Orin Kerr of the Volokh Conspiracy has posed three questions for hawkish bloggers:
First, assuming that you were in favor of the invasion of Iraq at the time of the invasion, do you believe today that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea? Why/why not?
Second, what reaction do you have to the not-very-upbeat news coming out of Iraq these days, such as the stories I link to above? [The stories (see Professor Kerr’s original post for the links): “The country is suffering about 70 hostile attacks a day, and 900 U.S. soldiers have died since the declared end of the hostilities — a rate of about 2 U.S. soldiers every day. Over 90% of Iraqis see the U.S. as an occupying force. Meanwhile, classified U.S. intelligence reports are pretty gloomy about what will happen in Iraq in the coming years.”]
Third, what specific criteria do you recommend that we should use over the coming months and years to measure whether the Iraq invasion has been a success?
Here are my answers:
1. As I have discussed elsewhere, the ouster of the Ba’athist regime from Iraq was one phase of a strategy aimed at emasculating terrorism by destroying or intimidating the state sponsors that are essential to a truly threatening terrorist network. In quick summary, terrorist groups that are forced to operate as semi-autonomous cells based in hostile territory lack the communications apparatus, financial resources, training facilities, specialized expertise and ability to assemble large numbers of operatives needed for 9/11-scale attacks. They can be dealt with by the police. What made al-Qa’eda a serious threat was its extensive infrastructure and military-style organization, and those, in turn, depended heavily on the possession of a virtual puppet state in Afghanistan. The demolition of Taliban rule largely explains why al-Qa’eda was unable to follow up its initial onslaught with the devastating follow-up strikes that many analysts dreaded.
To prevent al-Qa’eda’s regrouping in a new haven and to begin the long process of undermining other Islamofascist “armies”, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the al-Aqsa Brigades and Islamic Jihad, the United States could not stop after Afghanistan. Nor could it realistically deal simultaneously with all of the potential state abettors of terrorism. Iraq was a good starting point for three reasons:
Saddam Hussein had strong links to many terrorist groups and openly applauded the 9/11 attacks. Whether his regime’s connections with al-Qa’eda amounted to a “collaborative operational relationship” can be debated, but Osama bin Laden is not our only enemy. Plenty of terrorists took advantage of Ba’athist hospitality. Moreover, Saddam had the wherewithal to give the West’s enemies not just money but access to an unconventional arsenal. We do not yet – and may never – know the precise extent of his chemical and biological weapons programs, but sarin-filled artillery shells have been found in post-war in Iraq and were used in at least one instance to attack U.S. troops. Sarin could have been put to more lethal uses. Had Saddam Hussein been left in power, we can have no confidence that it would not have been.
Saddam’s failure to abide by the conditions of the Gulf War cease-fire provided a proper, classical casus belli. In his September 2002 speech to the United Nations, President Bush summarized those conditions under five headings:
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately and unconditionally forswear, disclose, and remove or destroy all weapons of mass destruction, long-range missiles, and all related material.
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all support for terrorism and act to suppress it, as all states are required to do by U.N. Security Council resolutions.
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will cease persecution of its civilian population, including Shi’a, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkomans, and others, again as required by Security Council resolutions.
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will release or account for all Gulf War personnel whose fate is still unknown. It will return the remains of any who are deceased, return stolen property, accept liability for losses resulting from the invasion of Kuwait, and fully cooperate with international efforts to resolve these issues, as required by Security Council resolutions.
If the Iraqi regime wishes peace, it will immediately end all illicit trade outside the oil-for-food program. It will accept U.N. administration of funds from that program, to ensure that the money is used fairly and promptly for the benefit of the Iraqi people.
Contrary to the truncated memories of the elite media, the case for deposing Saddam Hussein never rested purely and simply on fears of “weapons of mass destruction”. His government had put itself thoroughly in the wrong by ordinary, traditional standards of international law.
Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a major country in the heart of the Arab world. Its adherence to the pro-Western side in the War on Terror weakens the position of pro-terror governments throughout the region. The anti-Ba’athist Coalition’s easy military triumph also had an intimidating effect, shown most dramatically by Muammar Ghaddafi’s reluctant disarmament.
2. These reasons for taking decisive action do not seem to me to have been undermined by the failure of all of our enemies to emulate Colonel Ghaddafi and give up at once. The “not-very-upbeat news coming out of Iraq these days” proves that the other side is still willing to fight. And is that a surprise? Or an argument that we should not have had the temerity to strike against them in the first place?
The only “surprise” is the choice of the battleground. The Pentagon very likely reckoned that terrorists would avoid an area occupied by 145,000 infidel troops and instead reconcentrate in one or more well-disposed Moslem-ruled territories, after which they would resume direct attacks on the major Western powers. Instead, they have thrown a lot of men into attritional combat against a vastly superior foe; that is, they have attacked strength rather than weakness – rarely a winning strategy.
One might say, indeed, that the fighting in Iraq is a distraction – but to the enemy, not to us. High-level terrorist leaders are keeping themselves busy planning pinprick attacks that do nothing to diminish U.S. military capabilities (assuming that a recurrence of Vietnam Syndrome doesn’t lead us to abandon the country voluntarily). Their self-interest would be better served by devoting their attention to rebuilding Osama bin Laden’s devastated infrastructure than by setting off car bombs in Baghdad.
We have no reason to shrink from a fight on this ground, particularly when the enemy is so feeble. Seventy attacks a day sounds like a lot, but scarcely any are on a scale that requires more than a few men. If we generously assume that each is the mission of a separate ten-man squad, only about 700 “insurgents” are engaged in active operations on the average day. Allowing plenty of time for planning, training and recuperation, it is clear that, whatever the nominal population of terrorist sympathizers, the number willing and able to fight is minuscule. Five thousand would be more than enough to maintain the present level of activity.
A reasonable hypothesis is that Ba’athist die-hards and indigenous Shi’ite extremists have lapsed into demoralized passivity. The active core of the “resistance” consists of foreigners who enter the country, carry out a few bombings or kidnappings, and are killed. During their brief careers, they can instill fear and disrupt the reconstruction of Iraqi society, so we can’t dismiss them as trivial. On the other hand, talk about “quagmires” is absurd.
3. The pre-war forecast of the Bush Administration’s opponents was that victory over Saddam Hussein would require months of fighting, would cost thousands of American lives, would be followed by an immense humanitarian crisis stemming from refugee flows, disease and the destruction of oil-producing facilities, and would lead to massive protests by the “Arab street”, probably resulting in the replacement of marginally friendly governments by outright enemies. None of that has occurred. When evaluating the situation, it’s useful to bear in mind the full range of foreseeable outcomes. By any standard, the status quo in Iraq falls in the upper part of that range.
Ultimately, whether the Iraqi campaign succeeded or failed depends on whether it advances our objectives in the War on Terror. It will do that to the extent that it makes governments less able or willing to allow terrorists to operate freely within their territories. If all goes very well, Iraq will develop – over a period of years, not months – into a fairly stable, pro-Western democracy, and its example will push other Moslem states in the same direction. Less optimally but acceptably from the American point of view, governments, whether or not they like the United States, will grow increasingly reluctant to anger it by sheltering and subsidizing terrorists, lest they suffer the fate of the Iraqi Ba’athists.
Update (9/28/04): Professor Kerr has posted links to the first 35 responses that he received.
Update (9/30/04): On Iraqi attitudes toward the U.S. occupation, this item from today’s OpinionJournal Political Diary (subscription-only but well worth $3.95 a month) is worth considering (emphasis added):
Supporters of Sen. John Kerry’s “bring our troops home” plan(s) should have been at the Explorers Club in Manhattan on Tuesday night. Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos spoke to a packed house about spearheading the recovery effort after the April 2003 looting of Baghdad’s Iraq Museum. The talk included a brief aside on the response of Iraqi civilians to the presence of American forces in their country – one that was, he said, “almost without exception” appreciative and hospitable.
“But they were also warily cautious,” Col. Bogdanos added. “‘Will you stay this time?’ they asked more often than I can count. Indeed, those were the words I heard more often than any others in Iraq. The overriding concern in their history-conscious society was that history would repeat itself: that the U.S. would leave and the former regime would again respond with a vengeance, massacring entire segments of society.”
Had Mr. Kerry been present, of course, he probably would have accused Col. Bogdanos of not knowing the real situation on the ground.
Comments