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CounterPunch
August
28, 2002
The Fake Debate on Iraq
Democrats Want Bush to
"Make the Case,"
But in this Case, They are on the Make.
by Will Youmans
This may surprise you: something like a debate
has broken in Washington DC over a foreign policy question. And,
to make things even more interesting, it is playing out in the
media. It appears that the near-stalemate between the State Department's
multilateralists or as some call them, realists, and the Pentagon/Department
of War/Reaganite crowd has spilled over into the wonderful world
of partisan bickering. One side of that back-room debate, the
hawkish unilateralists (headed by Rumsfeld/Perle/Wolfowitz) decided
to "go public."
The Democrats' arguments fall closer
to the State department's, which are few and simple: 1) Bush
has to "make the case" for war on Iraq. That means
prove that Saddam Hussein has chemical or nuclear weapons. 2)
Bush must get support for attack from other countries in the
world, especially from Europe and the states surrounding Iraq
(which has been a failure thus far). 3) Specify the extent of
the commitment or resources, troops, money etc. this project
is estimated to cost. 4) Involve the people in the decision-making,
or better yet Congress. 5) and some are calling for a program
of nation-building. The first point is the main one Democrats
are repeating, and the rest get less airplay.
My main impression is that the Democrats
are carefully positioning themselves with domestic politics in
mind. They know a war on Iraq would boost Dubya - who is probably
slow-moving against Iraq since his election is still two plus
years away - and be detrimental for their own electoral ambitions;
but so would taking a principled stance against attacking. So
they are setting a higher standard for the US war machine to
begin revving.
What our liberal friends in the beltway
are not doing is providing a solid position against invading
Iraq. Like the big softies they are, Dems are warning that we
should seriously weigh the consequences first with a public debate.
Right. If it were true, it would be another obstacle since this
is a debate the public is tremendously undereducated to participate
in anyways. Just a decade ago, the American public was fired
up by Bush Sr,'s comparison of Hussein to Adolf Hitler. This
analogy struck those who know about the Middle East as odd since
Nazi Germany was a major world power and Iraq had the GDP of
Kentucky (which is to say nothing about the Osama bin Laden as
Hitler analogy often repeated since 9-11). Since then, Hussein
proved to be harmless to anyone but his own population, who ended
up being more victimized and destroyed by the US/UN's systematically
murderous folly known as the sanctions.
The Dems are banking on the absence of
the moral clarity that Bush had with Afghanistan (which media
miraculously refer to as a success despite the obvious failure
of the primary objective -- to catch or kill bin Laden). I totally
interpret the Democrats' arguments in the context of domestic
political posturing. They are trying to deny Bush access to a
political goldmine. Americans, like most people, tend to rally
around the flag during times of war and, to be partially redundant,
before sporting events.
One obvious test is to go back and look
at what the Dems were saying when Clinton made militaristic moves
for his own domestic expediency: Operation Desert Fox against
Iraq, and the missile attacks on Afghanistan and a Sudanese baby
milk factory (or was it a pharmaceutical plant) timed to coincide
with key hearings on the Lewinsky deflowerment scandal. They
were quite uninterested in cases being made for those actions,
though Clinton did atleast go through the measure of prevaricating,
I mean prefabricating, a pretense with those weapons inspectors
who voluntarily left Iraq under the guise that Hussein made their
jobs undoable. This suggests the model for creating a pretense,
which many old policy hacks such as Snowcroft and Kissinger suggest.
I would not confuse this posturing and
early electoral maneuvering with debate. Debate is where one
side has a position and the other side has another, usually opposite
view. Here, there is no disagreement as to whether the United
States has a right to attack Iraq. That is the fundamental assumption
both "sides" accepts. The Dems are very far off the
mark with their main concerns. Everyone in the world agrees that
Saddam Hussein should not be in power. The question for debate
is does the United States have the right to do it. Right now,
both the Dems and the Republicans say yes to that. What in the
Democratic position prevents Bush from inventing a pretense?
Still, part of me is glad they are discussing
something. It makes people more likely to read my rants. More
importantly, it clearly demonstrates the utter narrowness of
foreign policy discourse. The most objectionable premises are
accepted as natural right. What is most fascinating is that the
existence of this deluge of talking head-exchange demonstrates
that Iraq's threat is not imminent - the standard for invasion
provided by a liberal reading of applicable international law,
another topic interestingly absent from these discussions. Plus,
if Iraq's danger was so real, why are all of the most vulnerable
neighbors against any military action?
Finally, that points to the funny timing
of this whole movement for attacking Iraq: it comes when Iraq
is militarily at its lowest point since Saddam Hussein came to
power. Ironically, when Hussein was at his most barbaric and
war-mongering, he was an ally and recipient of American dollars
and, yes, chemical weapons. Maybe his weakness is why certain
American officials want him out. The key for many of them is
regional stability, and a de-legitimized leader sitting on one
of the greatest oil reserves in the world is not something they
want to leave to chance.
Oil. There is another word we are not
hearing enough of in this so-called debate.
Will Youmans
can be reached at: wyoumans@umich.edu
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August 28,
2002
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Islam
and Politics
Mikhail Gorbachev
Nature
Can't Wait
William Ring
War on Iraq:
The Brightest Scenario
William Ring
War on Iraq:
The Brightest Scenario
August 27,
2002
Sam Bahour
The Violence
of Curfew
Wenonah Hauter
From Johannesburg:
Pacts with the Devil: Public-Private Partnerships and the Global
Environment
Jerre Skog
Wanted:
"Our Kind of Guy"
in Iraq!
Uri Avnery
Letter
to a Pilot
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2002
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