Why we're there: we went into Iraq, and persist there now, for sound reasons

National Review, Dec 31, 2005 by David B.J. Rivkin, Lee A. Casey

THE Bush administration has remained largely on the defensive in the escalating war of words over the merits of its decision to invade Iraq in 2003. In contesting the Democrats' key anti-war allegation--that the president "lied" the country into Iraq by misrepresenting the available intelligence--the White House has concentrated on the indisputable fact that everyone, Republicans and Democrats, Bush-administration officials and their Clinton-administration predecessors, the U.S. and dozens of foreign countries, believed that Saddam Hussein maintained stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, at the least, and probably had an active nuclear program as well. There are, however, a number of other, equally compelling points that can and should be emphasized in defending the administration's Iraq policy.

THE LAW

First and foremost, it should be made clear that the legal case for war against Saddam's regime--a subject of continuing debate in Europe, the U.N., and the international-law professoriate--has not been undercut in any way, and certainly not by the failure to find WMD stockpiles in Iraq. This is true regardless of whether the war's legality is based on: the inherent right of the United States and its coalition allies to defend themselves against threats to their security; U.N. Security Council Resolution 678, which authorized the use of force against Iraq in 1991 both to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait and to restore peace and security in the region, and which has never been withdrawn; Security Council Resolution 1441, passed in the fall of 2002 and finding Iraq to be in "material breach" of its obligations under various preceding resolutions; or some combination of the above. None of these justifications depended on the actual existence in Iraq of WMD stockpiles, and the use of military force was not, therefore, "illegal."

In this connection, it should be emphasized that at no time was it the responsibility of the U.N. inspection teams, or the United States and its allies, to establish that Saddam Hussein retained a WMD capability. The onus of proving that he had fully disarmed was always on Saddam. This was the price of an armistice, and of keeping his odious regime in power following Iraq's defeat in the first Gulf War. From a legal point of view, his failure to meet this burden fully justified military action.

LIVING WITH SADDAM

It is perhaps more pertinent to the current debate, however, that the threat assessment upon which the Bush administration acted was fundamentally sound. The only mistake in its calculus, made by the CIA and numerous foreign intelligence services, was positing that Saddam possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons--as well as a concealed nuclear-weapons program--after 1991. It was, however, an honest mistake. The claim that Bush lied about Saddam's WMD is itself a lie. There is no doubt that the administration sincerely believed that Saddam retained a substantial WMD arsenal.

Indeed, the U.S. viewed the WMD threat as so serious that all of its pre-war planning, including the timing of the attack and the actual combat operations, was conducted in the full expectation that Saddam would use at least chemical weapons against U.S. troops. U.S. troops carried gas masks and chemical suits into battle. Moreover, it would have made no sense for the administration to rely so heavily on the WMD threat to publicly justify military action if it knew that no WMD would be found once Saddam was toppled.

In any case, Saddam's supposed WMD stockpiles were only one aspect of the threat calculus. The other critical elements encompassed the undisputed facts that Saddam had proven himself to be an aggressive and unpredictable actor in a highly important and vulnerable area of the world; that he had had WMD capabilities (including a mature nuclear-weapons program) in the past; that he had already deployed and used WMD against both Iranians and Iraq's own citizens; that he had sheltered known terrorists and aided active terrorist organizations; and that he had never fully cooperated with the U.N. inspection teams. In other words, Saddam Hussein was a dangerous man behaving as if he had something to hide.

Significantly, none of the major opponents of military action in Iraq--including and especially France and Germany--ever claimed that Saddam had, in fact, met his obligations and was no longer a threat. Like those members of Congress who voted against the use of force in the fall of 2002, their alternative was to continue a policy of containment. They did not, of course, offer to take up the burdens and risks of this policy: It is the United States and Britain that would have continued indefinitely to enforce the no-fly zones and guarantee the region's security from Saddam.

Even more to the point, the U.N. sanctions regime was crumbling. Indeed, by the end of Bill Clinton's second term, Britain and the United States were the only permanent members of the Security Council who supported continuing (let alone tightening) the sanctions against Saddam Hussein's government. Partly for commercial reasons, partly driven by reflexive anti-Americanism, partly because of Saddam's Oil-for-Food bribes, and partly in simple diplomatic exhaustion, France, Russia, and China were eager to grant the regime in Baghdad a clean bill of health. And in any case, even if an all-out U.S.-led diplomatic effort could have resuscitated the sanctions policy for a time, it was fundamentally unsustainable for the long haul. Even the most targeted sanctions would have hurt individual Iraqis more than Saddam, whose allies had made adroit use of Iraqi suffering, some real and some exaggerated, to advance their agenda.