Who cares what you think?

As President George W. Bush said to a rude whiner

The Old Mole was clearing out some boxes in the attic this morning when he came across a printout of an email exchange he had with a colleague, Paul M., way back in March 2003.

Thinking it might be of interest to those following current events, I post it here, lightly edited for clarity, and containing a few relevant hyperlinks.

Oh, and if it seems that the Old Mole got in the last word, he did. PM made no further comment (and OM got to do the edits) —but maybe PM’ll pick up the thread again. About where we left off 22 years ago.

----- Original Message -----
From: OM
To: PM
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 9:06 AM
Subject: Re: Please Delete if You Favor War

OM: Paul, Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I have nothing to say in favor of Sadaam or his thug regime, whose disappearance will indeed be a clear redeeming aspect of what is unfolding. But, as you acknowledge, the demerits of Sadaam do not settle the question of the justifiability —much less the prudence—of making war without broad multilateral support.

PM: 35+ nations is pretty multilateral.

OM: I take this to be a quibble about what constitutes "multilaterality.” Shall we agree that it is a concept that admits of degrees, and that the degree of international support this war has received is far less than what the Administration had hoped, and far less than any comparable initiative, including the liberation of Kuwait and the intervention in the Balkans —or do you deny that? Do you deny that the US failed to muster even majority support in the Security Council and that the Administration's scapegoating of France was a deliberate obfuscation of this fact? Do you deny that the US has failed to secure the support of NATO, the alliance that secured the peace for over 40 years in Europe [sic], or that the US has failed even to gain the support of its neighbors to its immediate north and south, Canada and Mexico?

The Kosovo case was one in which there was broad multilateral support for humanitarian intervention in a bloody and genocidal local conflict. That kind of support is lacking here.

PM: The UN didn't back the bombing of Serbia and neither did Russia or China. I don't think French approval is a sin qua non for humanitarian intervention.

OM: But NATO did. You avoid the point that the US has turned its back to its traditional Atlantic alliances. You also avoid the point that in the Balkans there was an ongoing genocide.

Admittedly, there is only a difference of degree between retail and wholesale slaughter, but this is a difference that has to be counted as significant unless each and every civil injustice is to be elevated to the status of a sufficient justifier of humanitarian intervention. Surely you will admit that that would be a dangerous confusion.

***

OM: This is not a question of condemning those in uniform who are risking their lives to remove Sadaam.

PM: Yes it is and it is important that protesters understand the implications and ramifications of their actions. When you condemn the Commander-in Chief and claim he is pursuing an "unjustified" and "illegal" war, you are branding our troops as henchmen. I've seen signs at these protests calling Bush a Nazi —this tells our servicemen and women that they are no better than the stormtroopers who carried out Hitler's evil plans. Please don’t be so naive as to pretend that you can separate your criticism of Bush from those who willingly follow his orders. Don't insult them by suggesting that they are only stupid, innocent pawns in Bush’s illegal and unjustified campaign.

OM: The Nuremberg defense, to my knowledge has never been nor should ever be denied to ordinary soldiers observing the Geneva Accords. Is this a question of my naivete or your hyperbole?

***

PM: International law on this issue is so unstable and politicized as to be useless. In 1991, for example, Russia abstained rather than vetoed the action against Saddam only because we paid them off —some legitimacy[!] Had we refused to purchase their abstention, would the liberation of Kuwait have been “illegal?”

OM: You are suggesting that international law "on this issue" is unstable, politicized and useless, and to establish this proposition you offer the example of the US paying the Russians to abstain in 1991. Why the qualification "on this issue"? You and I both know that money influences legislation at every level, from the UN down to the Atlanta City Council. All law, as you well know, is "unstable and politicized" —but you, in this single case, draw the dire conclusion that it is therefore "useless.”· Why the restriction to "this issue”?…

No one can sensibly claim that the US is acting in self-defense, nor that it is acting with UN support. You suggest that this is a justifiable humanitarian intervention on behalf of Sadaam's future victims. I think that that is the best case that can be made for intervention, but the fact is that Sadaam’s regime has not recently been conducting genocide against his own people…

PM: Thanks in large part to the no fly zones. But Saddam’s terror network still maintains its brutal hold on the Iraqi people. The BBC reported the other day that a Kurdish woman was caught smuggling kerosene from Iraq into the Kurd territory. She was doused in the kerosene and set afire as a message to other would be smugglers.

OM: So the "no fly" zones worked? Containment was working, but failed to eliminate human rights abuses? As deplorable as any human rights abuse is, are you willing to say that any nation is justified in attacking any other nation to prevent human rights abuses of whatever magnitude? If not, what principle are you implicitly appealing to, to justify this intervention, and how do you propose that it be administered?

***

OM: [Sadaam] does not present a regional much less a global threat…

PM: Perhaps he does not pose as much of a conventional threat as he used to but this only encourages his development of non conventional means to terrorize his neighbors and "enemies." When conventional force failed Saddam in Kuwait. he ignited Kuwait's oil fields. An act of sheer madness. Such a psychopath, armed with the means to kill and destroy, will always be a threat.

OM: So ... he's not a threat, but he was a threat and he could become a threat again, so he's a threat after all ...who has to be eliminated no matter the cost. Am I following you correctly? Isn’t a sense of proximity and proportion needed here?…

UN inspections were —until they had to be halted due to the impatience of the governments of US, the UK, and Spain— steadily reducing Iraq's depleted arsenal even further.

PM: Destroying a few dozen Al Samoud missiles is hardly disarmament. The inspections were doomed to failure the moment Saddam declared that Iraq had no WMD. These weapons and their precursors are so easy to hide. Recall that Saddam long claimed that he had no biological weapons until his son-in-law defected and blew the whistle. He was lured back to Iraq and shot. A message to others who would disclose the truth about Saddam’s programs. But as you correctly noted, although I believe that Saddam has WMD, I don't rely on that fact to justify this intervention.

OM: Unless I'm mistaken, this very son-in-law had while in the West declared that those WMD had been destroyed. Hadn't he in fact “disclosed the truth about Saddam’s programs,” as you state?

***

OM: In celebrating the liberation of Iraq, have you any basis for confidence that the people of Iraq and that region will have better prospects in the aftermath of this war?

PM: I have great confidence that the succeeding regime, supported by the coalition and the UN, will be substantially more humane than Saddam’s reign of terror. It could hardly be worse! Certainly the current Serbian regime, despite its troubles, is an improvement over Milocevic. The current regime in Afghanistan is an improvement over the Taliban. I sense throughout your comments an underestimation of the evil and brutality of Saddam's regime.

OM: You refer to "the succeeding regime," but when is that succession to occur, and why the singular? Those who die in the bombardment, or of thirst or malnutrition in the war and what international relief agencies expect to be its catastrophic aftermath, will not be better off. There are aspects of well-being that are even more basic than being governed humanely.

Nobody doubts that Saddam is about as bad as they get, but that doesn't even begin to guarantee that life for the Iraqis will improve faster for this war that it would have anyway. And you don't address the question of how this war will affect the region, or do you buy Bush's vision of a contagious democratic renewal? I take it that you do not regard the Kuwatis, Qataris, Saudis and others in the region as presently suffering sufficiently to justify unilateral humanitarian intervention. What are their prospects if, as many predict, the region rises in revolt against the American occupation?

Isn't this a matter, to put it crudely, of numbers and probabilities? But the subtraction of one evil man (plus his two sons) and his probable future victims are the only numbers the Bush Administration is willing to discuss. Leave aside "collateral damage," how many more billions of dollars do you think the US will be willing to spend after it looks at the tab for toppling Saddam? Bush won't even divulge his estimates. Does one have to underestimate Saddam's evil to think these numbers relevant to both the morality and the prudence of this enterprise?

If you don't, then I applaud your game determination to see the silver lining in what seems to me a very dark and gathering cloud. Do you believe that Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Rove are in fact motivated by concern to relieve the suffering of the Iraqis under Sadaam?

PM: Yes. If you listen to Tony Blair and George W. Bush —both very religious individuals— you will hear that the primary motivation behind their resolve is the belief that they are standing up to an evil of a kind that rarely presents itself in the world. I note that you aid not include Colin Powell (a Clinton favorite) or George Tenet (a Clinton appointee) in your list.

OM: Okay, I didn't account for the motives of Powell and Tenet: are they in the driver's seat? Have they looked at the numbers? You seem to acknowledge that "Saddam's evil and removing him will save lives" does not answer the moral or the prudential question, but you don't add anything to that point except to suggest that adding Powell and Tenet to Bush and Blair yields some kind of assurance.

Or do you recognize that they are acting on a different agenda, one which is intended to undo over 50 years of multilateral efforts to build a just and stable world?

PM: It is rather silly to suggest that our leadership “intends" to undo 50 years of multilateral cooperation. The 50 years to which you refer was dominated mainly by the cold war and opposing alliances —so I don’t know where your tradition of multilateral cooperation comes from.

OM: The post-WWII tradition of multilateral cooperation began with the formation of the UN and NATO in the late 1940s. The intention of Bush to "go it alone" to preempt perceived threats is stated in no uncertain terms in his speech at West Point in June, 2002, and in numerous subsequent pronouncements. Surely you're not suggesting a series of slips of the tongue? It is that broader agenda which I find objectionable.

As for the security of the US, I doubt that we will feel safer having cast ourselves in the role of the selective enforcer of UN resolutions —1441 must be obeyed, 242 needn’t.

PM: I think UN resolutions are pretty irrelevant at this point.

OM: This indeed demonstrates the "irrelevance" of the UN…

PM: Well, it is a pretty dysfunctional institution when it comes to this kind of issue. I’m all in favor of WHO, UNICEF and similar UN efforts —but the Security Council is a joke.

OM: You admit then that the justification of this war cannot be tethered to so ridiculous an institution as the UN and its laughable Resolutions? (You do relieve yourself thereby of any need to explain why the US has tolerated Israel's noncompliance with UN Resolution 242 these 35 years.) Was Colin Powell's effort just for public consumption then? And, speaking of dysfunctional, surely you noticed the utter absence of debate on these questions in the US Congress in the months since it handed Bush a blank check to make war. Was the vigorous debate in the UK Parliament earlier this week a symptom of lack of clarity or of something else? There may be more than one joke going here….

***

OM: [A]ny sane US citizen has to ask, “am I and my children going to be more secure in the long run for this decision?" Do you think so?

PM: Yes I do. I thank God that there are a few powerful nations on this planet that have the resolve to stand up to brutal tyrants. We know we can't be the world's policeman but from time to time we can do the right thing and send a message to those who would murder and terrorize innocent people.

OM: You speak of "a few powerful nations" who will "stand up to brutal tyrants" —the locution "stand up to” connotes an extraterritorial threat which, again, Saddam does not now present as has not presented since his humiliating defeat in 1991 and nevermind the norms of international law that the world has been groping toward at least since Kant's Perpetual Peace. Again, if I understand you, what you are applauding here is an entirely novel doctrine of occasional preemptive unilateral humanitarian intervention —rather than the merely self-interested doctrine of unfailing unilateral preemption laid out by Bush, Cheyney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al.

I welcome your addition of a required humanitarian motive, but I'm still surprised that your impatience with the UNMOVIC inspections was so keen as to tempt you to embrace a doctrine that is so radical an innovation, and in so volatile a region.

You speak of the powerful "few" who from "time to time" choose to do the right thing ... but you seem to balk at an unqualified commitment to "do the right thing." Why? Has the high regard in the world that this country has enjoyed until recently been on account of its willingness to do the right thing "from time to time"? What message does that send? The policeman who only does what is right "from time to time" is inviting an examination of his motives.

You say that the UN is a joke "when it comes to this kind of issue" —but what kind of issue is it? Isn't it the very kind of issue that is better suited to universally accepted procedures —however cumbersome —than to a single, very powerful individual's obsessive judgment? If, to you, the rule of law is so unimpressive on the global scene, why has it (perhaps until recently) seemed so precious to us here at home? Is it because the rule of law is for us and the rule of us is for the rest of the world to get used to? That's the message that's been received around the world since Bush took office. Is that the way to a security that will last after the welcoming throngs in Baghdad have fallen silent?