Conflicted about the Conflict: We Would Have Invaded Anyway

This week, the Butler Review was released in the United Kingdom, reiterating what has been coming out in the United States recently: that the intelligence agencies had reservations about weapon stockpiles, that Saddam Hussein was not an immediate threat, and that Blair (and Bush) pushed forward regardless.  On BBC Radio’s “World Service” program yesterday was an interview on the subject with Foreign Office minister Baroness Symons.

The original airing of the program doesn’t appear to be available any more.  It was 4:24 minutes long; the important part started at 3:30 and covered the last minute of the interview.  Fortunately, I transcribed some of that part…

(Symons) The crunch issue is, “If we knew then what we know now, would the decision over what we did in Iraq be the same?” and the answer to that is “Yes.”  Because as the Butler Report makes clear, Saddam had had chemical and biological weapons, he had had a nuclear weapons program, he had concealed them, he had used these weapons in the past.

(BBC Interviewer) If we’d known that there were no stockpiles, no weapons of mass destruction, we’d have invaded anyway?

(Symons) I think that the threat that was posed to us at the time was a threat that we could not have simply passed by.  Because the fact is that at the time, we were getting all these reports, not only about the belief that Saddam could be building up these stockpiles, but of course, as well, it was the coming together, as the Prime Minister made very clear in his statement, of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the terrorist threat.

[Online program ends here.]

In other words, “Yes.”  If we had known at the time that there were no weapons of mass destruction, we (or at least the United Kingdom, and I think it’s safe to say the United States by extension, since the UK wouldn’t have done it without us) would have invaded Iraq anyway.

In short, the war was about deposing Saddam.  And nothing else.

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Updated on March 10, 2011
 

Conflicted about the Conflict: Big Deal

There has been a big hoopla over the fact that the Philippines has decided to pull its Coalition forces out of Iraq in order to secure the release of one of their people held hostage.

According to this site (currently with information from February 2007), that’s going to be a total of 43 people removed (down already from 51).  Forty-three!  Big fucking deal!  (In fact, the only Coalition members with fewer personnel in Iraq are Norway, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, and Moldova.  Tonga has about the same number as the Philippines; they only just arrived on July 4.  Oh, and of course Spain has pulled theirs out already, and Honduras, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua are listed with none present.)

On the other hand, that one hostage equates to some 2% of the Philippine forces there.  If the United States had 2000 or more of our forces held hostage — I’m not sure just what the current number of troops in Iraq is, but it’s somewhere above 100,000 as I recall — then maybe we would do the same.  (Or maybe just when we reach that number of deaths.  We’re only at some 881 today.  Whoops, wait, that was last Friday.  The number is probably higher by now.)

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Updated on July 15, 2004

Updated on March 9, 2011
 

Conflicted about the Conflict: Say Cheese!

I heard an interesting call on talk radio this morning, pertaining to the events and photos from Abu Ghraib prison.

The gist of it was this: at least back in the Viet Nam era, soldiers were put through some training (called “SEAR”, I think he said) regarding what might happen if they were captured by the enemy.  The first thing that happened in this training was that they were stripped naked.  Then they were physically beaten. Then they suffered other humiliating experiences intended to “break” them (or since this was training, to help them prevent being broken).

Not that it excuses the atrocities here, but if this sort of training is taken to heart, then it also does the reverse and trains people in what to do when being put in charge of prisoners of war.

Understanding the causes of events like this is the best way to prevent them from recurring.

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Updated on January 25, 2011

SERE Training: Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape

Conflicted about the Conflict: Body Counts

I’ve been hearing occasional numbers batted around about the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq since the war “ended” almost a year ago.  The last number I read was 630, but I can’t pin a date on it, identify the breakdown of in-combat vs. other, or tell how many were soldiers and how many were civilians.

The term usually used for this is “casualties”.

That’s not accurate, though.  “Casualty” indicates those injured as well as those killed.  With all the focus in the past couple days about John Kerry’s war record (at least he has one!) and whether he really “earned” the first Purple Heart, you’d think we’d be focusing a bit more on accuracy in our terminology.

How many of our soldiers have received head wounds?

How many have lost a limb?  Or even just broken one?

Gone blind or deaf?

Nerve damage from crushed hands?

Lung damage from fumes and smoke and dust and other particulate matter?

Severe burns?

Exposure to caustic materials?

How many are casualties omitted from the numbers we’re being told, because the soldier’s life was merely permanently ruined rather than completely ended?  Why do we accept that only deaths are important enough to tally?

According to AntiWar.com, it’s almost 4000 (as of April 22, 2004).  I’m not sure just what their numbers are drawn from, but they link to a page at the Department of Defense which tags 566 killed since May 1, 2003 (almost 400 Killed in Action) and 3100 wounded (with just under 2000 not returned to duty in three days).

We’ve got about 130,000 troops in Iraq right now.  A little under one-half of 1% have been killed, and 2.4% have been wounded.  That’s almost one soldier in 40.

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Updated on April 23, 2004

I’m obviously not alone in the recognition of this discrepancy in the numbers that get pushed at us and the greater impact on our troops’ bodies.  This week, both Doonesbury and Get Fuzzy have moved to the issue of seriously-wounded-yet-not-killed soldiers.

Updated on January 21, 2011

The current numbers from AntiWar.com say almost 4300 American deaths (3400 in combat) since “Mission Accomplished”, and almost 33,000 American wounded as the “official” number.  No idea how many non-American dead and wounded.

Conflicted about the Conflict: Ace in the Hole

I’m sure it’s purely coincidence.

There’s been this rumor for some time that the U.S. government has actually had both Saddam and Osama for a while, just waiting to announce their capture.  And now they have announced that they have caught Saddam.

Since a story like this can be expected to have good for just over a week, the date of Saddam’s capture looks suspicious: twelve days before Christmas and capture on a Saturday ensures that the story keeps hitting strong for the first couple business days following, and then slopes off just right to ensure that people have a good feeling about the conflict and the Troops (and the President, of course) right up to and thus through Christmas.

A few days earlier and there would have been a news focus gap before Christmas during which something anti-Bush could have snuck in.  A few days later, and the media would have had to force the story to die off quickly so as to not impact the feel-good crap that has to be projected for Christmas.  (Can’t have war impact the holidays!)  A few days further yet and it would have had to be reported at Christmas, which would be a double-big no-no.

Okay, fine, so they caught him.  Now would you please get the country stations to stop playing that damn Toby Keith song, “American Soldier”, every time I turn around?  How about a nice piece of Lee Greenwood über-patriotism instead?

[Weblog title reference: Hussein was the Ace of Spades in the deck of “most wanted” cards issues by the U.S. military, and Hussein was found in a “spider hole.”  “Ace in the Hole” is a country song by George Strait.]

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Updated on October 27, 2010
 

Conflicted about the Conflict: Giving Thanks

On Thanksgiving Day, President Bush made a covert visit to Iraq, to have Thanksgiving dinner with a selected group of soldiers.  The event was done under heavy security, apparently with many in the White House itself not aware of what was happening, nor the President’s own family, and only a select group of aides and reporters were taken along.

To hear Talk Radio go on about it for the next few days, you would have thought he bit the head off a puppy on live television.  The lefties ranted about how the event was a superficial photo op, pure politics.  The righties ranted about how Bush was a “stud” for doing this (yes, that term was used) and how the lefties were just trying to co-opt the event.  (And then they went on to decry Hilary Clinton’s trip to Afghanistan as superficial photo op, pure politics.  And the same thing about Howard Dean and his brother’s remains in Laos.)

In reality, they are both right.

We’re less than a year out from the next Presidential election.  Everything that Bush does is geared for maximal political effect.  The administration wants to direct and control the media as much as possible, and to get big impact out of every event they can.  Don’t be surprised to see further big “events” occur every couple months — at Christmas, at Memorial Day, at July 4th — any time that Bush & Co. see their numbers needing to be propped up.  Expect most of these to involve the Troops, which plays to both the pro-War side and the “Support the Troops” folks.

At the same time, everything that the Democrat candidates do is also geared for maximal political effect.  (In the Dean case, the 30th anniversary of the death of his brother was in mid-December, but Thanksgiving week plays better.)  Nothing will be done without the impacts — both Democrat-positive and Republican-negative — being carefully scoped out, maximized or minimized, and targeted to where the largest impact will be.  Expect to also see some attempts by both sides to pre-empt the stunts of the other.

On the other hand, Bush’s visit to the soldiers in Iraq was, without a doubt, the right (ahem) thing to do.  Discarding the political photo op side of things, it was a brave action to visit a strife zone like that, and it is bound to be a morale boost for the Troops, to know that the President is willing to take that sort of an action and show his direct support for them.  (I’ll stop short of calling Bush a “stud”, though.)

(As for Hillary’s visit to the Troops in Afghanistan, some pundits said it was yet another overture on her part to test the waters for a 2004 Presidential bid, but I think that she would need to have declared by now if she was going to do that.  It was definitely a photo op, and arguably a really good thing to do for the morale of the Troops who are being forgotten about in Afghanistan, what with 99.9% of the media focus having turned to Iraq for the past year.  I can’t help wonder, though, if she didn’t somehow get wind of Bush’s trip, and did hers to suck some of the wind from his sails.)

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Updated on October 22, 2010
 

Conflicted about the Conflict: Reporters

I’m torn as to whether “embedded journalists” are a good thing.

On the one hand, with today’s technology, we are getting a never-before-available view of the war.  (One radio reporter I heard spoke of seeing a report on NBC about an artillery strike being requested on a particular position, then flipped to CNN and saw a reporter with an artillery unit talking about a large strike that had just been launched, and then flipped back to NBC where the first reporter was able to talk about the strike as it hit.)

Not that I’m worried that we are only seeing the small picture, fractured through lots of sets of eyes, mind you; the big picture is present as well.  We are also getting a greater feel for the individuals involved in the war.  And while embedding puts the journalists much closer to the action, the government thus also knows where they are so as to not worry as much about them.

On the other hand, while embedding puts the journalists much closer to the action, the government thus also knows where they are, which potentially gives a greater level of control over whom has access to what information.  Embedding may also introduce a bias: by increasing the human factor, putting the journalists through the same training and billeting them right alongside the soldiers may taint what those reporters comment on.  Knowing that they have to face these soldiers at mess and in the tents, the journalists will be unlikely to comment negatively on the units they are with, and may be less likely to comment negatively about anything related to the military.

A related concern is the connection made to those journalists themselves.  Michael Kelly was the first embedded journalist killed during the conflict.  For a day, his name and picture were everywhere (and then the ever-bored media moved on).  But there had been a couple other, non-embedded and non-American journalists killed in the conflict before him.  That was mentioned a couple times, but who they were and where they were from?  Who cares, it seems.  And how about the journalists killed in the attack on the Palestine Hotel?  It turns out that they were from the Ukraine (working for Reuters) and Spain, but damned if you could find that out from the (radio) news broadcasts.  They weren’t American and they certainly weren’t embedded, so they were hardly worth a passing mention.

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Updated on July 21, 2010

Fixed links.

Conflicted about the Conflict: Protests II

Two more observations about the opposition to the anti-war protests…

• A recurring comment from the conservative side of things is “If you don’t like the decisions made by your elected representatives, then vote them out of office.”  Stepping gingerly over the mushy cow patty of the last presidential election (since I’ve already addressed it), we should be sure to include the unspoken part of that retort: “Which won’t be for another two years.”  The idea that those who are opposed to the war (or indeed to any policies of the current administration) should have no mechanism for expressing their displeasure other than electioneering is offensive.
• Nearly as offensive, some conservative talk jocks have been using the “vote them out next time” idea in combination with low voter turnouts at the mid-term election to insinuate that the protestors didn’t (bother to) vote in the elections which put Bush and the Republican-controlled congress in power, and thus that their complaints are invalid, en masse.  Alas, there is a grain of truth to that, since it is largely the younger crowd doing (and able to do, for various reasons) the protests, and that age group typically does have lower voter turnout levels.  Of course, large numbers of the protestors did vote, but it doesn’t behoove the talk jocks to recognize that.
• Another comment I’ve encountered a couple times is one paraphrased as “The protestors should think long and hard about just who their protest helps.”  When I heard this on the radio, the speaker almost immediately back-pedaled away from the idea that the protestors should not (be allowed to) protest.  But think about implications of that comment, about the chain of thought the person is trying to lead us down:
  

  Anti-war protests hurt American soldier morale
  …which lessens the effectiveness of our troops
  …which gives aid and comfort to the enemy
  …which means that anti-war protests are treason.

  Despite the date this entry was originally posted, this is no April Fool.  Treason is exactly the conclusion which such a comment is intended to imply.

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Updated on April 7, 2003

Updated on July 20, 2010

Formatting changes for better readability.

Conflicted about the Conflict: Protests

I’m not one to participate in protest marches and sit-ins and so forth.  It’s not that I don’t believe in their value and power, just that they aren’t for me.  I did participate in one, back in 1989 or 1990, a gay rights march at the University of Oregon, but that’s it.  (Or maybe it is that I don’t believe in their value and power, that they don’t have enough.  I don’t join them because I have better things to do.  “Better” meaning selfishly personal things.)

Nonetheless, three observations about the anti-war protests.  Or perhaps about the opposition to them…

• I read a lot these days about people opposed to the anti-war “Support the Troops” protestors, focusing on the idea that now that we are engaged in the conflict, bringing the troops home (pulling out) is not an option.  This is of course a common response (by people on any side of the question) to protestors opposed to your view: dismiss them by targeting only the most surface view of the opposition’s claims rather than seeking any real meaning.
  
  In his recent column in The Stranger, Josh Feit does this, but he also includes the nugget of truth that is at the core of this “Support the Troops” anti-war stance.  Feit writes, commenting on the fallout of the Vietnam Conflict:
  

  “We could’ve won that war, the revisionists insisted, if only everyone had supported our troops.  It was a neatly effective way of blaming the Vietnam disaster on the people who were right all along--the protesters--while at the same time exonerating the politicians who led us off the cliff.”

  In other words, it is easy to blame the war, deaths (both military and civilian), and assorted atrocities on the people doing the actual fighting, but we should not.  (Although we shouldn’t exonerate them for anything bad that happens because they were “just following orders,” either.)  “Support the Troops” really means “Don’t blame the soldiers, blame the politicians who got us all into this mess.”
   
• Conservative commentators have denounced many of the protests and the protestors as being anti-Bush more than (or rather than) anti-war.  That is, the protestors don’t really care about the war issue, but are instead carrying on the “Bush didn’t win the election” fight, years after the fact.  I think the commentators are partly right: that is what a portion of the protestors are all het up about, but it is only a portion.  Those same commentators tend to then launch into yet another diatribe about how everything wrong with the country is Bill Clinton’s fault, which leaves you asking just which group can’t get past the politics of a few years back.
  
  (Of course, I do have a brief comment on the election, summed up best by a comment I heard a couple weeks ago: “Bush stole the election fair and square.”  If the popular and electoral numbers had been shifted just enough in the 2000 election to reverse the Democrat and Republican results and court decisions, you know that the Republicans would still be howling about disenfranchisement and “every vote must count” and the Democrats would be saying “move on” and “just get over it”.)
   
• The backlash against the anti-war protestors is taking a disturbing turn, lately, and it’s one that I’ve encountered from both the liberal and conservative sides of the spectrum (that should be enough to scare you right off the bat).  And that is that the anti-war protestors should shut up and go home.
  
  From the conservative side, the complaint comes fairly readily and obviously, and has been coming since well before the fighting actually started: your protests aren’t going to do any good, you aren’t going to change the President’s mind, you might as well give up.  Frankly, I wouldn’t expect anything less from Rush Limbaugh (et al), as this group is solidly behind the President (and company).  This is the same group that pushes high approval ratings for the President and the war and complains about a massive liberal bias in the media; it is their job to pump up how good their side is and pooh-pooh the strength of their opponents, especially when preaching to their side of the choir.
  
  But from the liberal side, though, I’m hearing almost the same thing: the troops are already in battle, the President isn’t going to pull them out, you might as well give up.  I fear that the biggest part of this is just boredom: “Oh, God.  Not another protest.  Will you people please just give it a rest?”  But there may also be a facet where the unstated goal is to have the protestors let everything slide for a while but come back with a vengeance in a few months or even a year or two (however long is needed), after the general population’s tolerance for the war will have slacked off significantly, at which point maybe the protests can make a bigger impact.
  
  The boredom angle flows into the “wait a while” one, perhaps: the anti-war movement risks burning itself out and wearing out its welcome in the media.  By being a constant presence, it may become “noise” which we (and the media) will simply stop paying attention to.  The more you repeat the same thing, the less anyone hears it.  God knows, this has already happened with the war news: the same picture of a distant burning something in Baghdad for an hour or more, with a dozen different talking heads telling us nothing new; you can get the entire day’s war news in five minutes, but it’s the only thing on, every channel, all day long.  Because heaven forbid some station miss a breaking item.

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Updated on July 7, 2010
 

Conflicted about the Conflict: I Hate America

I hate America.

Well, it’s true.  It must be: Rush Limbaugh says so.  All the conservative radio talk jocks say so.  If you’re a liberal and you’re against the war and you oppose the President, why there’s simply no other answer.  “If you’re not with us, you’re against us, and since we love America, you must hate it.”

This subject is what prompted me to start this WebLog in the first place.  It just took me a while to get around to typing it up.

For shits and giggles, though, let’s assume they are right.  If I do hate America, what is it I actually hate?  It’s unlikely to be the land itself, with its purple mountains majesty and fruited plains; I don’t hate physical things.  That’s America the place; it’s America as an idea or an image which I must hate.

So what is America-the-image?  Let’s look at it how the rest of the world does.  “America” is a land of dreams and promises and potential for success.  “America” is Hollywood.  “America” is McDonalds and Starbucks.  “America” is a country which thumbs its nose at the United Nations.  “America” is a country which won’t sign the Kyoto Accords, which backs out of the ABM Treaty, and which won’t permit gays and lesbians to serve in its military.  “America” is George Bush and Colin Powell and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

As an aside, I note that I am guilty of conflating Saddam Hussein and Iraq in my own writing.  The leader and the nation are not the same, but our national media and rhetoric make them the same to the point that even those of us who know better can only separate the two with difficulty.  It is thus very true that to the rest of the world, “America” is George Bush, and vice versa.  The Seattle Weekly had a take on this in Geov Parrish’s “Dubya War Glossary” from their March 19, 2003 issue:

Saddam Hussein n: The nation of Iraq, pop. 224,002,000 (2002 est.); area 172,476 sq. mi. (slightly larger than California), centered on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Southwest Asia, previously known as Persia and Mesopotamia; one of the oldest continually civilized regions in the world.  “Iraq” and “Saddam Hussein” are generally used interchangeably; e.g., “We’re going to bomb the hell out of Saddam Hussein.”

To the rest of the world, “America” is a big bully which likes to throw its weight around, both monetarily and militarily; a bully which insists that everyone else behave according to its whims.  It’s no wonder I hate America.  Nobody loves a bully.

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Updated on July 2, 2010

Added link to a story not avaialble online when entry was originally written.

Conflicted about the Conflict: Show of Strength

I heard a bit of pro-war commentary over the weekend which made me nod in agreement.

In a recent interview with an Afghan warlord in a British Arab-language newspaper, a man who has also done training camps for Al Qaeda, the interviewee spoke of having lots of recruits currently coming in for training, but that he expected an abrupt halt to the influx once America started to attack Iraq.  Basically, terrorist attacks like September 11 come because they can, because we (America, the West) are perceived as weak.  The terrorists believe that they can get away with it, that we won’t hit back.

(There is certainly support for that belief from the past decade, I’ll admit.  Clinton wasn’t great in that regard.)

Thus, the attack on Afghanistan was proving that we will slap back… once, and quickly.  The attack on Iraq, though, is proof that we won’t slap back only in response but as a continued show of strength.  Therefore, pulling back from Iraq would demonstrate that we have no balls, no willingness to follow through.  By going forward with the attack, we show our strength and commitment to a cause.  And that will serve both to impress the Arab world and to cow would-be recruits.

There is some good logic there.  But it is still logic which supports taking some action, not necessarily this one, in this way, at this time.
 

Conflicted about the Conflict: Support the Troops

The pro-war crowd cannot (will not) see the difference between support for the troops (the people) and support for the war (the action).  This allows them to equate being anti-war (specifically anti-this-war, but anti-war in general) to being anti-America.

The best way to “support our troops” is to bring them home.  All of them.  Alive.  As soon as possible.
 

Conflicted about the Conflict: Question Authority

I listen to talk radio a lot while driving to and from work, to and from the bars, and so on.  I listen to both liberal (KIRO and the NPR affiliate KUOW) and conservative (KVI).  I get a broader picture of things that way, and it is useful to know what those you disagree with are saying in order to better respond to them.  So yes, I even listen to Rush Limbaugh.

Almost certainly the scariest thing I have heard in the build-up to this attack on Iraq has been on the conservative talk radio stations, with people calling in to say “How dare people question what President Bush is doing!”  (One woman said almost exactly that.)

Excuse me?  Even if we agree with the President’s actions and motives, and those of his administration, how dare we act like passive sheep and simply accept what is being done?  Even if we question and come back with the answer that everything is okay and proper, it is our duty as American citizens to question, investigate, and decide for ourselves.

How dare we not question what is being done?
 

Conflicted about the Conflict: Stated Reasons for War

Probably the biggest concern I’ve had about the impending (and now occurring) conflict is the question of why.  What are our actual reasons for attacking Iraq?  (Make that our stated reasons.  More about our actual reasons later.)

The first is that “Saddam is a threat.”  To whom?  He isn’t a threat to us; even if he does have “weapons of mass destruction,” he doesn’t have the delivery systems to get them to North America.  Discarding (see this post) the possibility of his passing such weapons on to those who could use them against American interests domestically or abroad, the weaponry at Saddam’s disposal is not a significant threat to the United States.  Since he has not used such weapons in the past ten years, there is little reason to expect him to attack us now.

Second is that he could be a threat, sometime down the line, in a year or ten.  If he acquires a powerful delivery system.  If he develops a nuclear device.  If pigs had wings, we’d have to take them down before they could come into our airspace, too.  “If” is a good reason to take preventative measures — treaties, sanctions, United Nations resolutions, inspections — but it is a lousy reason to do a first strike.  Striking against Saddam without real provocation, for what he could do someday, opens the door to take on anyone else: Iran, Indonesia, Columbia, France, or Canada.

(As a side to the “threat” angle, it is repeatedly mentioned that he used nerve gas on his own people.  This was on the Kurds, who are Iraqi by dint of living in the artificially created national boundaries, but by no means are they Saddam Hussein’s “people” in any other sense.  It was also a single incident, and it occurred some fifteen years ago.  Not that we should ignore that this occurred, but we should recognize that it was a one-time event that happened before the last Gulf War, and thus we should give it no more attention than it really deserves.)

The third stated reason is that Iraq has not complied with the United Nations disarmament resolutions passed over a decade ago.  This one I can actually get behind, to a degree.  The purpose of weapons inspectors isn’t to enforce the disarmament but to inspect, to find out if compliance has occurred.  We should have pushed matters years ago, when the inspectors were kicked out.  When the Iraqi report delivered to the United Nations was obviously invalid, the United Nations should have moved on things.  The moment the inspectors found missiles or anthrax or whatever, the United Nations should have moved on things.  But the United Nations did not, and they did not via a democratic process.  The United States should not go around the United Nations’ collective back even if we disagree with their decision to drag things out further.  By doing so, by thumbing our nose at the rest of the world, we prove ourselves to be the bully they already believe us to be.  (And if we are setting ourselves up as the world’s police force, using this noncompliance as a reason to go to war, we must be consistent and go after every nation which is in violation of such resolutions.  Israel probably needs to be next, not North Korea.)

The fourth “reason” for attacking Iraq is humanitarian reasons, to stop Saddam Hussein from torturing his citizens. (The bit I heard today is that people who speak out against Saddam are forced to watch their children get dropped feet-first into a plastic shredder.  Woo!)  Yes, there undoubtedly are tragic amounts of human rights abuse and torture and such going on today… just like for the past decade or three, during which we’ve not been worked up over it sufficiently to make a move on Saddam.  Not to mention the vast number of other places in the world where we know such activities occur and we do nothing about them.  This reason is a red herring (despite Colin Powell talking it up as a reason a couple weeks ago); it has only been presented for the purpose of convincing some moderates and even lefties to support the attack (out of liberal guilt) who would not be convinced on other grounds.

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Updated on July 1, 2010
 

Conflicted about the Conflict: Preventative Measures

Sure to be the first of many parts of my ongoing thoughts about the (currently) upcoming war on Iraq.  The short of it is that am I opposed to the war in general terms — I’m opposed to war period — but there are lots of pieces which need to be examined along the way.  The anti-war protestors are not always right.

One of the reasons the Bush Administration keeps claiming as a need to go to war on Iraq (at this point, potentially go to war, if Iraq doesn’t disarm; more on that in a later item) is the threat of potential terrorism.  The fear not that Iraq itself will launch terrorist attacks on the United States, it’s citizens, or it’s allies, but that any “weapons of mass destruction” they have might get passed to (sold, given, stolen by) terrorist groups and then used by those groups.  Aiding and abetting, if you will.

This plays heavily off our fears from September 11, and the Bush Administration (and with them, the media outlets — liberal and conservative both — who carry the Bush Administration’s comments and then expound on them) wants us to think that Saddam Hussein will deal directly with Al Qaeda.  Al Qaeda is something of a boogie man these days, the only terrorist organization (maybe along with Hamas) which Americans can be expected to keep in our heads; all terrorists therefore collapse into the specter of Osama bin Laden.

The Bush Administration has revealed several specious (at best) “connections” between Iraq and Al Qaeda, almost desperately trying to give Americans a “smoking gun” reason for us to be in favor of going to war on Iraq.  At the same time, the media has tracked out these same “connections” and found very little to run with, and one major thing to run away from: Al Qaeda considers the secular Iraq to be an enemy (albeit not as significant a one as the United States).  And thus the likelihood of Iraq giving weapons to Al Qaeda drifts away like smoke.  (And the same would be true with any fundamentalist religious terrorist group: they are not going to make deals with a non-religious government, because such a government is their enemy.)

Occasional mentions are also made of Saddam Hussein supporting Palestinian terrorists — Hussein is anti-Israeli — but I have not not heard fears voiced that he would supply “weapons of mass destruction” to them.  And since he already has established connections there — donating money to the families of suicide bombers — such transactions would at least make sense.  That we don’t hear howling about that possibility seems to give the lie to fears about him supplying other terrorists with weapons.

In the end, going to war because of something a foreign power might do someday — not have done, but might do — and further might do with weapons they may not have and may not even be developing or trying to acquire, that doesn’t strike me as a good reason to attack someone.  With this rationalization for prevention of potential events, the door is left open to attack anyone at any time.

France, for example.  They are opposing us in the United Nations Security Council (which marks them as a potential enemy), and they have nuclear capabilities.  They could, at some point (tomorrow, next year, next century) pass weapons (nuclear, radiological, biological, chemical) to groups which are actively antagonistic to United States interests (terrorists, that is, although just what that term means is open to interpretation; could that include Quebecois separatists, right on our northern border?).  Perhaps France should be next in line after Iraq, North Korea, and Iran?  Maybe we can’t afford to wait that long?

Today the oil, tomorrow the wine!

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Updated on June 26, 2010

Fixed punctuation and added a word for reading clarity.