Interesting argument by noted libertarian and Rand scholar Chris Sciabarra about the capture of Saddam. He argues that because Saddam clearly was determined to survive rather than die in a blaze of glory, this proves he was amenable to force, and therefore deterrable. In short, that we could have deterred Saddam from his monstrous ambitions and did not need to invade Iraq to foil him.
Hmmmm, as they say when confronted with arguments like this. I truly do not know. Is it really the case that a man who defied a hatful of UN resolutions, invaded Iran and Kuwait, consorted with known terrorists, and who threatened to destroy Israel was the sort of guy who could be deterred in the manner of the Soviets during the Cold War? (And by the way, recall how close to disaster we got in the Cuban missile crisis).
I honestly do not know with certainty and I very much suspect that Chris Sciabarra does not know this for sure, either. Deterrence as a foreign policy option has been the mainstay of the isolationist libertarian case since 9/11, as seen here over at Jim Henley’s blog. But the Middle East always struck me as being the place where mutually assured destruction could go horribly, horribly wrong.
And of course if deterrence did work, that still leaves the small issue of whether we could, and should have let Saddam stay in power had we been able to prove clear links between him and terror groups possibly implicated in 9/11.
What can I say? Mr. Sciabarra may look backward to the “good old days” of the Cold War complete with Mutually Assured Destruction. I just hope he won’t volunteer my neck in the process.
Sciabarra ignores the fact that deterrence means limiting US freedom of action. I don’t understand why Sciabarra would want to do that. He also ignores the threat Saddam Hussein poses to the entire Middle East with his nuclear weapons.
The fact that Saddam Hussein values his life gives no reason for Sciabarra to assume that deterrence will work. Saddam Hussein may simply build a very good bunker for himself capable of surviving a nuclear strike from which he drops the bomb on Tel Aviv or forces the rest of the Middle East to give in.
The bottomline remains this: MAD is not a desirable way of life and I for one prefer to avoid it. If that means getting rid of a murderous thug and promoting stability in the Middle East by building up an Arab democracy in the process, so be it.
If any inference is to be drawn from Chris Sciabarra’s item, I think it is that Saddam had as much contempt for the UN as the US does.
Just goes to show that he isn’t all that mad….
Re that mouth exam that has the Vatican so excercised, do you think they were looking for a suicide pill or something similar?.
Why do I suspect that if Saddam had gone out in a blaze of insane glory, the War Party would have been perfectly willing to point to that as evidence of his irrationality and why he needed to be taken out ASAP?
Sciabarra’s argument has no bearing on reality. Saddam was never deterable in any meaningful way. Sure, if we only could have pinned him down in a small hole and fed him hotdogs & mars bars for a few months it may have been possible. O wait – that’s what we did. But short of that, he paid no attention at all to the UN, and only to the US when we massed an (ussustainable) army of invasion on his border. It was always business as usual with him.
I concur with Rawsnacks: this is stupid indeed (well, sorry for my directness).
A quasi all mighty Saddam, seating on a golden throne, piling up UN aids in Swiss bank accounts while crushing his country with an army of fedayeens and political police as opposed to a defeated Saddam hiding at the bottom of a mud hole with nothing more entertaining than listening to his beard growing are two radically different interlocutors.
One is certainly willing to negotiate, more than anything else.
The other has no reason to give up on anything, unless you actually box him down in the aforementioned hole.
12 years, 19 resolutions: nothing. A lightning fast campaign, 8 months of action and the President Bush’s regards got him begging from the bottom of his hole.
And, I’m sorry but… Thousands of bodies in mass graves, and there are still some here to imply that we could need more evidences of Saddam’s irrationality?
Impressive.
Scott, the need for Saddam’s removal had nothing to do with the style in which he chose to meet US soldiers.
Indeed, when the decision was made to open the Iraqi campaign the next phase of the War on Islamist Nutjobs, for a variety of good and sufficient reasons, I doubt anyone troubled themselves with trying to predict whether Saddam would surrender quietly, go down fighting, or just catch a 2000 pound JDAM on its way down.
That said, I freely admit both sides spin events as best they can. Your point?
Amusingly idiotic.
The crucial aspect of deterrence is the existence of an overwhelming threat. The value of that overwhelming threat is that it will be taken seriously. The necessity of being taken seriously requires that America be willing and able to execute it.
Since Saddam clearly didn’t believe that America was willing and able to make good on it’s threats, just how would deterrence work? Rand scholars. Must be an easy way to make money. Wish I had thought of it. Could I be a Rand Scholar on the global issue of a worldwide shortage of porn? sigh.
Sometimes I think I’m on a magical Rollercoaster of Inanity. Sliding and creaking my way to oblivion, screaming in horror while goblins in Noam Chomsky masks spout nonsense phrases.
Make the hurting stop.
No, it was claimed that he needed to be taken out Right Now because he had WMDs and was enough of a nutjob to use them on New York or London w/o caring about possible retaliation (which would have deterred him from gassing New York).
As far as the WMD “sufficient reason” goes – your precious war has been compared to a no-knock raid gone wrong (where the burst down the doors at 3am, only to find no drugs).
Bullshit. Everybody on Earth believes America is willing and able to make good on a threat to retaliate if someone uses a WMD on New York or DC.
The oral exam with tongue depressor was done both to determine if anything foreign were present in his oral cavity and ALSO to obtain saliva for a DNA test. Why the Vatican got its skirts in a swivet is unfathomable, as are most of their bleatings.
No, it was claimed that he needed to be taken out Right Now because he had WMDs and was enough of a nutjob to use them on New York or London w/o caring about possible retaliation (which would have deterred him from gassing New York).
It is my opinion that these claims came about only as response to new UN resolutions after the French double crossed Powell. Machiavellian perhaps but would not have been necessary if the UN and its highly interested parties had had the wits to follow through on its original resolutions of a decade ago.
A quasi all mighty Saddam, seating on a golden throne, piling up UN aids in Swiss bank accounts while crushing his country with an army of fedayeens and political police as opposed to a defeated Saddam hiding at the bottom of a mud hole with nothing more entertaining than listening to his beard growing are two radically different interlocutors.
Right on. And the types of force needed against them are two different animals too. I suppose its the difference of having the force of a State in your hands, as well as its economy, and a being dissheveled character in hole with a few mars bars. I suppose that’s why the executive branch of a State has a police force and a military force. Rooting out a band of thieves takes one kind of force and rooting out a dictator with a whole State at his disposal takes another. For some reason there are folks who think you only need one kind and the proper approach was to send a few guys in black suits and an arrest warrant to take care of things. I think we all see that that is nonsense, as if it were that easy there would be no war.
The point is that Saddam clearly was no threat to the US or UK, since he certainly seems to be interested in survival, and releasing poison gas in New York or London isn’t compatible w/ his survival. He’d want to remain on his “golden throne” and not have to go into hiding like Osama (remember him? the guy responsible for 9/11 we’ve been distracted from by this whole Iraq thing?) like he’d have to if he used the WMDs he didn’t have against the west.
The War Party claim that Saddam had to be taken out Right Now was shown to be false by his being sane enough to surrender when caught.
Everybody on Earth believes America is willing and able to make good on a threat to retaliate if someone uses a WMD on New York or DC.
Odd, then, that so many believed America was unwilling to retaliate, or indeed should not retaliate at all, after mass murder was committed in New York using planes that were the equivalent of tactical nuclear weapons.
This also assumes that any use of WMD in the US by terrorists would be traceable back to its state sponsors. As the utter inability to track down the anthrax attacks that coincided with the 9/11 highjackings indicates, this is an unwarranted assumption. Saddam and others could be quite confident that, if they gave chem or bio agents to terrorists, “proof” sufficient to satisfy the Scotts of the world of their responsibility would be impossible to come by.
Scott, unlike you, I am not willing to gamble with the lives of millions that the likes of Saddam Hussein are eminently rational people with no interest whatsoever in mass murder. Saddam killed with WMD without compunction whenever he thought it was in his interest to do so. He was an avowed enemy of the US. He violated a ceasefire with the US. That is plenty of justification for me.
Good God, a 747 isn’t the equivalent of any sort of WMD, otherwise every nation on Earth has WMDs. Lets invade any country w/ a national airline. You’re clinically insane here.
That, and you assume Osama didn’t expect the US to retaliate. Ever consider the possibility he wanted the US to strike back randomly, to create the very “war against the Islamo-nutjobs” you, and Osama, want?
Who was Oceania always at war against?
The concept of deterence depends on the level of activity,MAD was designed to prevent total war it did not prevent conflict of lower intensity.Wars were fought by proxy,Vietnam and Afghanistan,guerilla wars,terrorism, espionage,politically,economically and through the media.Extremely rarely were leaders at risk,the question is therefore how could Saddam be deterred since he was willing to expend his peoples lives to preserve his power.Assassination,cruise missile snatch squad?Sanctions only hurt the Iraqis and there was an international drive to get them lifted.So instead of words,deterrence,containment please can there be some nuts and bolts.Further is anybody willing to have waited for the second generation of Husseins to take power
It also leaves out the issue of whether we could and should allow a Saddam Hussein or a Slobodan Milosevic to remain in power, period. If you were not chosen by your people *and* use your power to kill innocents, opponents and others arbitrarily and by the busload, it should be legal to remove you.
Scott:
“Bullshit. Everybody on Earth believes America is willing and able to make good on a threat to retaliate if someone uses a WMD on New York or DC.”
Actually, your point here is bullshit. Osama bin Laden used the argument that the U.S. was too weak morally to respond with any real force or resolve to a direct and major attack on U.S. soil. He used the “Black Hawk Down” incident in Somalia as partial evidence for this, along with America’s virtual non-response to the attacks on the African embassies and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, as well as the first World Trade center bombing. In fact, it had become an in-joke amongst Al-Qaeda and the Taliban that if New York was literally nuked out of existence the most they could expect in response was to be charged with a crime under international law and have warrents for their arrests issued. It was this belief, however irrational and wrong, that led bin Laden to approve the operation of Sept.11.
We have Clinton to thank of course for helping to give creedence to this belief amongst Islamic/Arab fascists.
Now you would have us make the mistake of assuming that Saddam Hussien did not also think this. How do you know? Given our failure to remove him permanently in the first Gulf war, and given his almost ten years of violations of the cease-fire agreement and U.N. resolutions (for what there worth), how do you know that he also did not assume that America had become too weak and too lazy to respond to a direct attack? Unless you can provide incontrovertable evidence to prove this, your argument is nothing more than an assumption. And an assumption that, after the events of Sept.11, shows a remarkable level of contempt and carelessness for the rights, freedoms and lives of American citizens.
As to the fact that we have not yet found ready to use WMD’s, this means nothing. It does not mean they never existed. At least one ex-Iraqi general has claimed that they did have them, and we know from the David Kay report that Saddam did have an active program to acquire more of them. Add to that Iraq’s indisputable connections with terrorists, including Ansar al Islam and Abu Nidal, Saddam’s funding of Palestinian terrorism, and all of this adds up to a clear and present danger to the U.S. and our allies, one which, after Sept.11, we could not afford to ignore.
And please, the “War Party”???. Bin Laden and the network of Islamic/Arab fascists declared war on America long ago, and backed that up with repeated attacks on American citizens, including the first World Trade Center bombing, the numerous murders and kidnappings of American citizens, the bombing of our embassies, a direct attack on an American navy vessel, and the horrific events of Sept.11. Calling those who, quite rationally, think that we may need to excercise our right to self defense and meet this war that is being waged upon us with force, the “War Party”, is a childish and shallow way to debate.
It did prevent attacks on US soil by the USSR, didn’t it?
Our willingness to go to war when Kuwait was attacked certainly showed Saddam our willingness to go to war if New York was attacked.
Give it up. You’ll never find WMDs, or evidence of any recent WMDs. The claims Saddam had them were government lies. Its time for you to face reality here.
Good God, a 747 isn’t the equivalent of any sort of WMD, otherwise every nation on Earth has WMDs.
Here you show your ignorance, Scott. The 747s used to attack the WTC packed a kiloton of explosive power, the equivalent of a so-called battlefield or tactical nuke. Remember, the Hiroshima bomb was only about 12 kilotons.
Finally, modern, high-tech societies are filled with supercharged devices packed with energy, combustibles, and poisons, giving terrorists ample opportunities to divert such non-weapon technologies to destructive ends. To cause horrendous damage, all terrorists must do is figure out how to release this power and let it run wild or, as they did on September 11, take control of this power and retarget it. Indeed, the assaults on New York City and the Pentagon were not low-tech affairs, as is often argued. True, the terrorists used simple box cutters to hijack the planes, but the box cutters were no more than the “keys” that allowed the terrorists to convert a high-tech means of transport into a high-tech weapon of mass destruction. Once the hijackers had used these keys to access and turn on their weapon, they were able to deliver a kiloton of explosive power into the World Trade Center with deadly accuracy.
Foreign Policy, January 15, 2002
You were claiming that the war was unjustified because no one would ever attack the US with WMDs. I am pointing out to you that someone has already attacked the US with the explosive equivalent of a battlefield nuke, and with an actual real-live bio-weapon – anthrax.
Our willingness to go to war when Kuwait was attacked certainly showed Saddam our willingness to go to war if New York was attacked.
Sure, if the Iraqis attacked New York with an armored division. The point of the Iraqi campagin wasn’t that we feared an Iraqi conventional attack (we never did). It was that we did not think that the risk of Saddam supplying terrorists with WMD was an acceptable risk. You have a rather breezy willingness to accept that risk, but I do not.
We still don’t know who did the 9/11 anthrax attacks, Scott. Based on available evidence, Saddam had every reason to believe that we could not walk back the cat from an anthrax attack with sufficient certainty to justify war. The extreme difficulty in determining who is behind a bio attack means that it is very difficult to deter someone from mounting a bio attack.
I have read that Saddam, under questioning, has denied having WsMD.
Now I’m absolutely certain he had them.
Sciabarra, Arthur Silber, Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul – they give a bad name to libertarianism.
It is sound and correct to claim that, as a general rule, the US should not embarc on military adventures abroad – this is a valid and true libertarian position.
On the other hand – if the US neglects it’s defence it gets hit as on 9/11.
So some balance needs to be found between the two contradictory requirements. Absolute isolationism or pacifism are irrealistic.
You can claim that Saddam wasn’t dangerous enough TO THE US to justify the war. (He was extremely dangerous to his people and all neighbouring countries). This would be plausible, barely (though not necessarily correct).
OTH – to claim Saddam wasn’t dangerous at all, didn’t have WMD, didn’t threat no one, was deterrable (and by implication – a rational man), had no ties to terror – all these claims by above mentioned guys – show an extreme dissconnect with reality. A departue from reality is a departure from logic (it is worse actually).
So I join Ed and the dissident frogman, and other commenters who weren’t impressed by the title “Randian scholar”.
Jacob writes:
“Sciabarra, Arthur Silber, Lew Rockwell, Ron Paul – they give a bad name to libertarianism.”
No they are advocating the standard libertarian position. You may disagree with it, of course, but nevertheless a consistent anti-war position is the standard. But rather than both sides entering fruitless discussions about labels and who is sullying them libertarians should discuss the substantive issues. I can see that you feel passionately about the war but in appraising _reality_ you should really take a much more sceptical look at US and UK foreign policy on this matter. The battle between good and evil is not as obvious as you would make out.
I’m not 100% convinced we took Saddam alive because of Saddam’s determination to survive.
I believe he lacked the courage to do anything else but surrender. So, it was not a determination to survive it was fear of any other alternative at the time of capture.
He could have tried to ‘fight it out’ and die a hero to many of his people. He could have shot himself so as to not give his enemies the satisfaction of taking him alive. Both of these two actions require courage and detrmination.
I don’t see Saddam as courageous at all. He reminds me of the school yard bully who crumples when his supporters have fled and he must fight alone.
Saddam is paranoid, sick, and full of fear. All he has now is his bravado.
As long as he stays out of the hands of the Iraqis he is safe. Once the tribunal is convened and he’s handed over to the Iraqis for trial, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him exhibit very bizarre behavior due to his fear.
After reading the above debate, it is apparent to me that Scott would have opposed doing anything about Hitler after the Sudetenland invasion other than wringing one’s hands in the League of Nations.
We saw how that approach turned out.
Foolishness. Chris Sciabarra’s viewpoint is neither interesting nor scholarly. This is merely the product of a mind trying desperately to find any pitiful scrap of evidence to try to justify the Axis of Weasel worldview.
Saddam stripped of his armies, syncophants, and hopes is not the same as Saddam facing… drumroll please… ‘smart sanctions’ and the collective frown of France and the U.N.
A child could figure this out. Which leaves the question of why Scott hasn’t. No eye as blind as the one what doesn’t want to see, eh Scott?
Speaking of children,If I ordered a 7-year-old to clean his room, spanked him when he refused, then got results after I repeated my order,does that ‘prove’ that I could have gotten Johnny to clean the room if I had just asked nicer in the first place without the spanking? Of course not.
So remind me, why are we taking Chris seriously?
In a quick skim of this thread, I don’t see anyone giving what I think is the most devastating objection to the idea that Saddam could be deterred:
He’s over 60 and if he had not been overthrown he would sooner or later (most likely sooner) have died of natural causes and left his huge arsenal to Uday or Qusay or both. By all accounts, they were both completely nuts, and we know they were willing to go out in a blaze of glory. In short, deterrence only looks good in the short run, if at all.
He ignores the role of France and Germany in encouraging Iraq to believe nothing would be done. here is, of course, the history with Clinton. Still, these two seemed to imply they would (and had the power to) bind the United States & the UN up. The reaction he posits doesn’t work if Iraq is convinced we won’t act. Of course, we have to carry through on our threats for credibility, but in this particular instance, Iraq was encouraged to challenge us in a way that appeared to be calling our bluff. What choice did we, and, indeed, if the UN is to mean anything, what choice had it (even if it didn’t realize it) but to go in. Since the UN wouldn’t, someone needed to make the UN look more credible. Kofi Annan has, however, continued to undermine that credibility.
Thanks for the comments. Somehow I just knew that arch-delusionist Scott Cattanach would come out for a comment or two on this one. He makes the point that MAD probably prevented a Soviet invasion of the USA (and probably other NATO members as well). It probably did, but it did not prevent a nearly disastrous escalation in Cuba, as I pointed out in my original post, nor did it prevent the Soviet invasion of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, numerous Soviet-backed incursions in Africa and elsewhere.
Imagine Saddam with nukes. While he may have balked at firing them at us, he could almost certainly have used his arsenal to blackmail his neighbours, seizing their oil and territory, possibly even wiping out the state of Israel. And of course we would have been powerless to prevent him funding terror groups and brutalising his own people.
But then of course as so long as we are okay, who gives a s**t? The isolationist position can be nicely summed up as, “I’m alright Jack. Could the rest of the world please go away?”
Paul
“No they are advocating the standard libertarian position. ”
As long as they advocate the standard lib position: “no military adventures” – I’m in principle with them.
In the concrete case of Saddam – the question was: was he sufficiently dangerous to justify intervention ? The answer to this is a matter of appraisal, evaluation. I have my opinion but I can understand the opposite one.
But this is not what they were claiming. You should read their prose. They claimed there is no danger at all, Saddam is alsmost an angel, he has no malicios intentions, he did no wrong, has no dangerous personality, he is rational and deterrable, all accusations against him are lies, etc. etc.
In trying to apply their “no war” instincts they went to great lenghts of reality blindness. There is little to distuinguish them from the lunatic left – on this topic.
(In general I have much respect and agreement for their opinions on most other matters).
And what have the “lunatic right” got to say on the topic.
And if we are all so against “vile dictatorships” that suppress democracy – when are we invading Manyamar?
One has to admit that on deeper investigation there is an awful amount of duplicity in the foreign policies of the American Administration. But of course, as libertarians, the readers of this blog would know that most governments are untrustworthy. So why some commentators place so much trust in the dictats of this one I will never understand.
It seems to be the case of some commentators that this administration can crap on anyone “as long as it isn’t me”. A truly libertarian stance? More nationalistic in my view.
Plus ca change, as the dissident “freedom”man might say…
P.S. Give ’em both barrels, Scott
Mad Dog, what has Mayamar got to do with anything?
In any event, of course one can admit straight off that govts act inconsistently. So what? In taking down Saddam and his vile regime, Bush and co. did the right thing in my book. I find it kind of interesting that a certain sort of “libertarian” finds this so hard to stomach.
As I have said in the past, I just cannot figure out why libertarians of isolationist hue pay so much respect to the sovereignty of nations irrespective of whether they are dictatorships or free states.
I think we need to recognize that MAD “worked” because we’re talking about two western cultures. Note that although Palestine would rather implode than agree to a peace deal that would insure its survival. It’s a lot easire for a the US to swallow its pride like we did when our Navy Pilots crashed in China than it is for Yasar Arafat or it was for Sadam.
Scott, Scott, Scott – try not mischaracterize other’s arguments. It really makes you look foolish and desperate.
If you cannot see that an attack on the US with an actual WMD (anthrax) and with the explosive equivalent of a WMD (the 747s) stands as refutation of your thesis that no one would attack the US with WMDs, then I can’t help you, bud. Changing the subject (then, guns and knives are WMDS, too!) doesn’t really help your case.
First of all, my point was that you’ve given no reason for someone w/ as much to lose as Saddam (and he would lose it) to attack us w/ a WMD, not that nobody on Earth would ever do so. Saddam seems to have shown himself to be enough of a surviver not to commit pointless suicide like that.
The fact that “somebody” mailed anthrax (and somebody other than Saddam attacked us on 9/11) doesn’t prove that Saddam would commit suicide by poison gassing Washington.
And I’m sorry, but I don’t buy 747 = WMD. I’m sure you’d call it a WMD if somebody kills 20 on a subway w/ poison gas (since chemical weapons are WMDs), so the whole “WMD equivalent” argument would ban guns w/ mags that hold 20 or more.
Nobody is trying to prevent anyone from getting “WMD equivalent” weapons by the definition you are using, if a 747 qualifies. You’re really, really reaching for something to back up your war. If Iraq had stockpiles of nasty bugs and chemicals, you probably wouldn’t be reduced to telling me I’ve ridden inside several weapons of mass destruction (OH MY GOD THERE”S A WMD FLYING OVER MY CITY RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!! EEEEKKKKKK!!!!!).
No offense Scott but most of your arguments are either completely off point or irrelevant.
Fact is that the argument was never that Saddam would personally use a WMD on America or it’s allies. It was that Saddam could sell/give it to proxies and allow them to use the WMDs. That Saddam had WMDs was never in doubt. Not by Clinton. Not by the UN. Not by the French, Germans or Russians. Not by the Republicans nor the Democrats. Saddam had WMDs because he has a past history of actually using them. Saddam had the capacity for WMDs because he had experienced scientists who had successfully made them. Saddam had WMDs because he still had dual-use plants that could produce them. Saddam had WMDs because he had military equipment that could deploy them.
That we haven’t found WMDs yet is meaningless simply because Iraq is not a small country. Additionally Saddam, like the fruitcake he is, evidently decided to use his entire bloody country as some sort of massive ammo dump. Most reasonable people would store military equipment, bombs and weapons in specific specially built facilities. Saddam evidently was the Iraqi equivalent of a redneck with a rusting car on the front lawn.
That there are 90+ known ammo dumps yet to be searched. That these ammo dumps are literally acres in size and must be searched by hand over each and every square foot makes the job even harder. Expect it to take time but the WMDs will be found.
Additionally there is a massive lie being continued by the Left that the *only* reason for invading was WMDs. This has never been the case. WMDs are the legal pretext, that is true, but it was stated by many officials in this administration that the humanitarian reasons also existed. This has been repeated endlessly but it never seems to quite percolate into the minds unwilling to listen. If you object to Iraq’s invasion on humanitarian grounds then you *must* also object to every other such operation for that same reason.
Regardless. The facts are as they are. While I won’t take up the issue of 747’s as WMD, which I’m rather leary of, there is a basic principle in there somewhere. At some point civilian transport will have the ability to inflict damage comensurate with a low yeild WMD. Perhaps in an age with active hypersonic suborbital spaceplanes or some such goofiness.
So while you might be overwhelmed by the beauty of your logic, frankly it’s a little more than insipid at best since you either misstate or ignore the facts as they are.
Even riskier – he’d have to trust someone else (something most tyrants don’t do well) not to screw up and leave a trail right back to him.
That Saddam had something substantial that he could hit us w/ in 45 minutes was in doubt, not that you could search the country and find a can of Raid or some rusted lab equipment.
Give it up – the US has had control of the country and top officials in custody for months and haven’t found squat, which is why RC Dean is reduced to saying 747s are WMD equivalents.
OHMYGOD THERE’S ANOTHER WMD EQUIVALENT FLYING RIGHT OVER MY HOUSE!!!!! MOMMIE!!!!!!!!
Lets scare RC Dean some more…..
Imagine Saddam with nukes. While he may have balked at firing them at us, he could almost certainly have used his arsenal to blackmail his neighbours, seizing their oil and territory, possibly even wiping out the state of Israel. And of course we would have been powerless to prevent him funding terror groups and brutalising his own people.
But then of course as so long as we are okay, who gives a s**t? The isolationist position can be nicely summed up as, “I’m alright Jack. Could the rest of the world please go away?”
And that is why I supported escalating our hostilities against Iraq. This was certainly about oil and who owns it. Saddam has tried to build a new Arab Empire with control over much of the oil in the region. Before we were aware of his motives, we (the US) supported his War with Iran, at the time a bigger enemy. Since, he has shown his ability to use WMD and attack his neighbors to control their economic resources.
Our involvement was to prevent him from taking hold of those resources as it may have an undesired effect on our economy if it did (Cato and some other right libertarians do not costing only about 1% of the US GDP which I guess is acceptable to them (but maybe not to those who lose jobs due to the contracted economy)). That was our interest in Iraq. Having a Saddam with a free and protected hand in the region was unacceptable and everyone knows that. What has been debated is whether force, international or unilateral was better or more sanctions and other forms of force were. No one will ever have the answer to that one. All I know is that Saddam did not live up to the agreement to end the first phase of the gulf war and had to be removed sooner rather than later. If someone can convince me that he would have been removed in 5 yrs or less starting last March I’d listen to alternatives. If that can’t be reasonably asserted I prefer the method used.
It is distinctly possible we would have had another North Korea within the next 5-10 years. This added to 40% of the world’s oil in the same region was a noxious combination that would have been unacceptable. Any links to terrorism, while concerning in and of itself, is secondary to the economic reality of the situation. This is why we don’t invade other countries with despots on thrones or invade every country with known or unknown ties to terrorism. The economics of the situation win out every time.
Just to be clear – I placed the fact that the 747 attack was the destructive equivalent of a tactical nuke on the table for the sole purpose of putting the lie to Scott’s claim that no one would attack the US with such weapons. It has happened, which makes it rather foolish to claim that the entire world is deterred from such attacks by American military predominance.
I suggest that it is far too long since Scott watched the footage of towers being destroyed, or listened to the soundtrack of the jumpers hitting the pavement.
Or was that all faked by the Bush administration on a back lot in Hollywood? Is it BUSH LIED!!! NOBODY DIED!?
BTW, I think toolkien’s analysis of the bigger economic and strategic picture is bang on. Saddam posed an intolerable risk in a number of ways, including both his regional amibitions, and the nexus his regime created between WMD and Islamist terrorist organizations.
How many times do I have to point out that the issue is whether Saddam had good enough survival instincts not to use a WMD on the US, not whether anybody else ever would? Why do you keep replacing Iraq w/ “the entire world” other than to simply lie? Can’t you defend your war and tell the truth at the same time?
Technically, using your definitions, didn’t American Airlines create “the nexus between WMD and Islamist terrorist organizations”?
Scott (and this is the last time I play with the troll, I promise) – I never said the 747s were WMD. I said they delivered the explosive equivalent of a WMD. Try to read and comprehend the English language – I am generally quite careful in the words I use.
You, in an attempt to divert attention from the gaping holes in your facts and logic, have overlooked the words I used to pretend that I said something I didn’t, so that you could ridicule a statement I never made, hoping no one would notice said gaping holes.
The 9/11 attacks proved the Islamists would hit us with whatever they could. Saddam had clear and long-standing ties to the Islamists, including what appears at this stage to be a distant but workable relationship with AQ, at a minimum. Saddam had WMD (tons of which are still unaccounted for). You apparently see no risk to the US worth responding to in the confluence of (a) a known bad actor and declared enemy of the US with tons of unaccounted for WMD and (b) an organization with the demonstrated will and ability to hit the US with whatever it could.
I regard that situation as an intolerable risk. Your apparent willingness to allow this situation to continue indefinitely says a great deal about your values, none of it good.
One thing that I’ve noted in some news reports is that the air tube in Saddam’s spider hole had a nonfunctioning fan. Could his disorientation and tractability be accounted by CO2 buildup? The theory that Saddam was deterrable assumes he was in his right mind at the time he surrendered. If he was short on oxygen, that might not have been the case.
In other words, this entire discussion might be going down the wrong track for lack of facts.
Toolkien, RC Dean and Ed, thanks for your excellent comments.
Context is everything in arguments like this. Deterrence theories can easily go wrong. I think the experience of the Cold War has led policymakers of various hues to ignore the risk of a country using terror groups as proxies. The Soviets were also not religious maniacs unafraid of death. MAD “worked” in a certain fashion, but that does not mean it could work in all cases. Does Scott think it always would work? What would he do if it ever failed?
Seriously, the possibility of deterrence failing is something that libertarians interested in foreign affairs have to confront. I am the first to admit this is not an easy issue, and also admit that pre-emption, as applied by Bush, is necessarily a better solution. But Scott and those who think like him have to be prepared to admit of such scenarios, rather than just evade the matter or change the subject, which seems to be a common habit on comment threads like this.
As I have said before, this sort of head-in-the-sand isolationism makes large chunks of the libertarian intellectual movement irrelevant. Get real.
If a WMD is defined by how much distruction it causes (hence the term “weapon of mass distruction“), and you’re claiming that a 747 is the explosive (and therefore distructive) equivalent of a WMD, then you’re saying that a 747 is a WMD. One leads logically (you remember logic don’t you? its what you tossed aside to support your government’s war) to the other.
If he was short on oxygen
Sadly, not quite short enough. Soon, though!
Not terribly convincing. That Saddam was “brave” in using other peoples lives but timid or cowardly as regards his own life is only the most obvious problem with Sciabarra’s argument.
I am confused as to why Scott Catanach is a “troll” yet R.C.Dean (or anyone else) is apparently not?