Between Iraq and a hard place - Letters

Washington Monthly, Sept, 2002 by Douglas Scott, William Cox

On the whole, Joshua Micah Marshall ("Bomb Saddam?" June) offers a valuable analysis of the debate over whether to invade Iraq. Nevertheless, he may be giving too much credit to the "ideologues [who] have turned out to be right."

First, Reagan is given the standard credit for winning the Cold War. Yet, three paragraphs later, Marshall states the crucial truth--that in the 1970s the Soviet Union was "already headed for collapse, and its downfall had more to do with its own terminal rot than anything America did." In short, Reagan's wild military spending (encouraged by the CIA's Team B, led by the first Bush) coupled with tax cuts was not merely useless but devastating for the American economy in general and for civilian infrastructure in particular.

Second, George H. W. Bush obeyed Colin Powell in the Gulf War and left Saddam in power. Score another for the ideologues. Yet Marshall quite properly devotes much of his article to showing how predictions of an easy stroll into Baghdad ate predominantly made by logic-chopping civilians who avoided military service. Why, then, are we so sure that that the ideologues were right at the time and Powell was wrong?

The third triumph of the ideologues is less easy to refute, and will continue to be so until much more scholarly analysis emerges of the Balkan wars during the 1990s. But I suspect it will become clear that Clinton moved from caution to bombing not because he listened to the neocons, but because Croatian victories isolated Serbia and made American intervention less unilateral.

Marshall's article is damn good. I just wish he hadn't spent the first five paragraphs clearing his throat.

DOUGLAS SCOTT
Norwalk, Conn.

Joshua Micah Marshall made a very common error in stating that Iraq expelled UNSCOM weapons inspectors in 1998. In fact, the inspectors were withdrawn by the United States so that they would not be victims of Operation Desert Fox. Afterward, Iraq refused to readmit the inspectors who had been shown to be harboring U.S. spies.

WILLIAM COX
Morgan Hill, Calif.