Deter and contain: it worked against Joseph Stalin, so why not against Saddam Hussein?

THE SIMPLEST QUESTION THAT SUPPORTERS OF going to war with Iraq cannot answer is why would Saddam Hussein be less likely to use his weapons of mass destruction if we attack than if we contain him. This debate, essentially within the Republican Party, closely mirrors the struggle over the proposed rollback of communism that raged in the GOP in the late 1940s and early 1950s--until President Dwight Eisenhower settled it. As we currently debate whether some form of containment can work, it is worth reviewing the lessons of that history.

Those who advocated preventive war against ...

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