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MARCH 2004

Iraq Roundup for College Students
by Adam B. Kushner

Any demographer can tell you why there are more commercials for Viagra during the evening news broadcasts than for Play station: young people–even many thirty-somethings–simply don't follow current events. Yet, by the unwritten rules of suffrage, people older than 18 are expected not only to understand the world, but also to elect representatives based on that understanding. So as the Iraq war–a divisive issue for next year's election–fades slowly into memory, it's worth reminding youths what it was all about. Here, then, is a refresher.

The administration of President Bush cited three justifications for going to war. The primary one was that Iraq was a rogue regime and that overthrowing it would enhance America's national security. To that end, the White House argued that: Saddam Hussein was an irrational despot with designs on Middle East (and perhaps world) domination; he had an ongoing weapons development program, including biochemical and nuclear weapons; he could unleash his arsenal on the battlefield in as few as 45 minutes; and Saddam was cooperating with the terrorists of al Qaeda.

Since the war ended, most of the claims have been discredited. True, Saddam has hoped to dominate the Middle East since the 1960s. But his biochemical weapons development program ended during the last inspection regime before 1998 (he may have had a few leftover stockpiles from the Iran-Iraq war and the Kurdish genocide of 1988, but today's inspectors have failed to find even those). There have been no signs of a nuclear weapons program. A special commission in England learned that the rapid-deployment claim was manipulated by the Prime Minister's office. And although a large majority of Americans came to believe that Saddam Hussein helped al Qaeda orchestrate the 9/11 attack, even President Bush has denied as much.

The second argument for war was to credibility to the United Nations. The Bush administration argued that resolutions such as 1441, demanding intrusive weapons inspections in Iraq, would be worthless if they weren't backed up by the credible threat of force. In a sense, the United States hoped to use the UN resolution and impending war as a deterrent to other rogue regimes. Most international observers believe America's credible threat recently helped convince Libya to allow inspections.

The third point said that the Iraq was a fundamentally liberal project, and that spreading democracy–at the point of a gun, if necessary–should be the goal of every human rights advocate in the world. This was a humanitarian war to remove a genocidal tyrant. Since the war ended (and the administration failed to prove the national security argument), the White House has cited this case most frequently. Of all the arguments, the third has been the most resonant. It fits into America's grand narrative of fighting for freedom, and dovetails neatly with 50 years of Cold War foreign policy.

But there are problems. Critics say that the United States is not investing nearly enough money, troops, or time into the reconstruction of Iraq, without which there will be no democracy. Despite promising to show resolve in the face of frequent guerilla attacks, the Bush administration is now preparing to pull most peacekeeping troops out of Iraq before the election next November.

Another logical flaw with the humanitarian case for war is that Iraq was not the only despotic regime around. If the White House really cared about liberal democracy and human rights, it would also invade Iran, North Korea, Egypt, China, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, Syria, Myanmar, Jordan, and a handful of other countries. If Iraq becomes, in the coming months, the constitutional democracy that the U.S. hopes for it to be, President Bush may find a slippery slope from Iraq to Pakistan.#

Adam Kushner has been a contributor to Education Update since his undergraduate days at Columbia University. He is now a professional journalist.

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