No. There's no benign international community that simply doesn't have its act together. Many countries are happy to sell weapons and nuclear facilities to the highest bidder without regard to how they will be used. It's not just the Russians providing nuclear technology to Iran or China selling missiles to Korea. Consider Libya being elected chair of the UN Human Rights Committee and Sudan sitting on the same committee as they send Arab militias to slaughter black Africans. Consider the French arming the Hutus as they prepared to slaughter the Tutsis in Rwanda.
So this wonderful club of nations gets together and they are ostensibly tasked with preventing the next holocaust or the next Rwanda. Looked at in this light, it's not surprising that they don't really give a shit.
Enter the United States. Not exactly the United States of the Cold War and before that happily supported dictators in Latin America and elsewhere for strategic and business reasons. Consider where the US has applied it's forces since the Soviet Union collapsed. Under Bush I, Somalia. An ill-fated, but generally well intentioned effort to stop thugs perpetrating an atrocity of starvation. Under Clinton, the NATO intervention in Kosovo. Under Bush II, the replacement of the Taliban with the first popularly elected (and truly popular) President in Afghanistan's history. While other nations have been happy to deal with the most heinous regimes in the world, has any nation taken more action or pushed harder in recent times than the US for sanctions or military action against nations either oppressive or committing atrocities? (Now in the interest of balance, I grant that the US has probably also done something objectionable in this regard in the post-Reagan era, but since nothing comes to mind, I'll leave it to my readers to fill in the gaps.)
And so we come inevitably to Iraq. The foreign policy question of our time. Now as I said in my previous post, I was in favor of action against the Saddam Hussein regime long before the axis of evil speech. And I'm talking on human rights grounds. But how to do that? No easy solution. Then along comes Bush II, gunning for Iraq for their own reasons. Saddam Hussein, they see as aggressive (attacked Iran and Kuwait), hostile to US interests like Israel and Saudi Arabia, shooting at US warplanes with impunity (a particular pet peeve of Rumsfeld), hiding and developing weapons of mass destruction (yes, they believed that) and violating UN resolutions in doing so, supporting suicide bombers against Israel, and besides, he tried to kill Bush II's father. Probably wouldn't hurt either to have a pro-US government for future oil contracts. And while human rights in Iraq is not a big concern of the Bush administration, it is a factor, it lends sympathy to their cause, will make the Iraqis grateful in the post-Saddam era, and they really do believe in this transformed middle east thing. The basic conclusion is that Iraq sucks, it ain't gonna get better, and it could get a heck of a lot worse if Saddam's left to build weapons of mass destruction. Part of this is the post 9/11 thing. We let al-Qaeda sit and look what happened. Let's not let Saddam sit until he comes up with his own surprises. And another thing, the neo-cons think the US is perceived as a paper tiger. No real response to the first world trade center bombing, no real response to the Cole bombing, ran out of Somalia when a few boys were killed, no troops on the ground in Kosovo. The neo-cons want to make it clear to those who would oppose the US that we are willing and able to kick butt; they think that would make the world a better place.
Now I take a break from the main story here to consider the above reasons for war. You may not agree with them. You make think they're bad policy. You may think that there are lots of reasons to attack lots of countries and you don't want to go there. No problem. In my experience, the critics of the war don't just disagree. They think it's idiotic, imperialistic, greedy, warmongering, you name it. If you feel that way, get off it. Take a deep breath. I know you've been holding on to your anger for a long time and it's hard to let it go. Take another deep breath. Calm now? The causes for war are not stupid or evil. You just disagree with them.
So the Bush administration is ready to roll. They figure they'll use the violation of UN sanctions and violations of the Gulf War treaty (WMD and shooting at US planes enforcing the no fly zones) as pretext and just do it. Colin Powell says "Wait just a minute boys, the world and the Arab states will go ballistic if we do this on our own. Let's take it to the UN." So Colin's got a point and every nation will have to agree in public that they're against Iraq having WMD's and Saddam will inevitably resist inspections and we'll get to go to war anyway. OK. So the public reason for all this is WMD, the only thing everyone can agree on. So Bush gets Congress to back him, goes to the UN and says, "Enforce your resolution or lose credibility." The UN's not liking this. They'd much prefer to quietly ignore their own resolutions and do business with Saddam, but they've been called out and no one wants to be alone in saying they're against WMD inspections in Iraq. Unanimous vote for new inspections and "serious consequences." Bush moves massive force to the Gulf. He'll pressure Saddam until either they find WMD or Saddam's resistance to the inspections allows the go ahead for invasion. (to be continued)
