|
"(Saddam has ) ...dominated Iraq for about 30 years. In that time he's initiated two wars. He did attack Iran in 1980, but revolutionary Iran was the real aggressor, and we supported his efforts to combat Iranian expansionism. He also invaded Kuwait in 1990, but only after we had signaled that we wouldn't oppose this. Containment didn't fail, it wasn't tried. Moreover, he has never gone to war in the face of a clear deterrent threat. He's a cruel tyrant, but not a serial aggressor. Similarly, Saddam has never used WMD against anyone who could retaliate. He didn't use them against us in 1991, and he hasn't used them since, even though we have bombed his country repeatedly since then. Why? Because he's deterred...."
"...Saddam cannot blackmail us with nuclear weapons or other WMD. Why? Because he knows we could destroy him if he tried to carry out the threat. And of course we know it too. As Condi Rice wrote in Foreign Affairs, "Iraq's WMD would be unusable, because any attempt to use them would bring national obliteration." You might also remember that the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons pointed right at us, was governed by tyrants and mass murderers, yet they couldn't use them for blackmail or regional expansion. So why does the Bush administration think Saddam can blackmail us if he got his hands on a few?"
"...Saddam will not give WMD to al Qaeda. There is still no credible evidence, even after this afternoon, of cooperation between Iraq and al Qaeda, even though the Bush administration has worked overtime trying to find it, and put great pressure on American intelligence agencies to come up with the correct answer. Even Ken Pollack has termed this evidence, quote, "Tenuous and inconsequential." More importantly, Saddam would have nothing to gain from doing this, and everything to lose. He could accomplish no positive purpose by giving WMD away, and he knows we would retaliate decisively if we caught him trying to do it. Giving WMD to terrorists in literally the last thing he would ever do. The bottom line is that the threat from Iraq is too small to justify preventive war...."
"Remember, the Bush administration has said it's willing to leave Saddam Hussein a tyrant in power if he disarms, which means liberation is in fact a red herring being used to cover up the fact that there's such a weak strategic rationale. We should also remember that we support plenty of other governments with brutal human rights records, which further suggest that this is not the real reason for war. Moreover, being democracy to Iraq will take years, if not decades...."
Radical change is as likely to open the door to Islamic extremists as to bring liberals to power. We are playing with fire in doing this. Our invasion will resurrect images of colonialism, and fuel even greater anger at the United States. And just remember, we didn't liberate Eastern Europe by invading it, we did it by patient containment..."
"War is likely to increase anti-Americanism in the Arab and Islamic world, make it easier for a bin Laden to recruit new followers. It will divert time, money and attention from the effort against al Qaeda. It's doing that already. Look at the amount of time, effort and political capital we are putting into this, while the majority of al Qaeda leaders are still at large, still planning new attacks...."
"...it will jeopardize international support for the broader war on terrorism. The image of the United States in the world has declined steadily as we get closer to war, especially in those countries whose arms we have been twisting to get them to go along. This is not a coalition of the willing, it's a coalition of the coerced, the cowed, and the co-opted. Launching an unprovoked war will reinforce the growing perception that the United States is a bully, make it harder for us to get the cooperation we need. On the day we go to war, Osama bin Laden will be smiling...."
----Steve Walt, a Professor at the Kennedy School at Harvard
|
