Iraq War for Dummies

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If you’re like most Americans, you probably haven’t started duct-taping your windows—yet. But you are feeling a bit apprehensive about this whole Iraq war thing, not to mention terrorists with nerve gas and dirty bombs up their sleeves.

Let’s face it, we’ve got the jitters, and war and terrorism are just the beginning. Add in the tanking economy, state governments bleeding red ink, corrupt corporations, disappearing civil liberties, the ballooning federal deficit, dead bodies piling up in Israel and a nut job in North Korea who is threatening us with nuclear-tipped missiles—hey, we’re in a funk. And to think that just a few years ago all that bothered us was a bit of hanky-panky in the White House. Who imagined we’d ever feel nostalgic about Monica Lewinsky?

We’re worried, and we’re confused, especially about this looming war. We know Saddam Hussein is a vile man, a “baby-torturer,” as President Bush likes to call him, and a brutal tyrant who probably has an arsenal of nasty chemical and biological weapons. But we don’t know what should be done about him. Should we invade Iraq and take him out, as the president wants? Or should we let the United Nations weapons inspectors continue to do their jobs, as they and several of our European allies desire?

And if we do invade, what then? What will we find in this Pandora’s box called Iraq? All wars have unintended consequences, and this one, in the heart of the most volatile region of the world, is certain to have many.

The conflict itself is scary enough: What if Hussein, cornered and desperate, uses those nasty chemicals and germs against American soldiers? What if he sets his oil fields on fire or launches an anthrax-carrying missile at Israel?

And what if, after the invasion, street riots bring down the government in Pakistan, putting nukes in the hands of al-Qaeda supporters? What if civil war breaks out in Saudi Arabia? What if, what if?

As the astute New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman noted recently, the U.S. government is hoping that Iraq, with our help, will become like Japan and Germany after World War II, a model of democratic institutions, and that it will then influence the rest of the region in a positive way. But what if, he wonders, Iraq instead becomes another Yugoslavia, torn by bloody tribal and ethnic power struggles?

The war itself is expected to cost at least $200 billion. The post-war occupation could cost several times that. We could repair a lot of roads and schools here at home with that money, not to mention buying health insurance for the 40 million Americans who now go without it. The economy is already jittery.

Yes, we’re nervous about this war. And scared. We can count our blessings, though: We don’t live in Baghdad.

If you’re one of the many millions of Americans who haven’t yet figured out whether going to war with Iraq is a good idea or the height of foolishness, this article may help you. Then again, it may confuse you even more. But at least you might learn a few things you didn’t know before.

Iraq could easily be one of the healthiest countries in the Middle East. It has both oil wealth and a relatively well-educated, modernized populace. In the latter regard Saddam Hussein deserves at least some credit. He’s not a religious zealot like Osama bin Laden, who wants to turn back the clock to the Muslim glory days of the seventh century and kill the infidels in the process.

But, as the ubiquitous murals of Hussein in Iraq suggest, he’s also a man of overweening, even pathological ambition and self-importance. In the macho world of Middle East politics, he’s always pictured himself as top dog, the man who will unite greater Arabia and, ultimately, drive out the Israelis.

He knows no method but violence, and he rules by fear. Born poor, as a child he had to thieve to eat. He was illiterate until age 10. His first job with the Baath political party was as an enforcer, a thug. Later he became an interrogator of prisoners—and a torturer. His greatest role model, he has said, is Josef Stalin.

His lust for power has had disastrous consequences for his country.

First there was the horrific eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s, which he provoked and which resulted in the deaths of nearly a million young men, an entire generation of Iraqi and Iranian youth. It was then that Hussein first used chemical weapons in battle. They had been given to him by his ally, the United States, which at the time worried about Iranian-sponsored fundamentalism more than it did Hussein’s megalomania. In addition to using them against Iranian soldiers, he also used them to kill some 5,000 of his own people, Kurds in the north whom he suspected of aiding the Iranians.

Then there was the 1990 blitzkrieg into Kuwait. The resulting U.N.-sponsored Persian Gulf War, led by the United States, inflicted horrific damage on Iraq, wrecking most of its sewer, water and sanitation systems and killing an estimated 100,000 people, including as many as 8,000 civilians, though that number is in dispute.

It was a terrible defeat for Hussein, but he doesn’t see it that way, nor does the average Arab on the street, who admires Hussein for having stood up to the greatest power on Earth and survived.

It would be a mistake to assume that Arabs in the Middle East see events in the same way Americans and Europeans do. Apart from the relatively independent Al Jazeera television in Qatar, they get their news from suspect sources. That partially explains why many if not most Arabs continue to believe that the Israeli secret police, not al-Qaeda, masterminded the 9/11 attacks.

War can sound exciting in the abstract, and the media have a way of hyping this looming conflict as if it were the runup to the Superbowl. But the old adage is always true: War is hell on Earth. Its purpose is to destroy and kill.

This one’s especially scary to American soldiers because of the possibility, or likelihood, that Hussein will use some of those chemical or biological weapons, as he has threatened to do. U.S. soldiers are training in full-body protective gear, but as 60 Minutes pointed out recently, there is some question whether it really does the job and whether the Pentagon is prepared to handle chemical warfare. The outfits sure look scary, though, as in, “I don’t want to go anyplace where this is required dress.”

The president’s chief of staff, Andrew Card, recently warned that the United States reserved the right to use nuclear weapons against the Iraqis should they attack with chemical weapons. The Pentagon has said it might use nukes anyway, to blow up deep Iraqi bunkers. Neither proposed tactic is reassuring.

Some 300,000 U.S. and British troops are now in the Middle East, preparing to invade Iraq. Nobody knows how many of them would become casualties. A best-case scenario has Iraqi troops folding early, in effect surrendering the country because they don’t like Hussein either. Worst case, Hussein’s strategy draws fighting into the cities, where U.S. soldiers are forced to kill civilians to get at him. Tens of thousands of Iraqis, including women and children, die. Al Jazeera has a field day broadcasting the images of torn bodies and rubble. Iraqi soldiers use chemical weapons and resist fiercely in the cities, where only hand-to-hand combat, which is deadly, can drive them out.

It’s convenient to envision the people of Iraq rising up against Hussein as soon as the invasion begins, but that ignores reality: An estimated one million Iraqis are tied in with Hussein’s regime or party, notes Jack Beatty, writing in the Atlantic Monthly: “They’ll face imprisonment, war-crimes trials or reprisal murders if Saddam loses power.” In other words, they have every reason to fight.

Not that long ago Americans were more concerned about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda than Saddam Hussein. After all, Hussein hasn’t caused any trouble since getting his butt kicked out of Kuwait 12 years ago. And, unlike our ally Saudi Arabia, Iraq is not an exporter of Islamist terrorists. (It does support Palestinian suicide bombers, however, by paying money to the families of the so-called “martyrs.")

Shortly after the war in Afghanistan ended, driving out the Taliban but not capturing bin Laden or his top lieutenants, the Bush administration shifted its, and our, attention to Iraq. Suddenly Saddam Hussein was Public Enemy No. 1, and Osama bin Laden faded into the background.

The reason? A seachange in policy was taking place in the White House. Because of 9/11, the president began to accept the idea, long propounded by certain hawks in the neo-conservative defense establishment, that America should take a more assertive role vis-à-vis potential enemies. Instead of merely containing them, as the U.N. had tried to do with Hussein for over a decade, America would take pre-emptive action wherever and whenever it was threatened.

It began with the idea, carried to force in Afghanistan, that America would treat any nation harboring terrorists as an enemy. And gradually it has extended to any nation developing weapons of mass destruction—the president’s notorious “axis of evil,” first among them Iraq.

Hussein had such weapons, was developing a nuclear bomb and supposedly was in the process of hooking up—and presumably sharing his weapons—with al-Qaeda. Despite U.N. resolutions ordering him to dispose of his weapons, he had not documented having done so.

During his State of the Union speech this year, the president reiterated his concerns: “Imagine,” he said, speaking of the 9/11 attackers, “those 19 hijackers with other weapons, and other plans—this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take just one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known.”

It is a scary thought. Sept. 11 showed us just how vulnerable we could be to even a small group of people who were determined to wreak havoc. As the president has said, the oceans are no longer enough to protect us.

Increasingly, the answer given is simply that we’re set to do so and it’s too late to back down now. Perhaps believing that other nations would get on board, the Bush administration has prepared for war. Now we’ve got all those soldiers, ships and tanks in the region. If we wait much longer, the weather will be too hot for soldiers wearing bio-chem protection gear. And if, after all this, we don’t invade, the thinking goes, we’ll send a signal of American impotence to rogue nations everywhere.

The problem, even for many who support invasion, is that America so far has been unable to garner international support for military action. Many nations, including some of America’s closest allies, want to wait. War, they say, should be a last resort, and they don’t see Saddam Hussein as an immediate threat, especially with the weapons inspectors now at work and Iraq surrounded by American forces. The U.N. Security Council is deeply divided.

As Hussein has shown, he can keep up his hide-and-seek game with the inspectors indefinitely. President Bush is probably right when he argues that only force will make him come clean. On the other hand, Iraq can’t cause any trouble as long as it’s under such scrutiny.

In any case, the build-up to war has created a deep rift between the United States and its close allies France and Germany and its new friend Russia, all of which oppose invasion at this point. And efforts to get Turkey, Iraq’s northern neighbor, to allow coalition troops to use its bases have failed, despite an offer of $30 billion in aid and loans, because the Turkish people are overwhelmingly opposed to war.

In the meantime, millions of people all over the world have hit the streets in recent weeks, protesting the potential invasion. Bush says he respects the protesters but won’t be swayed by them. “Saddam Hussein is a threat to America, and we will deal with him,” he says.

It’s impossible to predict. Some commentators are sanguine, arguing that Hussein is widely despised as a troublemaker and his demise would be welcome, especially if the war doesn’t drag on. Others say that anger at the sight of a Christian nation engaged in a prolonged slaughter of Arab Muslims could arouse barely latent passions and cause the whole region to go up in flames.

Saudi Arabia is especially vulnerable, they say. Tremendous tension already exists between the ruling family and the multitudes of religious conservatives among the population, where an extreme version of Islam called Wahabbism is practiced. There is already deep resentment of the U.S. military bases on Saudi soil.

In fact, Osama bin Laden has based much of his recruiting of new militants on the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia, the site of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers, 15 were from Saudi Arabia.

Pakistan is also showing signs of tension. Islamist hardliners did well in October elections, winning numerous legislative seats and control of the two provinces bordering the Afghanistan border. And Turkey is worried that a war could inflame separatism among Turkish Kurds. (Iraqi Kurds, thanks to the “no-fly” zone imposed over northern Iraq following the Gulf War, now enjoy virtual autonomy there.)

Muslim nations in Southeast Asian such as Indonesia also worry that a drawn-out Iraq war might foster increased militance and instability in their countries.

War is always unpredictable. As a Pakistani columnist, Ayaz Amir, wrote recently in the newspaper Dawn (as reprinted in the Sacramento Bee), “Who can tell what is enshrouded in the mists of the coming war on Iraq? In the very war on terrorism, who can tell what dragon’s teeth are being sown?’

A conquered Iraq will present huge problems. Not only will the country be devastated, but also a governmental system will be virtually non-existent. Who will be responsible for rebuilding?

Here the old adage would seem to apply: “If you break it, you own it.” If America goes to war with Iraq without the support of the international community, it and the nations that join its coalition—right now only Britain and Spain are signed on—will be responsible for the war’s aftermath, including policing and rebuilding a country the size of California.

Iraq has almost no experience with democracy or its institutions—no checks and balances, no impartial laws and courts, no meaningful legislative bodies—and its populace is anything but homogeneous. There are three major groups, the Kurds in the far north, the Sunni Muslims in the area around Baghdad, and the largest group, Shiite Muslims in the south. Sunnis and Shiites have a long history of violent conflict in the Middle East, and the Shiites rose up against Hussein just after the Gulf War, thinking that America would support them. When it didn’t, Hussein quickly crushed them, killing thousands.

Iraq is also fundamentally a tribal society, one in which clan affiliation influences everything. A nation in which tribalism is the most powerful political factor is hardly ripe for democracy.

A conquered Iraq, then, will require nothing less than nation-building. And, while that happens, a huge military presence will be necessary to keep order. The effort will take many years and cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Without U.N. and international support, America will be responsible for most of those dollars, at a time when its economy is reeling, the federal deficit is growing, and state and local governments are cutting services right and left.

The central U.S. argument for invasion of Iraq is that it is in “material breach” of U.N. resolution 1441, passed on Nov. 8, 2002, ordering it to disarm. The U.N. inspectors have stated that Iraq has not been fully cooperative with them.

Does this justify invasion? From the standpoint of the U.N., that’s up to the Security Council, and right now it says no. It’s worth noting that several nations, including Israel and Turkey, are in violation of U.N. resolutions. One is the long-standing Resolution 242 ordering Israel to withdraw from the Arab territories it occupied in 1967.

President Bush argues that Iraqi subterfuge has been going on for years and there is no reason to think it ever will end. Saddam Hussein is a deceitful murderer who will do whatever it takes to stay in power, he says. And as long as Hussein is in power, and as long as al-Qaeda remains operative, Americans will not be safe. As commander-in-chief, it’s his job to make sure that America is secure, and if that means invading Iraq, even unilaterally, invade he will.

A unilateral attack would be, of course, unprecedented. America as a rule does not wage war against countries that are not waging war against it. There are small exceptions—Granada, for example, and the operation to snatch Manuel Noriega from Panama—and American secret agents long have operated in other countries, though less so now than during the Cold War. But a full-scale invasion of a non-belligerent nation would be something different altogether.

There is no telling what such a rewriting of precedent, and international law, would provoke. Would other nations feel empowered to launch pre-emptive strikes against otherwise peaceful enemies?

Still, even his critics have to give Bush credit for reinvigorating the United Nations and calling Hussein to account. Had it not been for his persistence, there would be no inspectors in Iraq right now, and the world would not be paying such attention to the U.N.'s dealings. He’s put that international body on the spot, challenging it to be strong for a change in seeing that its resolutions are honored. He’s forcing it to force Saddam Hussein’s hand, and nobody can say that’s not good.

It’s a watershed moment for both the United States and the United Nations. A unilateral U.S. invasion would be a devastating blow to the U.N., relegating that body to mere onlooker status as the United States, the world’s only remaining superpower, took on the role of international cop and power broker. And yet taking on that imperial role ultimately may be disastrous for America.

At a time when goods and information and people travel freely across borders and nations are interdependent in a way that was unimaginable a century ago, only the United Nations has the moral and, ultimately, legal authority to keep the peace. Only it represents the collective wisdom of the community of nations and their consensual decision-making process. If the United States ignores that, it may be at our own peril.

The ancient Greeks had a word for it: hubris. Tragic pride. At the end of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Creon’s last words to the blinded, bereft former king of Corinth are: “Crave not mastery in all, for the mastery that raised thee was they bane and wrought thy fall.”

For President Bush, a devout Christian, Proverbs 16:18 might serve: "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."