war?
The following was sent to a mailing list in which i sometimes inflict
my ideas and thoughts upon the unsuspecting.
Its likely that next week we will be at war. The first week in March
has been picked by many as the best time to start an invasion of Iraq
as waiting much longer would lead to an invasion in hot weather which
would be far more difficult (remember those chemical/biological suits
the soldiers will have to wear). The problems we're having with
Turkey may slow things, but who knows.
I'd like to start by saying that, with exceptions of the lists of
websites, most of the things I write and send out are things I've
started by writing for myself mostly - to help clarify my own thoughts
on things. If you think I've written too much, you should see the
stuff you don't see.
I've wanted to comment on the current political situation for a bit
now - but my feelings haven't been entirely clear even to myself. I've
managed to convince myself that invading Iraq would be a Good Thing at
least twice (and for two different reasons) and that it would be a Bad
Thing three or four times (and for three or four reasons).
This was written around the turn of the year, but then my computer
crashed and died. Now I've managed to buy a new machine and the old
disk worked fine in it so I recovered everything, but I've been out of
town interviewing each of the last three weeks, so have not had the
time I'd like to have had to recover this and post it. For those
who might be interested, it looks like there's a job offer coming from
one of those interviews - but I'll say no more till I actually have
it in hand.
I'm not absolutely opposed to war, by the by, Ferinstance I was quite
in favor of the Gulf War - sometimes war is the only way to resolve an
international problem. However, I do believe that war is a last resort
and should be used as a tool only in response to armed conflict (such
as an invasion of another country).
I'm (with only a few exceptions) not going to give links or references
for statements here - I've checked out most of the "facts" and find
both support and refutation for them all - so its really up to you to
do your own research and see what you think.
Finally, given new information I'd probably revise my thoughts on all
these things so I've by no means settled into a firm decision.
So let me summarize the reasons I've settled on as justifying the
war (to me) :
1) Israel has already stated that any hostile actions on the part
of its Arab (note that this is very much an Arab/Isareli conflict,
more so than Moslem/Jew) foes would result in serious retaliation
by Israel. This is very likely to be nuclear and such retaliation
would result in rapid escalation - likely with all kinds of
interesting alliances of allies and enemies. Its likely to end up
with India and Pakistan slogging it out as well as North and South
Korea and everyone else with a grudge who might want to take
advantage of the chaos.
2) Saddam Hussein is a nasty, brutish (and short?), sadistic
dictator who has done his best to quash any opposition and any
sense of democracy. It can well be argued that we owe the Iraqi
people assistance in removing him since the US, in the form of the
Reagan and Bush(pere) administrations, was instrumental in putting
him in power and helping him to stay there.
3) Saddam Hussein is constructing and stockpiling weapons of
mass destruction for whatever nefarious ends.
The first (the more persuasive to me) reason seems insufficient. We
don't seem to have any good information that Iraq is really preparing
for such an attack - or at least nobody is showing us any such
information in any convincing way. Then too, it seems strange to me
that we would attack Iraq to stop Israel from starting a war. (This
feels a bit like Russia attacking Poland to maintain peace with Nazi
Germany.) Even worse, actually starting a war might lead us to that
kind of general conflict.
The second doesn't work for me either - if that were a sufficient
reason for us to attack a country we'd find ourselves at war with
quite a few countries - including some that we currently support (I
support absolutely Israel's right to exist and be safe, but its hard
not to see Israel as almost as brutal a regime - if you happen to be a
Moslem Arab - as Iraq). Worse yet, its not at all clear that an
invasion would result in a democracy - the US does not have an
entirely postive record of installing democratic regimes.
The third, and the most often stated reason for having a war is that
Iraq either has or is creating "weapons of mass distruction". There
are two major types of such weapons that are usually mentioned :
biological and nuclear.
Nuclear weapons are difficult critters - easy enough to make if you
have the know how and the right materials (plutonium being a good one,
but enriched uranium is also nice, and will suffice). But they are,
without testing (and we have no sign of actual tests from Iraq),
tricky to get right. Fizzle yields are all too easy to achieve and
while dangerous and icky, they're hardly enough to really injure an
opponent (for a great read on this topic see "The Curve of Binding
Energy" by John McPhee). Even once you have a nuclear gadget you need
delivery mechanisms for nukes and missles are also hard to do, and
planes are hard to do with reasonable monitoring of planes coming
toward your country. "Hand carried" nukes in trucks or ships are the
worst threat - and probably essentially impossible to protect against.
Even given that Iraq has nukes and can deliver them, can they really
make enough to have any real effect on the US? Sure they can destroy
a few buildings and kill a bunch of people - but such an attack, if
unprovoked would probably leave the country attacked with ample world
support for a nuclear response. Which, I might add, I'd support quite
whole heartedly.
Of course, the US and Israel are not the only possible targets, Kuwait
still has a pile of oil that is probably very tempting indeed to the
government of Iraq, Iraq and Iran have a long history of conflict -
currently cooled off, but for how long. Iran and the Saudi's also have
major differences in opinion (much of it religious but we cant discount
the Saudi support of the US in the Gulf War).
The more problematic attack may be bilogical. Delivery mechanisms are
much simpler - a couple of dozen people with aerosol cans would
probably suffice nicely. We've already seen anthrax used. Smallpox
is another possibility, but perhaps a better is Ebola (even better, Tom
Clancy has written a novel that gives a good set of guidelines for
doing this - but then if you want good idea on attacking the US,
Clancy is all kinds of fun).
Ebola is scarey stuff (see "The Hot Zone" by Richard Preston). An
Ebola epidemic could do all kinds of harm to any country it might
occur in, and might well spread to the whole world. Then again it
might just fizzle - but it may be worth considering what a fizzle
could mean.
But invading Iraq to stop them developing Ebola is rather a lost cause
already. The lab equipment needed to make Ebola into a weapon could
probably be put into a couple of Winnebagos (Colin Powell mentioned
trucks) - and for all we know they could be driving around the US,
parking in Wal-Mart lots right at this moment. Even if that is not
the case, it does not take advanced degrees in medicine or biology to
develop Ebola as a weapon and the raw materials could be sent to a
friendly country or group in a small briefcase in the event of war,
the lab destroyed and the developers gone into hiding.
Another effective weapon could be made from ricin. Ricin is a chemical
that occurs naturally in castor beans. The purification process is very
simple and its a very dangerous toxin. Since its not a disease, it poses
no rebound threat and its easily distributed in the water supply. It
would not likely have a major effect on the war itself, but could be used
as a social/psychological weapon intended to undermine support for a war.
Are there reasons for us to avoid a war?
Yes. None perhaps overwhelming, but taken together they do add up.
First, see pro-war reason one. If we invade Iraq and they do have
serious weaponry, they're all too likely to use it against Israel -
its exactly what they did in the Gulf War. If they do and if Israel
counterstrikes with nukes - and given the way the government of Israel
is acting that seems all too likely - things could get more
interesting than anyone might like. On a peaceful level this is
already happening - North Korea has perceived that the US is subject
to a certain tunnel vision in the world and they've taken advantage of
this - in some sense therefore we have already lost ground because of
this (as yet undeclared) war.
Even if the conflict did not spread outside the middle east, we'd be
likely to find the middle east moving from an uneasy and unstable
peace to a messy war with Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Kuwait and
Israel all fighting everyone else.
Second. The US economy is already in trouble. While war does
generally provide an economic stimulus, if it were to lead (as it
might well) to serious increases in oil prices I suspect that our
current "slow down" might become a serious crash with unpredictable
(but probably unpleasant) consequences. The Shrubbery has already
stated that he doesn't care. But then he's also pretty much immune to
such considerations as are his principle advisors who are uniformly
wealthy.
Third. If Iraq did have biological agents and decided to use them
(most likly against Israel - but perhaps against Israel and the US)
and if it did not fizzle, we could end up with a disasterous world
wide epidemic - as bad as the Black Death or worse. There are
variants of Ebola with greater than 99% mortality rates - if one of
these is infectious or is bred to be infectious it could effectively
wipe out civilization worldwide.
Fourth. A successful invasion would likely commit the US (perhaps
with UN support - more likely without, or with only lukewarm support)
to a military role as a peacekeeper. This is likely to leave us in
the position of the USSR in Afghanistan or the colonial powers in the
third world, constantly under attack, losing men and spending money in
a futile effort to achieve (what was called in a similar situation a
while back) "Peace With Honor". We've been told that the reason we
did not take Baghdad in the Gulf War was that there was a political
vacuum in Iraq and no effective alternative leadership. As far as
I can tell, this has not changed.
Fifth. It seems likely that the WTC attacks were motivated by
anti-american sentiment among fundamentalist Moslem Arabs. An attack
against Iraq without the provocation of a previous attack by Iraq
against another party is not likely to improve our image abroad. It
seems very likely indeed to make things worse and stimulate further
attacks against the US and its allies by similar groups, and
potentially with stronger support by Moslem Arab governments. Worse
it could spread to Moslem states without a primarily Arab ethnic
makeup. Since the US is already painted as being anti Islam because
of our pro-Israeli stance(and since the WTC attacks because of raids
on mosques in the US), this would not be a terribly hard sell.
This is likely to lead to more terrorist attacks against the US
and our allies (or those perceived to be our allies, or even those
perceived as not being appropriately anti-US in general). I can
think of a number of effective ways to attack the US using people
already present here using explosives, chemical agents (ricin, sarin),
or even biological agents. Though if I were masterminding it, I'd
tend to focus on things that would not kill too many people and that
might foment dissention. As a simple example, destroying the
Glen Canyon and Hoover dams certainly seems doable. It would
remove a major source of electric power and drinking water.
It would be a spectacular bit of news footage for CNN. And it
would start an interesting debate about replacing the structures.
Sixth. The US does not seem to be doing a good job of convincing
other countries that war is necessary. What does that say about our
reasons for war?
Finally. When in doubt I believe that we should always try to use
peaceful methods rather than war - and war should be really the only
possible recourse before it is undertaken. I don't believe we
are at this stage yet.
So there you have some of my thoughts. As you might guess I'm
currently against the idea of an intervention type war against
Iraq.
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