The Big Conundrum.
It's been over three years, and no one has explained to my satisfaction why I should believe that US planners ever really believed that there were actual weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Follow my reasoning.
First, wmd are not useful as offensive weapons. They are intended as defensive and deterrent weapons. This is because, absent technology far more advanced than Iraq could command, there is no reliable way to direct the destruction against the enemy. On the battlefield, chemical and biological weapons afflict soldiers on both sides, and moreover kill innocent civilians. They're a weapon of last resort.
US policy makers and planners were of course aware of this. While saying publicly that Saddam pursued his weapons programs because he was a madman seeking empire, all serious parties knew that, if he had a wmd program, it was to deter invasions. This was hardly a crazy notion, as Iraq had been bombed by Israel in the early 1980s, considered itself menaced continually by Iran, and had been invaded in the first Gulf War. It was sensible for him to think that wmd would be a deterrent.
But here's the beauty of a deterrent. It's the idea of the weapon and not the weapon itself that does the work. The US and the Soviet Union didn't go to war during the Cold War because their nuclear weaponry deterred them from doing so. The weapons themselves were never actually used, though; it was the idea of Mutual Assured Destruction that prevented hot war--or at least so the strategists believed.
Which is why the strategists should have (and I believe did) understand that Saddam was blowing smoke up their asses. We know now--everyone knows now--that he intentionally misled the world into thinking that he had wmd capacity in order to forestall an invasion. The Big Question is when did our intelligence community and their allies overseas figure this out?
Well before the war, I'm sure. Here's why. First, they knew that their intelligence was weak because it had repeatedly failed to check out. The UN weapons inspectors proved this. This is why US intelligence was slow to release information to them--they desperately wanted their information not publicly proved false before the invasion. Second, they must have begun to understand that their sources in Iraq were being manipulated to present a more damning picture of the wmd situation than was in fact true. Saddam was simply not capable enough to bluff without being sussed out; our intelligence people--the ones in the trenches, not the politicoes--aren't that stupid. But finally, and here's the big part of the big question, if they HAD believed in the wmd myth, they would have been committing a monstrous crime against humanity by actually invading. If, as our propagandists asserted at the outset of the invasion, Saddam had given orders to use chemical and biological weaponry when the invasion was within 50 miles of Baghdad, the result would have been genocidal. Untold thousands of civilians would have been killed or maimed. And I don't believe our military or politicians at the highest levels would have committed such an act.
I've spent three years looking for an answer to this big question, and haven't yet been enlightened. Anyone out there have a solution?
No, I think we have to conclude that at the highest levels it was well known that the wmd rationale was bullshit. Then we have to wonder what this has to teach us. I mean about the system of public discourse, which was clearly unable to actually determine this at the time.
It's been over three years, and no one has explained to my satisfaction why I should believe that US planners ever really believed that there were actual weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Follow my reasoning.
First, wmd are not useful as offensive weapons. They are intended as defensive and deterrent weapons. This is because, absent technology far more advanced than Iraq could command, there is no reliable way to direct the destruction against the enemy. On the battlefield, chemical and biological weapons afflict soldiers on both sides, and moreover kill innocent civilians. They're a weapon of last resort.
US policy makers and planners were of course aware of this. While saying publicly that Saddam pursued his weapons programs because he was a madman seeking empire, all serious parties knew that, if he had a wmd program, it was to deter invasions. This was hardly a crazy notion, as Iraq had been bombed by Israel in the early 1980s, considered itself menaced continually by Iran, and had been invaded in the first Gulf War. It was sensible for him to think that wmd would be a deterrent.
But here's the beauty of a deterrent. It's the idea of the weapon and not the weapon itself that does the work. The US and the Soviet Union didn't go to war during the Cold War because their nuclear weaponry deterred them from doing so. The weapons themselves were never actually used, though; it was the idea of Mutual Assured Destruction that prevented hot war--or at least so the strategists believed.
Which is why the strategists should have (and I believe did) understand that Saddam was blowing smoke up their asses. We know now--everyone knows now--that he intentionally misled the world into thinking that he had wmd capacity in order to forestall an invasion. The Big Question is when did our intelligence community and their allies overseas figure this out?
Well before the war, I'm sure. Here's why. First, they knew that their intelligence was weak because it had repeatedly failed to check out. The UN weapons inspectors proved this. This is why US intelligence was slow to release information to them--they desperately wanted their information not publicly proved false before the invasion. Second, they must have begun to understand that their sources in Iraq were being manipulated to present a more damning picture of the wmd situation than was in fact true. Saddam was simply not capable enough to bluff without being sussed out; our intelligence people--the ones in the trenches, not the politicoes--aren't that stupid. But finally, and here's the big part of the big question, if they HAD believed in the wmd myth, they would have been committing a monstrous crime against humanity by actually invading. If, as our propagandists asserted at the outset of the invasion, Saddam had given orders to use chemical and biological weaponry when the invasion was within 50 miles of Baghdad, the result would have been genocidal. Untold thousands of civilians would have been killed or maimed. And I don't believe our military or politicians at the highest levels would have committed such an act.
I've spent three years looking for an answer to this big question, and haven't yet been enlightened. Anyone out there have a solution?
No, I think we have to conclude that at the highest levels it was well known that the wmd rationale was bullshit. Then we have to wonder what this has to teach us. I mean about the system of public discourse, which was clearly unable to actually determine this at the time.
posted by jnerone at 2:46 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home