A Publication for the faculty, staff, administrators and friends of California State University, Chico
March. 10, 2005 Volume 35 / Number 5

Because "Oops" Is Not an Option

Jean Bethke Elshtain's defense of the war in Iraq in her presentation on Thursday, February 9th was important for CSU, Chico and the campus community. Although there are defenders on campus of the war on Iraq and BushÕs preemptive war doctrine, her position on these issues is hardly dominant. For that reason alone, Laird Easton and the Humanities Center are to be commended for bringing Elshtain to campus and her arguments should be seriously considered.

With that said, Elshtain's presentation was frustrating. She took questions only from students under the unclear justification that "this is a university." She also deflected rather than addressed the criticisms that arose. A university, Elshtain should be reminded, also contains Professors and serves the larger community. We also have the right to ask hard questions. Furthermore, meaningful dialogue requires the opportunity to follow up questions with comments- a possibility that Elshtain blunted with what can only be called grandmotherly admonitions. A counter to her case is therefore in order.

Elshtain is the most articulate and intelligent voice for the most defensible argument that has been given for the war on Iraq. While her case for the war is elaborate and subtle, it comes down to this: the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the United States was justified because Saddam Hussein had made war upon his own people. No current international organization including the United Nations was capable of deposing this mass murderer. Past inactions in the face of such threats have led to the slaughter of millions. The United States acted appropriately to save Iraqis from their ruler.

Elshtain provides considerable theoretical import rooted in a long tradition of just war theory to this - the latest - of a number of arguments that the Bush administration has thrown to the American people, like banana peels against a wall, hoping that one might stick. Unfortunately, like its predecessors, this argument will not do.

First, this was not the justification that Americans were given as we were led into war. The overwhelmingly dominant reason given by Bush for invasion was the presence of weapons of mass destruction and the imminent threat that Saddam Hussein posed to the United States. Anyone doubting that arguments for humanitarian intervention were not dominant should reread Bush's speeches justifying the war or a transcript of Colin Powell's testimony to the United Nations defending the American invasion. These presentations and speeches are lightly salted with arguments about how Hussein had treated his own people, but they make the case for invasion based upon the threat that Hussein posed to the security of Americans and the world. Elshtain is disingenuous to suggest that humanitarian arguments for liberation were integral to the original justification.

Although historical counterfactuals are impossible to prove, it hard to believe that the American people could have been mobilized in favor of this invasion had it been presented to them as a war of liberation, humanity, and democracy. A majority Americans - including a vast majority of the Republicans who are now defending the Iraqi war on these high moral grounds - were opposed to American involvement in Bosnia, even though the presence of genocide there had clearly been established. American involvement in Somalia during the early 1990s is also now embedded in the American political consciousness as an example of the risks of humanitarian intervention. Finally, there has been neither public outcry nor administration support for committing United States troops to the Sudan despite the undeniable documentation of massive killing there.

So what, if this justification is given in retreat because weapons of mass destruction were not found? Isn't it nevertheless a principled and praiseworthy justification? The answer here is also a decisive no.Given its history in Iraq, the United States lacked the moral authority to act unilaterally upon such a justification. We, after all, empowered the killer Hussein because we believed that under his leadership Iraq would serve as a strategic counterbalance to Iran. We stood back as he gassed Kurds and systematically terrorized those who opposed his rule. The argument that we could no longer abide his atrocities is not taken seriously internationally. Americans who express consternation at European attitudes toward the United States' involvement in Iraq or fail to understand why they question our motives should consider this sequence of events.

Elshtain's replies to this point were that if only blameless nations act, then no action will ever be taken and that September 11th fundamentally changed the geopolitical context. Supporting leaders such as Hussein, she remarked, was more understandable in the context of the bipolar world of the Cold War. No one, however, is suggesting that the United States need be blameless to act. The point is that the United States should not have acted unilaterally given the character of its prior involvement. No one also doubts that the geopolitical context has changed following September 11th, but the Cold War was hardly justification for America=s tragic history of support of dictators any more than the current geopolitical context is a justification for endless moral interventions.

Second, and more importantly, Americans are not now and will not in the future be willing to act upon the criteria outlined in this justification for war. The most important criteria Elshtain emphasized were that the nation charged with abuses must be shown to have systematically violated the rights of its citizens in egregious ways and that the war must be winnable. She also suggested that war against nations such as North Korea who have nuclear weapons is imprudent because of its human costs.

Consider what it would mean to follow these criteria. The next time that a ethnically-based war breaks out or it can be shown that any non-nuclear nation is systematically killing it own, the United States would be bound by the principles of its own justification to act alone. Unfortunately, a survey of the world reveals a number of nations that meet that criteria. Taken seriously and applied consistently, Elshtain's criteria and the administration's policies are a formula for perpetual war.

The moral responsibility that a nation owes to the citizens of other nations is far different from what it owes to its own. We need not be morally indifferent to suffering or be isolationists to reject this quixotic mission. We need only recognize the limitations to our ability to eradicate evil. Indeed, this is not an argument for isolation at all, but rather one for internationalism, for gaining the cooperation of the international community when civil wars threaten lives and leaders declare wars on their populations. Gaining the support of other nations under these conditions will serve as a prophylactic against nations that might claim to be intervening on humanitarian grounds but are really pursuing other purposes.

Third, the effects of the war in Iraq and this high flown justification for it have been to make it easier for terrorists to recruit, to galvanize opposition to the United States in the world, and to encourage nations to expedite the development of their nuclear and biological capabilities. At one point in her presentation, Elshtain seemed to suggest that terrorists cannot be eliminated and that they will always have premises for recruiting more of their own. Perhaps. Still, the invasion of Iraq and now the moral justifications that have been given for it have made it increasingly difficult for the United States to reach out to moderate Islamists. No one has fought the propaganda war for Al Qaeda in the Middle East better than the Bush administration. The images of Abu Ghraib alone will take a generation to deflect. Terrorists now have abundant evidence to support their belief that their Jihad is justified because they face an American administration bent on replacing Mosques with malls.

Conservatives also like to argue that Libya was brought to abandon the development of its nuclear program by the precedent of Iraq. Actually, negotiations which have led to those developments were in the making long before Iraq. Recent statements by leaders in both Iran and North Korea in defense of the development of their nuclear technologies are a direct response to the threat these nations believe is posed by the United States. Like diplomacy, force has its limitations and unintended consequences. The sooner this administration learns that lesson, the safer the world will be.

Also left undiscussed in Elshtain's discussion were the real moral and strategic alternatives that might have been exercised had we not invaded Iraq. Following September 11th, the United States possessed considerable sympathy and fund of goodwill from the world. Removing the Taliban from control in Afghanistan was justified because of their clear links to Al Queda and September 11th. But what if we had used the tragedy of September 11th to leverage talks between the Palestinians and Israeli and sought policies that gave credibility to our contention that we can act as an impartial arbiter in the Middle East? What if we would have sought to strengthen the United Nations in order that it might serve as a means for many nations - none blameless - to intervene in the face of gulags and civil wars? What if we had begun programs to curb American consumption of oil and exponentially accelerate the development of alternative energy sources so that we might escape our dependence on Middle Eastern oil and thus be able to intervene in this region for principled reasons?

My central point here is that the Bush administration has been led to offer this justification because weapons of mass destructions were not found and the war and occupation have cost billions of dollars and 1000s of lives. Admitting a mistake is difficult for Presidents under any conditions, but it is apparently impossible for this administration under these conditions. Oops is not an option. The Bush administration, then, has paradoxically descended onto the high moral ground that it now occupies. But high ground is often where one teeters before falling. Americans must not allow the arguments that are attending this war effort to become the reigning understanding of why we fight wars or to be considered proper policy in the Middle East.

To be sure, as Elshtain has suggested, the demands of the statesman and the academic are different. Like Monday morning quarterbacks, armchair critics of this administration's policies - I refuse to concede that they represent American policies - have an easier position than statesmen who must act on (always uncertain) intelligence and with the lives of millions at stake. Nevertheless, it is also easier to justify war from the Oval Office or the University of Chicago than to fight one gagging and befogged from Bagdad dust. It is easier still to ride a wave of obtuse, trumped up patriotism than to criticize constructively and to convince others that mature and responsible criticism is an integral part of love of country.

These are the kinds of points that I would have raised to Jean Bethke Elshtain had she been interested in a genuine conversation about Iraq.