home. We agree, as well, on condemning al Qaeda and its allies. We agree that countries that have been attacked, as the U.S. was, have the right to protect their citizens. Where we disagreed, at the time and in retrospect, is on whether it furthered the cause of international justice and security for the world's most powerful nation to take it upon itself to reject alternative means of dealing with 9-11 and determine that it was permissible to place Afghan civilians at serious risk of harm. For our specific response to Falk's arguments, see http://www.zmag.org/shalomjustwar.htm.
 

 

B9. Weren't the anti-war people dead wrong, if not disingenuous, regarding the danger of starvation in Afghanistan during the U.S. war there?

 

During the period leading up to the bombing, and then during the period of the bombing itself, it wasn't anti-war leftists, in the U.S. or anywhere else, who invented the idea that bombing was likely to lead to massive starvation of civilians: It was the food agencies, aid agencies, and UN agencies on the scene and responsible for dealing with the hunger. The claim of the anti-war movement was simple. In a context in which everyone with any degree of credibility on the topic agrees that bombing could have unimaginably horrific effects, it is vile to bomb, thereby displaying a willingness to decimate civilians at an untold level.

 

And bombing Afghanistan, and thereby displaying that willingness, is precisely what happened. Thinking that the bombing would extend much longer, the U.S. undertook it despite the unchallenged expectation that the impact on human lives would be huge.

 

The critique anti-war activists made was correct.

 

As to what in fact happened regarding starvation, we have virtually no idea. No one in the West with the means to count cares to do so. There is some suggestive data, however, that indicates that there were serious humanitarian consequences. Medicine without Frontiers reported a doubling of the child mortality rate between August 2001 and January 2002 (see the MSF report, 2/21/02, http://www.zmag.org/content/TerrorWar/MSFTerror.cfm). Michael Finkel reported in the New York Times Magazine (2/17/02) that in the single Afghan district of Abdulgan out of 15,000 residents, the total number of dead during the war "has to run into the 1,000s." An estimate in the Guardian (Jonathan Steele, 5/20/02) puts the indirect death toll at 20,000. Nakamura Tetsu, a Japanese doctor who heads an NGO that has worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan for 19 years, has said that "tens of thousands" starved to death as a result of the bombing (http://zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=2373).
 

 

B10. Michael Bérubé has written that the anti-war left argued, "to their shame, that the U.S. military response was even more morally odious than the hijackers' deliberate slaughter of civilians." Is he right?

 

The only example Bérubé cites to support his charge is a statement early in the bombing that noted that the bombing risked starving huge numbers of Afghans (as humanitarian aid workers had warned) and that this would be a humanitarian crime greater than the crime of the World Trade Center attack. So the question becomes, how should we compare these two crimes: (1) proceeding with a course of action that is known ‑‑ based on uncontested expert opinion ‑‑ to involve a substantial likelihood of leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands or even millions of innocent people, and (2) deliberately slaughtering thousands of people? Even if we judge intended killing to be morally worse than killing from indifference, given the at least thousand‑fold difference in the orders of magnitude involved (1) seems worse. Our moral condemnation would be lessened only if the Bush administration knew that the Taliban would disintegrate very rapidly (thus limiting the starvation), but from all available evidence, the Bush Administration was as surprised as most everyone else by the Taliban's sudden collapse.
 

 

B11. Didn't the defeat of the Taliban mean that food could be delivered to Afghanistan and hence didn't the U.S. war improve rather than harm the humanitarian situation in the country?

 

Food was deliverable before 9‑11. What made it undeliverable was the threat of war, closing of access routes to the country, the withdrawal of aid workers for their safety, and the bombing itself. Yes, the war's ending was much better than if it had continued for many more months and led, as predicted, to hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths.

 

The operational point is that it ended. The moral point, one that deserves to be studied as one of the low points of state behavior in history, is that Bush administration officials would have perpetrated it as long as was needed, regardless of the human implications, as they themselves made perfectly clear.

 

It is also worth noting that even after the Taliban were defeated food supplies to remote areas were much delayed by the fact that lawlessness prevailed in much of the country and the United States ‑‑ despite the urging of aid organizations ‑‑ refused to permit peacekeepers outside of Kabul who might have facilitated the delivery of food.
 

 

B12. Christopher Hitchens claimed that calls to suspend the bombing in Afghanistan originated from rightwing Pakistani sources. Were anti-war critics who supported the call dupes?

 

Calls for justice, not war, for refraining from massive bombing of Afghanistan, arose in the U.S. by September 12, or so, including from us. These did not originate with right wing Pakistanis. Shortly thereafter, international aid organizations and UN officials warned of the humanitarian dangers of the bombing and urged its suspension. Various anti-Taliban Afghans, including Abdul Haq and the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) likewise urged an end to the bombing. It may be that in various parts of the world unseemly people favored stopping the bombing. That doesn't mean that they controlled those who opposed it, an utterly ridiculous assertion.

 

The same type of thinking would say that since Hitchens advocates various military actions of the U.S., and a host of right wing dictators do as well, he is dupes of them, or a dupe of Kissinger, and so on.
 

 

B13. Michael Bérubé has also written that the anti-war left cannot admit that, on balance, the routing of the Taliban might have struck a blow, however ambiguous and poorly executed, for human freedom. Is that correct?

 

No. No one on the left has any trouble saying that Taliban rule was horrific. The anti-war left that Bérubé is talking about, including us, were clearly enunciating that fact well before 9‑11, when in contrast the U.S. government was helping create and empower the Taliban.

 

So, the removal of the Taliban, though it came about in a morally and politically despicable fashion, is most certainly the removal of a set of tyrants. On the other hand, the anti-war left also notes that those installed in place of the Taliban are little different in kind, a fact which should certainly not be ignored.
 

 

B14. Given the enthusiasm of the Afghan people for the defeat of the Taliban, can't the U.S. war be considered a humanitarian war of liberation? Similarly, is Nicholas Kristof correct when he asserts (NYT, 2/1/02, p. A25) that "our invasion of Afghanistan may end up saving one million lives over the next decade," because vaccinations -- against measles, for example -- are now possible?

 

The scenes of enthusiastic Afghans are primarily from Kabul, where international peacekeepers prevent the warlords from their worst excesses (though even in Kabul warlord power is not insignificant). But in much of the rest of the country, slaughter of prisoners, ethnic retribution, continued oppression of women, and widespread lawlessness prevail. (One should recall that the Taliban were welcomed by many Afghans in 1996 because they were able to end the horrendous disorder the country suffered under warlord rule.)

 

It is true that women are probably better off in Afghanistan today than under the Taliban. But it is also true that the improvement should not be overstated. According to Human Rights Watch (June 2002):

 

"Afghan women of all ethnicities have been compelled to restrict their participation in public life to avoid being targets of violence by armed factions and by those seeking to enforce repressive Taliban-era edicts. Afghan women, especially outside Kabul, continue to face serious threats to their physical safety, denying them the opportunity to exercise their basic human rights and to participate fully and effectively in the rebuilding of their country."

 

Kristof's claim is typical of this sort of formulation. In fact, the Taliban did not prohibit international organizations from conducting immunization programs. Polio vaccinations, for example, were conducted in September 2001 -- before the bombing -- and then were resumed in November, though some areas "were not accessible during the fighting." ("Supplementary memorandum submitted by the United Nations Children's Fund," Minutes of Evidence, Select Committee on International Development, House of Commons, The Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan and the Surrounding Region, 12/17/01.) Thus, what interfered with the vaccinations was not the Taliban, but the war.

 

No one should shed a tear for the Taliban's fall from power. But the people of Afghanistan are far from being liberated, intentionally or otherwise.
 

 

B15. Didn't the U.S. in fact get Security Council endorsement for its war in Afghanistan?

 

No. The United States went to the Security Council twice and both times the resolution that emerged did not authorize U.S. military action against Afghanistan. Resolution 1368 did call "on all States to work together urgently to bring to justice the perpetrators, organizers and sponsors of these terrorist attacks," but this is a far cry from authorizing the United States to decide unilaterally to wage a war against Afghanistan.

 

Alternatively, if we interpret this clause as authorizing the United States to attack Afghanistan without any further Council action, then it also authorizes any state to attack any other state as long as the attacker believes (or says it believes) that it is helping to bring 9‑11's perpetrators to justice. Hence, by this reading, the Council would have been authorizing Iraq to invade Saudi Arabia (from where many of the hijackers originated) or Germany or New Jersey (where the attackers were based). This is obviously preposterous, but there is nothing in the language giving the United States any more right to attack Afghanistan.
 

 

B16. If the war in Afghanistan was not a very effective means of dealing with the problem of terrorism, why did the United States government go to war?

 

9-11 has been used by the Bush administration to try to achieve many of its foreign and domestic policy goals. This does not mean ‑‑ and we have argued against the view ‑‑ that Bush was "behind" the 9-11 attacks or somehow "let it happen." (See our "9-11: Conspiracies or Institutions?" http://www.zmag.org/content/Instructionals/shalalbcon.cfm ) But it does mean that once 9-11 happened, the Bush team moved decisively to take advantage of the situation.

 

Thus, White House National Security Adviser Condaleezza Rice told Nicholas Lemann of the New Yorker that she "had called together the senior staff people of the National Security Council and asked them to think seriously about 'how do you capitalize on these opportunities' to fundamentally change American doctrine, and the shape of the world, in the wake of September 11th." Similarly, a senior official told Lemann that 9-11 was "a transformative moment," not so much because "it revealed the existence of a threat of which officials had previously been unaware as that it drastically reduced the American public's usual resistance to American military involvement overseas, at least for a while." Cheney's chief of staff Lewis Libby told Lemann that the U.S. response to 9-11 was not foreordained. "There are many other courses that the President could have taken. He could have waited for juridical proof before we responded. He could have engaged in long negotiations with the Taliban." None of these approaches, however, would allow the United States to redefine its role in the world -- and hence were rejected.

 

For example, one goal of the Bush administration has been to remove obstacles to U.S. freedom of action in the world. One such obstacle is international law. Although there was a golden opportunity after 9-11 to reaffirm the importance and value of international law, Washington was determined to go in the other direction. As Human Rights Watch put it: "in many respects, the campaign against terrorism has seen the erosion of international law, rather than its enforcement."

 

Another goal has been to communicate internationally the U.S. willingness to engage in outrageous levels of violence, outside the law, whenever any actor caused Washington to feel aggrieved. Policymakers reason that if everyone fears us, the fact that they may not like us all that much is quite secondary, at least if our only interest is to impose our will.

 

And a third goal has been to provide a lasting policy focus which could scare and otherwise deceive the U.S. public into supporting or at least accepting all manner of redistributive taxing and military spending and repressive legal reorganization, all on behalf of corporate and political power.
 

 

B17. What is the significance of oil pipelines through Afghanistan?

 

We wrote in October 2001:

 

"Oil of course plays a greater or lesser role in everything political and economic that happens in the Mideast, sometimes forefront, sometimes background. U.S. geopolitical and economic policies have as one of their prime motives maintaining access to and virtual control over oil sources around the globe. Pursuit of profit per se, and oil profit, are at the foundation of U.S. institutional arrangements in general, and thus impact our large-scale motives, of course. But the idea that oil is the proximate reason for the attack on Afghanistan, is very far fetched, just as the notion that the U.S. engaged in the war in Vietnam to gain access to minerals within Vietnam was far fetched. What is primarily at stake, geopolitically and economically, is not access to specific resources (or pipeline routes) but the rules of global interaction, the further delegitimating of international law, the development of a replacement for the Cold War in this case, a war on terrorism as well as actual concerns about terrorism itself."

 

We think this is still correct, despite the oil company connections of the new U.S.‑backed Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and of U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad. The prospects of building an oil pipeline through Afghanistan any time soon appear remote.

 

 

Part C. Iraq
 

 

C1. Are U.S. leaders correct in their characterization of Saddam Hussein as a monster?

 

There are two possible meanings of the word "monster." What most people mean by the term is a leader who pursues policies that grotesquely violate every norm of morality and international human rights law. By this definition, Saddam Hussein is certainly a monster: he has murdered thousands of political opponents and tens of thousands of members of ethnic minorities, repressed the population, and waged wars of aggression against Iran and Kuwait. A second, hypocritical definition is that any one whom the U.S. government considers an enemy and insufficiently pliant, is for those reasons a monster. And using this second definition, Saddam Hussein is indeed a monster, at least since his invasion of Kuwait.

 

How can we tell which definition U.S. leaders use? There are two simple tests. First, look at instances of leaders in other countries who are gross violators of human rights but who serve U.S. interests. Are they branded by the U.S. government as monsters, which they would be by the first definition, but not by the second? To take a single example: Suharto of Indonesia presided over killing at least half a million Indonesians and some two hundred thousand East Timorese, but not only did Washington not denounce him as a monster, it provided him with arms and diplomatic support (and even provided his army with names of communists to wipe out).

 

The second test is to look at how the United States characterized and treated Saddam Hussein himself, before August 1990, when he was serving U.S. interests. It was in this period that his worst atrocities took place -- his invasion of Iran, his use of chemical weapons against both Iran and Iraqi Kurds, his Anfal campaign of slaughter against the Kurdish population. Again, not only did Washington refrain from denouncing him as a monster, it provided him with economic aid, military intelligence, diplomatic support, and equipment that could be (and presumably was) used for his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. Indeed, when the Ba'ath party (later to be headed by Saddam Hussein) first came to power in a bloody coup back in 1963, the coup had U.S. backing and, reportedly, the United States provided the Ba'athists with names of leftists to murder (see Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, New York: HarperPerennial. 1999, p. 74).

 

Two of Hussein's atrocities deserve special mention. In 1975, the United States which, together with Iran and Israel, had been aiding a Kurdish revolt in Iraq, abruptly cut off its support for the Kurds when the Shah of Iran, Washington's close ally, struck a deal with Iraq. As Baghdad turned its full wrath on the Kurds, many of the latter sought U.S. assistance in obtaining asylum. In closed-session testimony, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger explained why the U.S. rejected their appeal for help: "covert action," he declared, "should not be confused with missionary work" (Select Committee on Intelligence, 1/19/76 [Pike Report] in Village Voice, 2/16/76, pp. 85, 87n465, 88n471; William Safire, Safire's Washington, New York: Times Books, 1980, p. 333).

 

In 1991, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, Hussein ruthlessly suppressed uprisings ‑‑ encouraged by U.S. propaganda broadcasts ‑‑ by Kurds in the north and Shi'ites in the south. U.S. officials permitted Hussein to use helicopters (in fact, U.S. warplanes flew overhead watching the Iraqi helicopters carry out their slaughter) and refused to allow the rebels access to the vast store of Iraqi weapons that the U.S. military had captured.

 

So, yes, Saddam Hussein is a monster in moral terms. But that is not his crime in the eyes of U.S. officials, for many of Hussein's most monstrous deeds were committed with U.S. backing. For the U.S. he only became a monster when he would not follow orders.
 

 

C2. Are U.S. leaders correct in their characterization of Saddam Hussein as a threat to world peace and security?

 

Broadly, yes, of course they are. That is to say, Saddam Hussein, given no obstacles, could probably be relied on to hurt many more people by his actions than he already has. But he doesn't confront a situation of no obstacles. Instead, he well knows that if Iraq does anything to seriously endanger much less harm people outside its borders, it will simply be annihilated.

 

Hussein's military position is far weaker today than it was before the 1991 Gulf War, a war in which his forces were decisively defeated. As conservative analyst Anthony Cordesman noted, "Iraq's military machine may retain a massive order of battle, but Iraq's lack of arms imports means that its military readiness and sustainability is only a fraction of what it was in 1990" (The Military Balance in the Gulf, Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 2001, p. 79). And, whatever Hussein's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (discussed below in question C4), surely his nuclear, chemical, and missile capabilities are less today than in 1990. At the same time, the regular over flights of his country subject Iraq to far more intense and intrusive surveillance than was the case prior to the Gulf War.

 

If one had to predict which country in the world was most likely to deploy its troops outside its borders, Iraq is hardly the most dangerous prospect ‑‑ not because Saddam Hussein is a peace‑loving man, but because he has neither the means nor prospects for gain from any such aggression in the present context. Yes, if an attack is unleashed on Iraq, Hussein in desperation might launch missiles at Israel or Saudi Arabia, but this is a very different matter from his launching an attack out of the blue. Far more likely to wage war on their neighbors than is Iraq are Israel or India, nations that are regionally dominant military powers. But of course, only one nation in the world has actually proclaimed its right to preemptively attack others, with or without UN authorization ‑‑ and that is the United States. So, yes, Saddam Hussein is a threat to world peace and security. But in that regard he doesn't hold a candle to George Bush.

 

And what motivates George Bush is not the threat to the peace that Saddam Hussein represents, but other considerations which we discuss below (see question C18).
 

 

C3. What are the connections between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein?

 

Obviously, one cannot prove the absence of connections. There are, however, good reasons for doubting any serious ties between the two.

 

Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime has been ruthlessly secular and has had no love for fundamentalist groups. Al Qaeda, for its part, considers its task the overthrow of all governments in the region that are insufficiently Islamic, and certainly Hussein's regime counts as such. (One might note that Iraq did not have diplomatic relations with the Taliban regime -- in fact, the only countries that did have diplomatic relations with the Taliban were the U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan.)

 

Of course, hostile parties can sometimes be useful to one another against a common enemy, but no evidence has come to light of cooperation between al Qaeda and Iraq. Ever since September 11, U.S. officials have been frantically looking for some connection between the two. War hawks leapt on the report that Mohammed Atta, the leader of the September 11 hijackers, met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence agent in April 2001. The Czech government, basing itself on the evidence of one informant -- a student who said he recognized Atta's photograph as someone he had seen with the Iraqi agent five months earlier -- said it was 70 percent sure the story was accurate, but the former director of Czech intelligence noted that "These informants tend to tell you what you want to believe" and the head of Czech foreign intelligence was skeptical. The FBI (which ran down "hundreds of thousands of leads") and the CIA concluded that the report was inaccurate; they found no evidence that Atta was in Prague on the relevant date and some evidence that he was in the United States (Washington Times, 6/19/02; Prague Post, 7/17/02; Washington Post, 5/1/02; Newsweek, 4/28/02 web exclusive; Newsweek, 8/19/02, p. 10; LA Times, 8/2/02).

 

On September 24, 2002, the British government released a 55 page dossier laying out its case against Iraq. The evidence was said to come from British intelligence and analysis agencies, but also from "access to intelligence from close allies" (p. 9). Surely this includes the United States and surely whatever hesitancy the United States government might have about revealing intelligence information publicly would not prevent it from sharing such information with its closest ally. The dossier presented zero evidence of any al Qaeda‑Iraq links

 

In the last week of September ‑‑ in the face of international and domestic hesitancy regarding the rush to war ‑‑ U.S. officials again raised the specter of al Qaeda‑Saddam Hussein links. Rumsfeld said he had "bulletproof" evidence tying the two together, but, significantly, he did not present any of that evidence and admits that it wouldn't hold up in a U.S. court of law.

 

There was one report, charged Rumsfeld, that Iraq provided "unspecified training relating to chemical and/or biological matters." The report apparently came from Abu Zubaydah, a high‑ranking al Qaeda prisoner who, according to an intelligence source cited by Newsday, "often has lied or provided deliberately misleading information." As one U.S. official told USA Today, "detainees have a motive to lie to U.S. interrogators: to encourage a U.S. invasion of Iraq, the better to make the case that the United States is the mortal enemy of Muslim countries."

 

The head of the Senate intelligence committee, Bob Graham, said he had seen nothing connecting al Qaeda and Iraq. Sen. Joseph Biden, who heard a classified CIA briefing on the matter, disputes Rumsfeld's summary. Nebraska Republican, Senator Chuck Hagel, commented that "To say, 'Yes, I know there is evidence there, but I don't want to tell you any more about it,' that does not encourage any of us. Nor does it give the American public a heck of a lot of faith that, in fact, what anyone is saying is true." Intelligence experts inside and outside the U.S. government expressed skepticism, and a Pentagon official called the new claims an "exaggeration." And French intelligence has found not a “trace” of evidence of any link. (NYT, 9/28/02; Newsday, 9/27/02; USA Today, 9/27/02; Washington Post, 9/27/02; Financial Times, 10/6/02.)

 

This said, there is one connection between Iraq and al Qaeda: namely, that an attack on Iraq may well play into al Qaeda's hands by destabilizing much of the Middle East and, in the words of former General Wesley Clark, possibly "supercharge" recruiting for the terrorist network (NYT, 9/24/02).
 

 

C4. Does Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction?

 

No one knows what weapons Saddam Hussein has. Most analysts assume that he has biological and chemical weapons. No one believes he has nuclear weapons.

 

We can presume that the most damning claims about the extent of his arsenal are contained in two recent documents: the September 24, 2002 dossier issued by the British government and an October 4, 2002 report by the CIA. There is good reason for thinking these documents exaggerated. For example, the British dossier identifies several once destroyed sites that it says have been rebuilt by the Iraqis. But Hans Von Sponeck, the former UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, visited two of these sites and found that in fact they were still destroyed ( http://www.irak.be/ned/bivv/iraq4questions4answers.htm ). Other British reporters visited some of the sites listed in the dossier (chosen by them) and found nothing suspicious (Guardian, 9/25/02).

 

Even if these documents were not exaggerated, however, they would make a good case for inspections, not war.
 

 

C5. Is it true that Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran and against his own people?

 

Yes. And such use is most certainly a despicable and heinous crime. And such use is one reason, among others, why it would be appropriate to call Saddam Hussein a "monster" on moral grounds (see question C1). The British dossier and the Oct. 4, 2002 CIA report give details of these horrible actions by Hussein, but they omit one small fact: that the U.S. and British governments were backing Hussein when he committed these atrocities.

 

One should also note that Hussein's chemical munitions are not the only weapons of mass destruction that have been used in Iraq. Far more people have died ‑‑ and are still dying ‑‑ from the diseases attributable to the U.S.‑British sanctions than from Hussein's mustard gas or tabun. Indeed, as Karl and John Mueller noted in the mainstream journal Foreign Affairs (May-June 1999), “economic sanctions may well have been a necessary cause of the deaths of more people in Iraq than have been slain by all so-called weapons of mass destruction throughout history.”

 

C6. How would you deal with Iraq's WMD?

 

Security Council resolution 687, the resolution calling for the post‑Gulf War destruction of Iraq's WMD systems, noted in paragraph 14 that the disarmament actions "represent steps towards the goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery and the objective of a global ban on chemical weapons." The acquisition of WMD by one state generally encourages, rather than discourages, their acquisition by others. Thus, Anthony Cordesman notes that "Given the other major proliferators in the region ‑‑ which include India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, and Syria -- even a[n Iraqi] regime that is not actively hostile to the U.S. might continue to develop nuclear weapons and long‑range missiles in spite of its agreements not to do so." (The Military Balance in the Gulf, CSIS, July 2001, p. 107) So the best method for dealing with Iraqi WMD ‑‑ both from the point of view of justice and efficacy ‑‑ is in the context of global or, barring that, regional disarmament.

 

To the United States and many other WMD states, however, serious disarmament is not on the agenda. The United States is a party to the Nuclear Non‑Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which sets up a class of "have" and "have‑not" nations, with the U.S. in the privileged "have" category, but Washington has refused to meet its obligation under the treaty to move towards disarmament; it has refused, for example to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty which have‑not nations consider a minimal litmus test indicating a country's commitment to the NPT.

 

The United States is also a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). As a report for the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies noted,

 

"After signing the treaty in 1993, Washington largely ignored it, escaping national embarrassment only with a last‑minute ratification just four days before its entry into force. Moreover, the United States took steps to dilute the Convention by including waivers in its resolution of ratification and implementing legislation exempting U.S. sites from the same verification rules that American negotiators had earlier demanded be included in the treaty."

 

Among the exemptions were the U.S. President's right to refuse an inspection of U.S. facilities on national security grounds. (See Amy E. Smithson, U.S. Implementation of the CWC," in Jonathan B. Tucker, The Chemical Weapons Convention: Implementation Challenges and Solutions, Monterey Institute, April 2001, pp. 23‑29, http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/tuckcwc.htm ).

 

The United States is also a party to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), but efforts to improve compliance with the treaty floundered after Washington blocked continued discussions. (See Jonathan Tucker's Feb. 2002 analysis, http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_7b.html ). Among other WMD states, Israel has refused to sign the NPT or the BWC or ratify the CWC; India and Pakistan have refused to sign the NPT; and Egypt and Syria have not ratified either the CWC or the BWC.

 

But even though many nations act hypocritically, it would still be a good thing if Iraq's WMD programs were effectively inspected (not least, for establishing a precedent that could be extended to others). Most everyone favors the inspection of Iraqi WMD, other than Saddam Hussein and, as we can infer from its actions, Washington. Everything the United States has done for the last few months, and indeed for the last eleven years, has had the effect of discouraging Iraq's cooperation with inspections. Security Council resolution 687 declared that sanctions would be lifted when Iraq was disarmed, but the United States promptly removed Hussein's incentive for disarmament when in May 1991 deputy national security adviser Robert Gates officially announced that all sanctions would remain as long as Saddam Hussein remained in power. In March 1997, secretary of state Madeleine Albright stated that "We do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted" ‑‑ and Hussein became more uncooperative with the inspectors.

 

After the inspectors were withdrawn in 1998 so U.S./U.K. bombing could proceed, it was discovered that the United States had used the inspection teams for spying. Obviously, Iraq would be disinclined to admit the inspectors again if the United States was determined to attack Iraq no matter what, for in that case admitting them would only weaken Iraq's defenses in the face of the inevitable assault. So an assurance from Washington that compliance with UN inspections would forestall an attack would provide an incentive for Hussein's cooperation. But declared Secretary of State Powell (ABC News, 5/5/02), regardless of whether inspectors are admitted, the United States "reserves its option to do whatever it believes might be appropriate to see if there can be a regime change." And then, when Iraq on September 16 declared its willingness to allow in the inspectors, the White House replied: "This is not a matter of inspections. It is about disarmament of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and the Iraqi regime's compliance with all other Security Council resolutions."

 

Now the United States is trying to force through a Security Council resolution on inspections that could not possibly be accepted by Iraq ‑‑ essentially allowing U.S. military forces full access to Iraq and the right to unilaterally declare Iraq in non‑compliance, thereby allowing the U.S. to invade Iraq without having to force its way across the border and with spies already in place to direct the attack (Guardian, 10/3/02). Such a proposal could have no other purpose than to make sure that inspections don't take place. Yes, Saddam Hussein has tried to obstruct and manipulate previous inspections and loopholes need to be closed ‑‑ as inspections need to be imposed on all other WMD states as well. But U.S. efforts here are not aimed at making inspections effective but at making them impossible.
 

 

C7. Is Hussein's announcement that he would allow in inspectors without condition to be taken at face value?

 

If a gigantic bully in the school yard says to a little bully "let me look in your pocket to see if you have a rock that you might throw at me or I am going to bash your head with this baseball bat until there is nothing left of it," are we to take the little bully's reply, "okay, go ahead and look," at face value? The question is about the same. If the little bully had a rock in his shoe, he'd say okay. If there was no rock, he'd say okay. He doesn't want to get bashed in the head with a baseball bat. Every time the little bully said okay it would mean -- okay, dig away in my pocket. The little bully would likely try, as well, both for dignity and for the possibility of retaining some tiny measure of self defense, not to mention retaining means to bully those who are even smaller ‑‑ to keep the gigantic bully out of some possible hiding places, of course. Is there a difference? Only in that more is at stake. And in that the Bush/Hussein-scale bullies don't, in fact, generally hurt each other, but huge numbers of innocents instead.
 

 

C8. Can't Hussein fool the inspectors?

 

Maybe. But no inspectors at all are far easier to fool than some inspectors, and some inspectors are easier to fool than more inspectors. As best anyone can tell, the inspectors in Iraq from 1991‑1998 were far more effective at destroying WMD than was bombing either during the Gulf War or in 1998.

 

One might ask, also, can't the U.S. fool inspectors ‑ can't India, can't Pakistan, can't China, can't Russia, can't France, can’t Israel? What inspectors, you say? Indeed. Very dangerous WMD arsenals in each of these countries are not subject to inspections at all, a matter that should worry anyone sincerely concerned with WMD arsenals.
 

 

C9. Can Saddam Hussein be deterred?

 

Suicide bombers or suicide pilots cannot be deterred. They have already chosen death. But Saddam Hussein has spent a lifetime precisely trying to avoid death. You don't make it as a ruthless dictator without an over‑developed survival instinct. In 1991 during the Gulf War, Hussein withheld use of his chemical weapons. We don't know if he was deterred by the U.S. (and Israeli) threats of disproportionate and massive retaliation or by the realization that by using such weapons against coalition forces he would be guaranteeing a U.S. march on Baghdad ‑‑ but either way, he was deterred. Given the certainty of instant annihilation for using his WMD, there is no reason to believe that he is not deterrable.

 

Are there some circumstances, however, in which Hussein would not be deterred? Yes, if he thought he were doomed anyway, he might decide to kill as many of his enemies as possible. So, ironically, the one circumstance most likely to elicit Hussein's use of WMD is a war fought to depose Hussein in the name of nullifying his WMD. And if Hussein in desperation used his WMD against Israel, Israel has promised to retaliate, perhaps with unconventional weapons of its own – with unimaginable consequences for the whole region and the world.
 

 

C10. Bush claims he does not need specific Security Council authorization to legally attack Iraq. Is this claim true?

 

No. The UN Charter prohibits nations from using or threatening force against other nations with only two exceptions.

 

First, Article 51 permits self‑defense, but only "when an armed attack occurs." Clearly, there has been no armed attack by Iraq against the United States. Some argue that self‑defense includes the right to strike an enemy who is about to launch an attack. Clearly there is no basis for claiming that an Iraqi attack is imminent. If U.S. claims that Iraq might have nuclear weapons by the end of the decade are taken as adequate grounds for allowing anticipatory self‑defense, then think about what the world would be like. Surely, Lebanon would have the right to attack Israel, and vice versa, and Pakistan would have the right to attack India, and vice versa, and indeed, just about any country would have the right to attack just about any other country. It was precisely this sort of international lawlessness that the UN Charter was meant to prevent.

 

The second exception to the Charter's prohibition against the use or threat of force is action taken under the authority of Chapter VII. That is, the Security Council may, under Chapter VII, authorize the use of force in pursuit of international peace and security. So if the Security Council were to pass a resolution authorizing an attack on Iraq, an attack would be legal (which is not the same as just ‑‑ see question A5 above). But there has (as of yet anyway) been no resolution authorizing an attack. Back in 1990, after all sorts of bribery and pressure from the United States, the Council did authorize action in resolution 678 to expel Iraq from Kuwait. U.S. officials claim that this resolution is enough to legitimize U.S. military action against Iraq today, but that is patently preposterous. Resolution 678 authorized member states to use all necessary means "to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions." Resolution 660 called for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait and the subsequent relevant resolutions are listed at the beginning of 678 and consist of the series of resolutions relating to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait passed between resolutions 660 (Aug. 2) and 678 (Nov. 29, 1990). U.S. officials maintain that "all subsequent resolutions" includes anything having to do with Iraq passed after Aug. 2, 1990 and thus includes all the post‑Gulf War resolutions relating to arms inspectors. Such a claim cannot be taken seriously. Resolutions don't authorize the use of force to uphold resolutions not yet passed. And they don't authorize individual member states to determine for themselves whether Iraq is in compliance with any particular resolutions. That's the responsibility of the Security Council.

 

After the Gulf War, resolution 687 ‑‑ accepted by Iraq ‑‑ mandated the destruction of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. But nothing in that resolution authorized any use of force or the right of any individual state to determine Iraqi compliance. If the U.S. view prevailed, then Israel, for example, could legally attack Iraq at any time after November 1990 ‑‑ last year, last week ‑‑ if it decided that Iraq wasn't complying with some subsequent resolution. Could this possibly be what the Council intended?

 

A final U.S. argument is that Iraq remains in violation of some 1990 resolutions relating to Kuwaiti prisoners and property and thus can still be brought to account under resolution 678. But, as Phyllis Bennis has noted, at the March 2002 Arab League Summit, every Arab state including Kuwait signed an all‑sided rapprochement with Iraq, including specific arrangements for the return of Kuwait's stolen National Archives and prisoner exchanges.

 

Thus there is no legal basis for a U.S. attack on Iraq without explicit Security Council authorization. We reiterate, however, that Security Council authorization determines legality, not morality.
 

 

C11. Has Iraq violated many Security Council resolutions?

 

Yes. But it is not the only country to do so. Other countries, including close U.S. allies like Israel and Turkey, have been in violation of Security Council resolutions. (See Stephen Zunes's detailed accounting, available at http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=2417 .) And, of course, the number of violations by U.S. allies would be far larger if it were not for the fact that the Security Council has a totally undemocratic voting procedure that gives Washington (and four other nations) the power to veto any resolutions of which it disapproves.

 

That others violate UN resolutions is not a justification for Iraq to do so. But the contradiction is relevant to note for it gives the lie to the Bush administration claim that it is motivated by a concern for upholding the UN and international law. Moreover, there is not a little irony in the fact that the Bush administration has declared that in order to enforce adherence by Iraq to the UN, it is prepared to go to war against Iraq, even if that war is not authorized by the Security Council, and hence in clear violation of the UN Charter.
 

 

C12. What are the likely consequences of a U.S. attack on Iraq? On the people of Iraq? On the prospects for democracy in the Middle East?

 

Administration officials assure us that all the consequences will be positive. The Iraqi people will welcome their nearly bloodless deliverance and democracy will spread throughout the region. These are possible outcomes, but the first is by no means certain and the second extremely unlikely. Under some scenarios, Iraqi troops will all refuse to fight and Saddam Hussein will be defeated swiftly. But no sane military planner will proceed on the assumption that everything will go right. One cannot exclude the possibility of intense urban fighting (with the U.S. using overwhelming airpower to obliterate all resistance), which would mean immense civilian casualties. As for Middle Eastern democracy, the corrupt authoritarian regimes of the region will probably be able to hold on to power by the imposition of greater repression on their populations – that is, by becoming less rather than more democratic. And if the threat to these regimes gets more serious, we can expect to see Washington increase its support for dictatorial rule, for there’s no chance that the U.S. would tolerate a new government in Jordan or Egypt or Saudi Arabia that came to power by opposing the U.S. war in Iraq
 

 

C13. Are the claims about civilian deaths in Iraq due to the sanctions exaggerated? And isn't Saddam Hussein responsible for the humanitarian crisis by his diverting of money to his weapons programs?

 

There is debate both on the number of deaths in Iraq under the sanctions and the cause of those deaths. Save the Children UK and a coalition of other NGOs has recently issued a report that summarizes the conflicting estimates regarding "excess mortality":

 

"UNICEF, in a widely publicised study carried out jointly with the Iraq Ministry of Health, determined that 500,000 children under five years old had died in "excess" numbers in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, though UNICEF insisted that this number could not all be ascribed directly to sanctions. UNICEF used surveys of its own as part of the basic research and involved respected outside experts in designing the study and evaluating the data. UNICEF remains confident in the accuracy of its numbers and points out that they have never been subject to a scientific challenge.

 

"Prof. Richard Garfield of Columbia University carried out a separate and well regarded study of excess mortality in Iraq. Garfield considered the same age group and the same time period as the UNICEF study. He minimized reliance on official Iraqi statistics by using many different statistical sources, including independent surveys in Iraq and inferences from comparative public health data from other countries. Garfield concluded that there had been a minimum of 100,000 excess deaths and that the more likely number was 227,000. Garfield now thinks the most probable number of deaths of under-five children from August 1991 to June 2002 would be about 400,000." (Iraq Sanctions: Humanitarian Implications and Options for the Future, 8/6/02, http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/sanction/iraq1/2002/paper.htm )

 

Whether the UNICEF figures are correct or the more conservative Garfield figures, either way we are talking about a massive human catastrophe. Using Garfield's estimate, more Iraqi children under the age of five have died from the sanctions than in a hundred World Trade Center attacks.

 

Some supporters of the sanctions argue that any humanitarian suffering is a result not of the sanctions but of Hussein's manipulations of the sanctions regime. There is no doubt that Hussein has a callous disregard for his people's hardships and bears some of the responsibility for the situation. However, as the Select Committee on International Development of the British House of Commons noted (1/27/00), this does not "entirely excuse the international community from a part in the suffering of Iraqis. A sanctions regime which relies on the good faith of Saddam Hussein is fundamentally flawed." Two UN humanitarian coordinators for Iraq (Denis Halliday in 1997 and Hans Von Sponeck in 2000) resigned to protest the inhumanity of the sanctions.

 

Not all U.S. officials have chosen to deny the impact of the sanctions. In May 1996, Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes asked Madeleine Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, "We have heard that half a million children have died . . . is the price worth it?" Albright replied, "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is worth it."

 

The sanctions have undergone various changes, but in all versions the people of Iraq have been the victims, while Hussein and his inner circle have, if anything, been strengthened ‑‑ the exact opposite of how sanctions ought to be targeted.
 

 

C14. Aren't the sanctions essential to prevent Iraq from developing weapons of mass destruction?

 

Not if we are to believe the U.S. and British governments, which claim that Hussein has been able to rebuild his WMD programs by easily evading the sanctions.

 

Blocking weapons transfers and WMD components makes good sense ‑‑ and not just to Iraq. But the sanctions regime in Iraq blocks far more than military supplies. In July 2002, $5.4 billion worth of goods were being held up, almost always at the insistence of the United States or Britain, covering such supplies as water purification systems, sewage pipes, medicines, hospital equipment, electricity and communications infrastructure, and oil field equipment.
 

 

C15. Christopher Hitchens says: ''you can't subject the Iraqi people to the cruelty of sanctions for so long while leaving the despot in place.'' Is this an argument for "regime change" and war?

 

Hitchens would have us believe that having subjected the population of Iraq to sanctions that have caused the premature deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, the solution is for the perpetrator of this mayhem to now invade, and add additional carnage, and claim by that act to have become a moral agent.

 

Suppose the mafia has been conducting a reign of terror on a neighborhood in the South Bronx for ten years because somewhere inside this neighborhood an ex mafia lieutenant acting as a local lord had decided to keep more of the take than the mafia dons felt he was entitled to. Would we call for the mafia to send in its heavily armed thugs, shooting their way through the dwellings, until they managed to find and kill the rogue local lord ‑‑ with the intent, of course, of placing a new mafia lieutenant in the saddle? Shouldn't our call be, instead, "Mafia Out, Rogue Out," and down the road, "No More Mafia"?

 

But might the residents of the South Bronx (or Iraq) be better off under a new mafia lieutenant than remaining subjected to the mafia reign of terror (or the U.S. sanctions)? That will depend on the human costs of the campaign to kill the rogue local lord, but even if the costs turn out to be less than the continued reign of terror – which no one can assure -- consider the horrible precedent that Hitchens's argument would establish. Do we really want a world where India arrogates to itself the right to invade Pakistan in order to protect the Pakistani population from some murderous Indian policy? Should we have cheered Indonesia's invasion of East Timor as a humane alternative to continued Indonesian efforts to starve the East Timorese?
 

 

C16. Who authorized the U.S. and British air forces to patrol the no‑fly zones over Iraq?

 

The U.S. and Britain. In April 1991, when Hussein was crushing uprisings in the north and south of the country, the UN passed a resolution calling on Iraq to cease its repression and urging member states to provide humanitarian aid to refugees. Embarrassed and under political pressure for allowing the uprisings to be crushed, President Bush senior ordered air drops to Kurdish refugees on the Turkish border and then ground troops which assisted the refugees as part of Operation Provide Comfort. The U.S., Britain, and France demanded Iraq observe a no‑fly zone in the area, and when the troops were withdrawn, the no‑fly zone was maintained, and patrolled by coalition air forces. Nothing in the UN resolution authorized Operation Provide Comfort, the no‑fly zones, or the air patrols. The no‑fly zone was ostensibly to protect the Kurds, but the protection was rather limited: it only applied to Iraqi attacks, not to Turkish air or ground incursions into Kurdish areas of Iraq ‑‑ which have never been protested or opposed by the United States. The boundaries of the northern no‑fly zone do not coincide with the boundaries of the autonomous Kurdish‑held area. In 1992, a similar no‑fly zone was established in the south, even though Iraqi forces had not withdrawn from the area as they had from the north. France withdrew from participation in the no‑fly zones and since then Washington and London alone have unilaterally extended the boundaries of the two no‑fly zones and unilaterally expanded their rules for engagement, allowing broad attacks on Iraqi installations if the planes are fired upon.

 

The initial no‑fly zone in the north may have played some humanitarian role with respect to the Kurds. But essentially the zones are unilateral U.S. and British impositions, without any basis in international law, designed to put pressure on Saddam Hussein. Under the new rules of engagement, they represent the opening salvos of a unilateral U.S.-U.K. war.
 

 

C17. Do the American people support a war against Iraq?

 

Yes and no. If asked do you support the United States preventing Iraq from killing you or your parents or your children, or indeed from killing even just those people who live in New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco, a considerable majority of Americans will most certainly say yes.

 

On the other hand, if they are asked, should the United States blast Iraq ‑- a country it has already devastated for over a dozen years with hundreds of thousands of casualties -- into the dark ages, with countless further victims -- in order to make the point that we are callous enough and violent enough to do it -- and to steal for ourselves direct control over the resources of another country, it is reasonable to guess that a considerable majority of Americans would say no.

 

Currently, as we write, reports suggest that about 70% of the British population, by polls, opposes the war plans, despite the British government being the only one in the world solidly behind Bush. This is very interesting. Two things seem to explain the British being more anti‑war than Americans. One, the planes that crashed into buildings on 9-11 didn't do so in London. And two, there is in Britain a mass-circulation press which is conveying actual truths and morally civilized reactions to the on‑going events, more widely than these are being conveyed in the U.S. Reaction in the U.S. is definitely behind. But it is also catching up.
 

 

C18. Why does the U.S. government want to go to war against Iraq?

 

Because Iraq's leader is not in Washington's hip pocket anymore, where he was, when Washington liked him quite a lot, while he was committing his worst crimes.

 

Because underneath Iraq is the world's second largest reserve of oil, which the U.S. government would like to control, particularly given the instability of Saudi subservience.

 

Because around the world are country after country who are suffering the accumulating damage of corporate globalization and being pressured by their populations to extricate from the American Empire's hold over their policies, and waging violent destruction on Iraq sends a very loud message regarding just how high the price will be for extrication from U.S. domination.

 

Because anything remotely resembling a legal and moral approach to international problems is ridiculed and rejected by U.S. elites because legal and moral approaches to international problems would, in case after case, lead to outcomes contrary to their agendas and interests.

 

And because intense focus on Iraq is serviceable to Bush and Co. seeking to divert attention from the condition of the U.S economy and corporate corruption leading up to the November U.S. elections, and hoping to undermine social spending that is strongly favored by the population, in the interest of tax cuts for the rich, which is strongly opposed by the population.

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