Militarily, moreover, a massive build up has been moving forward in the Persian Gulf. Reserves are being called up to active duty. Everything necessary for war will reportedly be in place by some time in the middle of next month.
If these were the only considerations, U.S. policy would be clear. The declared policy would be “regime change” in Iraq in order to eliminate its weapons of mass destruction. The operational policy would, in turn, be a “pre-emptive” war – a war in which the U.S. is prepared to attack unilaterally if need be, though it would much prefer multilateral backing, if it can get it.
However, both the declared policy and the operational policy are clouded by countervailing tendencies. Despite its unilateralist rhetoric, which has been alarming to much of the world, the Bush administration has opted to work through the United Nations. “We will work with the UN Security Council for the necessary resolutions,” declared President Bush in his UN speech. After a period of intense negotiations behind the scenes, the U.S. agreed to a resolution allowing UN arms inspectors to return to Iraq. Precisely because the inspections process inevitably takes on a life of its own, the prospects of war have correspondingly diminished for the time being, though by no means have they disappeared.
It seems clear that within the administration factions are in profound conflict about whether to go to war, or under what conditions to do so. A striking example of how deep these conflicts may run emerges in Bob Woodward’s new book, Bush at War. Woodward reveals that the statement just quoted from President Bush actually had to be ad libbed. At the last moment a key sentence from his UN speech had mysteriously disappeared. Hotly contested within the administration, it read: “My nation will work with the UN Security Council to meet our common challenge.” The president caught the unexpected omission only in mid-delivery, inserting an off-the-cuff pronouncement that was perhaps even stronger than what had been agreed upon in advance. Some have wondered whether the mysterious, last-minute omission from his TelePrompTer was an attempt by one faction within the administration to sabotage the other.
Be that as it may, traces of the administration’s internal conflicts appear almost daily in the news. It is perhaps best described as a conflict between the more cautious and the more aggressive. The more cautious faction scored an unexpected victory when the president opted to work through the UN. In turn the more aggressive faction is doing everything it can to discredit the inspections process as a sham. Yet when the aggressive faction seems about to score a point – as in a recent leak that Iraq had supposedly supplied deadly VX gas to al Qaeda – the more cautious faction is on hand to undermine it – as when an unnamed senior official immediately stated to the Washington Post that the VX story has no credible evidence to back it (12/12/02). The administration is to some degree at war with itself.
At the government’s highest level these conflicts finally concern procedures more than principles. Meanwhile, the president alternates back and forth between caution and belligerence, sending a confusing double-message to the world. Little doubt can exist, however, that the hard-liners, aided and abetted by the president, have scored major victories through the media. The climate of fear and resentment in which we now live has been manipulated to convince the American people of at least three things, none of which, as far as I can see, is true.
First, according to recent polls, 66 percent of our people believe that a connection exists between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and that Saddam was involved in the Sept. 11 atrocities. It is no wonder that they have this belief, since it has been harped on by the administration ever since the day after Sept. 11. Yet not a shred of evidence has been produced to support this momentous claim. Editorials in the organs of elite opinion, sometimes even by administration supporters, lament that the claim has been steadily repeated despite the conspicuous lack of hard evidence. They fail to appreciate the special utility it enjoys as an item of war propaganda. What does it matter that on the supposed link between Saddam and al Qaeda, the director of the CIA has openly contradicted the president? What matters is what the people can be made to believe.
Second, again according to the polls, an even greater number – 86 percent – believe that Saddam already has nuclear weapons or is just on the brink of getting them. Again, it does not matter that this claim too is unbacked by any evidence. It strains all credulity to believe that the administration would not produce the evidence if it actually had it. Again the CIA’s director has contradicted the president and all the other hard-liners – as has the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency. “There is no current danger to the United States from Baghdad,” according to former president Jimmy Carter, who has just accepted the Nobel Peace Prize. Iraq poses no threat to its neighbors, according to a statement made by outgoing Secretary of Defense, William S. Cohen, himself a Republican. Iraq’s neighbors – including Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Iran ,Saudi Arabia and even Kuwait – so far from feeling unduly threatened by Saddam, are doing everything in their power – unanimously (with perhaps only minor exceptions) – to dissuade the U.S. from initiating its much-heralded “pre-emptive” war. Saddam may be highly undesirable indeed, but the catastrophic prospects of the war and its aftermath appear, to his neighbors, far worse.
Finally, Saddam Hussein has been successfully demonized. He is not just one more in a long, sorry line of the world’s most brutal and ruthless tyrants. He is a veritable Hitler, a madman, a suicidal and irrational beast. We must get him before he gets us. By contrast with the previous two points – the trumped-up al Qaeda connection and the non-existent currency of the Iraqi nuclear threat – this device is not just for popular consumption. It persuades large segments of the intelligentsia. Perhaps most prominent among them is Kenneth Pollack, author of The Threatening Storm, whom many regard as having made the best case for invading Iraq. “The question,” writes Pollack, “is not one of war or no war, but rather war now or war later – a war without nuclear weapons or a war with them” (NYT 9/26/02).
A succinct rejoinder has been set forth by Jimmy Carter. “In the face of intense monitoring and overwhelming American military superiority,” Carter writes, “any belligerent move by Hussein against a neighbor, even the smallest nuclear test (necessary before weapons construction), a tangible threat to use a weapon of mass destruction, or sharing this technology with terrorist organizations would be suicidal” (WP 9/5/02). Carter recognizes, as Pollack does not, that more than anything else what Saddam cares about is his own survival.
Another powerful rejoinder comes from historian Paul Schroeder, a self described political conservative. With regard to Saddam as a suicidal madman, Schroeder observes:
Stalin had nuclear weapons, was a worse sociopath than Hussein and even more paranoid about threats to his reign, and his record of atrocities against his own people was far worse than Hussein’s; yet none of this gave any indication whether or how he would use nuclear weapons in his foreign policy. On that score, he was demonstrably cautious.
In fact, it is extremely unlikely that Hussein would do something so suicidal as to attack the United States or one of its allies directly, or allow a proxy to do so, and the administration knows it.
These rejoinders, against the likes of a Kenneth Pollack, allow us to consider the just war tradition. At a minimum, what they suggest is that, at the present time, invading Iraq would by no means be a last resort. The principle of last resort is essential to the just war tradition. No war that is not a last resort can be justified, according to just war principles as they are enshrined in church tradition and international law. I consider it ominous that Pollack’s argument simply circumvents these principles. It elevates cold-blooded expediency over the equity of established moral law. It claims to predict the future, conjuring up a worst-case scenario as if nothing could possibly avert it. It would incur huge sacrifices in scarce resources and precious human lives in order to avoid a threat that is merely hypothetical.
A threat that is not clear, that is not direct, and that is not imminent cannot justify going to war. Measured by just war standards, the war proposed on Iraq fails completely of a sufficient cause. What the tradition permits is self defense in the face of aggression. Pre-empting an anticipated attack, however, can be extrapolated from the provision of self-defense. Nevertheless, pre-emptive strikes must meet a high standard of justification. Otherwise, they are acts of aggression that violate international law. As David Krieger has pointed out in a speech to the European Parliament: “Preemptive war was once called ‘aggressive war,’ and was described as a ‘crime against peace’ in the Nuremberg Trials of Nazi war criminals. Such war violates Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter. It includes ‘planning, preparation, initiation or waging a war of aggression.’” “The proposed action [against Iraq]” writes Yale University’s Immanuel Wallerstein, “is illegal under international law – invading a country is aggression, and aggression is a war crime. . . . In criminal law, I am not legally authorized to shoot someone because I have heard him say nasty things about me and think that one day soon he may try to shoot me. If, however, this other person points a gun at me, I may shoot him in self-defense. Without this elementary distinction, we are in a lawless world. . . .” The doctrine of pre-emptive war, if taken seriously, portends a descent into international barbarism even greater than we have known so terribly since August 1914 and August 1945.
That the proposed war is incompatible with just war principles has been openly recognized by the Vatican: “Preventive war is a war of aggression and does not come under the definition of a just war.” A U.S.-led invasion of Iraq would be, according to the Pope, “a defeat for humanity.”
Without a sufficient cause, invading Iraq lacks the most important justification for going to war. Besides self-defense against aggression and acting only as a last resort, however, the just war tradition stipulates other conditions that must also be met. Among them is a reasonable chance of success.
Many supporters of the U.S. war against Iraq suppose that it will be won at low cost. Not all analysts agree. Among the doubters, Immanuel Wallerstein is particularly interesting.
Wallerstein examines three basic scenarios. First, there is the hope that the U.S. will win swiftly and easily, with minimal loss of life. Second, the U.S. could win but only after a long and exhausting war, with massive loss of life. Finally, the U.S. could actually lose the war, as in Vietnam, being forced to withdraw from Iraq after a massive loss of life.
Wallerstein comments: “Swift and easy victory, obviously the hope of the U.S. administration, is the least likely. I give it one chance in twenty. Winning after a long exhausting war is the most likely, perhaps two chances out of three. And losing, incredible as it seems (but then it seemed so in Vietnam too), is a plausible outcome, one chance in three.”
The most probable outcome is a long drawn-out bloody war. Iraq would be devastated, Wallerstein observes, political and economic turmoil would result at home and abroad, and “regime change” would occur, though not only in Baghdad.
The question of “the day after” must also be faced. James Webb, former Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, has written: “The issue before us is not simply whether the United States would end the regime of Saddam Hussein, but whether we as a nation are prepared physically to occupy territory in the Middle East for the next 30 to 50 years.” George Friedman, head of Stratfor, a private intelligence firm, has said that invading Iraq would be something like a dog chasing a car. What do you do once you catch it? The title of a detailed and sobering article in a recent Atlantic Monthly asks: “The Fifty-first State?”
Nicholas D. Kristof rightly wonders: “Is America really prepared for hundreds of casualties, even thousands, in an invasion and subsequent occupation that could last many years?”
These considerations do not even begin to touch on the question – central to the just war tradition – of civilian casualties, which lies heavily on the religious community and all people of conscience. Only the briefest of indications can be mentioned here. Recently UNICEF released a report showing that over the previous decade the child mortality rate in Iraq has sky-rocketed. This increase is traced not only to the sanctions but also to the aftermath of the previous war. Once a relatively advanced society, Iraq now takes its place among the least developed nations of the world, with the highest quotient of social misery.
When two U.S. Congressmen visited Iraq a few months ago, they held a press conference from Basra. “They spoke,” writes Phyllis Bennis, “of children dying of leukemia without drugs, they spoke of the effects of depleted uranium, they described women giving birth asking first not if the baby is a boy or a girl but whether it’s normal or not, because the rate of birth defects is so high. They reminded us what would happen to those children if there’s another war.” Mairead McGuire, the Nobel Peace Prize winner from Northern Ireland has written: “When I visited Auschwitz I was horrified. And when I visited Iraq, I thought to myself, ‘What will we tell our children in 50 years when they ask what we did when the people in Iraq were dying?’”
To sum up: In this presentation I have selected four principles from the just war tradition for examination. I have argued that the “pre-emptive” war proposed against Iraq would not be a last resort, that it would lack a sufficient cause, making it little more than a war of aggression, that it would not be a success in any meaningful sense of the term, and finally that it would wreak havoc on a civilian population already tortured by war and sanctions. In particular, I have stressed that the doctrine of pre-emption, if activated, portends a descent into international barbarism.
I conclude on two cautionary notes. The first comes from George F. Kennan, whose analysis of U.S. trends during the Cold War often finds an uncanny application today. He warned repeatedly against demonizing our enemies – against what he called “a regime of oversimplification, exaggeration, misinterpretation, and propagandistic distortion that [have] the cumulative effect of turning a serious but not unmanageable problem into what [appears] to many people to be a hopeless, insoluble one – insoluble, that is, other than by some sort of apocalyptic military denouement” (At a Century’s Ending, p. 119).
To Kennan let me add a final word from the Autobiography of John Adams: “This is the established Order of Things, when a Nation has grown to such an height of Power as to become dangerous to Mankind, she never fails to loose her Wisdom, her Justice and her Moderation, and with these she never fails to loose her Power; which however returns again, if those Virtues return” (Autobiography, IV, 158).
Posted January 29, 2003
George Hunsinger is McCord Professor of Systematic Theology at Princeton Seminary
