Antiwar critics not held accountable - National Affairs; Iraq War

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Dec, 2003

All of the controversy of the President's case for war has obscured an important truth--that much of what we are learning in Iraq undermines many antiwar arguments, claims Peter D. Feaver, professor of political science and director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies, Duke University, Durham, N.C. "An honest evaluation of the Bush decision for war requires [a determination] of the alternatives to war....

"Critics of the war effort in Iraq have largely avoided the painful scrutiny the Administration has been forced to undergo. While the press has focused attention on how emerging information, such as the interim U.S. inspections report, leads us to reinterpret the pro-war argument, no one seems to be subjecting antiwar arguments to the same scutiny."

Those made before the invasion "have been proven wrong with the benefit of hindsight," Feaver notes. For example, opponents of war asserted that United Nations weapons inspections and sanctions were acceptable deterrences, but now it is apparent that "the Iraqi people suffered mightily from the sanctions while Hussein's regime itself was actually strengthened. The pre-war status quo was far more costly for the Iraqi people than the current [situation]."

The opposition also countered that the UN Security Council could not be sure whether Iraq was complying with UN inspections and, therefore, the Bush Administration did not have a legal case for war. The interim U.S. inspections report in September makes clear that Iraq was noncompliant and actively defied the investigators, Feaver declares. "Those who argued Saddam Hussein was cooperating were wrong.... The war would have been just as much a judgment call in October, after six more months of inspections, as France was calling for, as it was in March."

Finally, critics claimed the war in Iraq would trap America in a bloody, urban battle. "We know that this concern, while plausible, was effectively neutralized by the U.S. war plan," he concludes. "Although the human toll of the war is ongoing, it will never reach the levels war critics warned about," with hundreds of thousands of starving refugees and thousands of U.S. battle deaths.