Still a Bad Idea

The Iraq war was a dreadful idea before it began March 19 (March 20 Iraq time), and now, two weeks in, it’s still a dreadful idea. Judging by the armchair cartography that pours endlessly from retired military types on network retainers, it’s not going all that well—at least not in relation to the upbeat prewar expectations of the Bush administration’s accomplished propagandists. But assessments of the enterprise as a military campaign fail to diminish the view that it’s a reckless and contemptible approach to making a dangerous world safer or more accommodating to American interests or values. The arguments against war in mid-March are just as compelling in early April, if not more so.

Nothing that’s happened since March 19 softens the view that the war is incompatible with any plausible interpretation of the existing tenets of international law. The Bush doctrine of preemptive self-defense, which the eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. recently described as “alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan employed at Pearl Harbor,” mocks established principles of sovereignty, self-defense and collective security that have been the hallmark of interstate relations since the end of World War II. Apostles of this war imagine legal cover in the form of U.N. Security Council resolution 1441, adopted in November to ramp up weapons inspections. But 1441 set no time limits for inspections, made no mention of invasion or regime change and certainly didn’t authorize a conquest and occupation of Iraq by George Bush and Tony Blair. The U.N. debates before and after the adoption of 1441 made it patently clear that a second resolution was needed before the council could be thought to have sanctioned an invasion.

Nothing that has occurred since March 19 dispels the sense that this war is built on shaky assumptions about the imminent threat that Iraq (however repulsive its leader) is thought to pose to U.S. interests and territory. The Bush administration’s willingness to encourage American public opinion to wrongly infer that Iraq had a concrete role in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is shameless and repugnant. There is also Bush’s willingness to justify war aims in terms of assertions about Iraq’s nuclear program that we now know to have been based on documents that were transparently fabricated.

Nothing that has occurred since March 19 gives skeptics any reason to feel less fearful of or less sickened by the war’s human cost. The Pentagon is adept at spinning revisionist views of the fog and unpredictability of an unfolding war, but for those who have been paying attention all along, the mounting casualty toll, the misdirected munitions and the terrorist feel to Iraqi military resistance were all too predictable. Articulate opponents have been warning from the start of a conflict that would be bloodier and nastier than the war the administration was selling. Mainstream media are caught up in telling a story of changing parameters and expectations; war opponents are finding pretty much the horror we anticipated.

Nothing that’s occurred since March 19 changes the expectation that the war’s financial toll will be obscene, and that the administration will play cynical politics with estimates of its magnitude and broader economic effects. Bush’s reluctance to be candid and forthcoming on the economics of war and postwar occupation only heightens a suspicion that the costs and consequences will be staggering and long-term. (Here, fuzzyheaded liberals are empowered to imagine the alternative uses to which tens of billions of dollars spent on armaments could be put in a society rife with failing schools, defective health care and reeling state budgets. Real hawks can’t indulge this kind of weakness.)

Nothing since March 19 alleviates the fear that a war without U.N. support or a wider coalition would foment hostility toward America that is more likely to increase terrorism and destabilize the Middle East. As one could have easily predicted, the occasional missile has wandered astray, and the predictable incineration of civilians that resulted has catalyzed predictable anti-American rage and distrust in the Arab media. In recent days, the improvident Donald Rumsfeld has seen fit to pique Syria and Iran with veiled threats of a wider war—impulsive steps that will only undermine the “winning hearts and minds” side of the campaign. Even as one anticipates that Iraqis will find much to like about the inevitable demise of Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime, the odds that democracy will bust out all over the Middle East (or even in Iraq anytime soon) seem remote indeed.