Editor,
This spring will mark 20 years since the Washington-led invasion of Iraq. A crucial question then and now involves the pre-emptive nature of Operation Iraqi Freedom where our side struck first.
A first use of deadly force is not, from my standpoint, automatically ruled out for all conceivable (and exceptional) circumstances. However, we can insist when any nation’s leaders start a war, that the burden of proof to do so is heavy.
In making a case to go to war, President Bush said, “Some have argued we should wait – and that’s an option. In my view, it’s the riskiest of all options, because the longer we wait, the stronger and bolder [Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein will become. We could wait and hope that Saddam does not give [biological and chemical] weapons to terrorists, or develop a nuclear weapon to blackmail the world. But I am convinced that is a hope against all evidence.”
A couple of months earlier Brent Scowcroft, who was national security advisor for Bush’s father, spoke out against a war. He addressed the concerns Hussein could supply weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to terrorists or threaten to use WMD to blackmail.
Scowcroft said, “He [Hussein] is unlikely to risk his investment in weapons of mass destruction, much less his country, by handing such weapons to terrorists who would use them for their own purposes and leave Baghdad as the return address. Threatening to use these weapons for blackmail – much less their actual use – would open him and his entire regime to a devastating response by the U.S.”
That’s to say, Hussein faced a mighty deterrent.
The United Nations did not authorize the subsequent USA/UK/Australia attack, nor, noticeably, were chemical or biological weapons used against the invading forces.
The best cause for armed action, for my part, was removing the cruel Hussein from power. However, a Human Rights Watch Report in 2004 said there was no evidence of actual or imminent mass killing to warrant a humanitarian-intervention rescue in March 2003. Such mass killings did occur in Iraq in 1988 against the Kurds, and during the immediate aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War.
The 2003 invasion of Iraq occasioned insurgent and sectarian bloodletting there, while the presence of Western occupying powers foreseeably escalated terrorism within and outside Iraq.
Accordingly, people who hold affirmation-of-life core values can consider the invasion to be unnecessary. And mournful.
Gary Huffenberger
Wilmington
