Rethinking Iraq, Pt. III

NB: In order to post more regularly, and as an interesting exercise in its own right, I've decided to tackle frequent and (at times) credible objections to the invasion of Iraq. In the course of doing so over the next weeks, I will indeed redeem the promissory notes I've issued (for fuller elaboration/justification of certain points) in parts I & II, and hopefully be able to do so within more manageable proportions.

"There never was a consistent rationale for war; the 'case' kept changing."

This is trivially true: different reasons were emphasized at different times. Yet that's a far cry from saying that the case was incoherent - which seems to be what the critic is really driving at. The point is: something which is not "consistent" is not thereby "inconsistent" in the sense of being self-contradictory.

Surely there are few cases in life where a person - or a 'corporate person'/persona ficta, such as a club, a family, an organization, a government administration - has one, and only one, reason for a course of action.

E.g.,

Why did you go to that particular college?
Why did you marry such-and-such?
Why/how did you alight on the career you now have?
Why were your assets invested in that particular manner?
Etc.

In the case of the first, one might say:

* My application was accepted
* The tuition was affordable
* The campus was near/far from home
* The institution has a good reputation
* The department I studied under offered a program catering to my interests
* Professor such-and-such offered an ongoing seminar I was dying to attend
* I knew I would have the chance to write for the department's periodical
etc.

What were the reasons adduced, at different times, for invading Iraq?

* Prevent or disrupt the confluence of terrorism and WMD: well and truly verify that Iraq had disarmed, and disarm it if it hadn't.
* Attempt to establish a beachead for political moderation in the Muslim Middle East
* End the reign of a wicked tyrant, thereby liberating his oppressed subjects
* Show U.S. - and Western-International[!] - resolve against despots.
* Move forward more constructively towards some kind of resolution on the question of Palestine

Reasons which weren't stated explicitly, but were hinted at, or might have been adduced:

* Prevent Iraq from ultimately gaining the deterrent effect of N. Korea.
* End a long-standing conflict/stalemate which not only had seen diminishing returns, but was
making much trouble for the U.S. vis a vis the wider 'war against terrorism'
* De-couple the U.S. and Saudi Arabia (including moving the troops out of the Arabian Peninsula),in order politically to be able to lean on and isolate the house of Saud for its duplicitousness
* Frighten other "rogue" states into thinking twice or thrice about developing WMD and colluding with terrorists
* Protect the Oil supplies of Iraq and the Gulf from any future deviltry of Saddam's.
* Harm OPEC

It hardly takes an extended analysis to show that these various reasons - whether one credits any/every one of them, or not - form a kind of "family" or system of justifcations. In fact they nearly all appear, or are implied, in the National Security Strategy document of Sept. 2002. Hence some of the more charitable detractors of the invasion credit the case as representing an "Intellectual's War."

The essential quality of a system is that its constituents condition and mutually entail one another, resulting in a whole which transcends a mere summation of the parts. It's fairly clear how the Bush administration's various reasons relate to, and "shade" one another; e.g., Saddam Hussein is/was a paradigmatic "Stalinist" tyrant, the overthrowing of whom would be absolutely crucial to (a)make room for political moderation in Iraq and, by example, region-wide and (b)diffuse the appeal of Islamism, which is a reaction to the Scylla and Charybdis of modern Middle Eastern politics; heretofore the alternative has mainly been some variant of secular tyranny of the Ba'athist type or kingly-theocratic kleptocracy and corruption (Saudi).

If, in the case of the invasion of Iraq, one wants an over-arching goal that comprehends the more specific ends listed, then one has to advert to vague, inclusive ends like "security" or "serving vital, national interests," and so on. Of course the crucial question for political deliberation is, at this particular point in time, vis a vis Iraq, in what does serving our vital, national interests consist? The set of motives given - for which invasion was claimed to be the only effective means, however risky and drastic - form the Bush administration's answer (just as if, in the case of college attendance, my aim was "to get the best possible education under the circumstances," with the specific reasons given justifying how my choice of college served that aim).

As a matter of rhetoric and presentation of the case, clearly different facets of the overall "strategy" were disclosed piecemeal, or rarely all at once. That's hardly surprising in politics, where ends are constrained according to the "art of the possible," where the machinations of political opponents, and the interests and capacities of one's audience, always somehow have to be factored into the mix. Clearly President Bush lacks the gift of oratory, and surely he could have presented his case better. Even still, an examination of the record shows quite consistent fidelity to recurring themes.