Now that the war with Iraq has begun, there are lessons to be learned, regardless of whether you believe the American attack was necessary or morally justified. These have been interesting months. Did you ever think you would see Pat Buchanan and Col. David Hackworth on the same side with Susan Sarandon and Charles Rangel in a political dispute?
James Fitzpatrick's new novel, The Dead Sea Conspiracy: Teilhard de Chardin and the New American Church, can be ordered directly from Winepress Publishers — 1-877-421-READ (7323); $12.95, plus S&H. You can email Mr. Fitzpatrick at jkfitz42@aol.com.
(This article originally appeared in The Wanderer and is reprinted with permission. To subscribe call 651-224-5733.)
This is an observation worth making, even though Buchanan and Hackworth objected to the war for reasons clearly distinct from the knee-jerk opposition to the use of American military force found on the Left. It illustrates how the ground has shifted from the old Cold War debates over America’s role in the world.
What are the lessons I have in mind? One of them centers on how unmatched the two sides will be on the battlefield. Now, please, do not misread what I am about to say. I want us to use every weapon at our disposal, short of our nuclear arsenal, as our troops move forward. I am not proposing that we have an obligation to make a war with Iraq a “fair fight.” That would be silly. We do not have to fight the war on Iraq’s terms.
But isn’t there something disquieting about the idea that our military can plan an attack that would leave tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers dead, while our side has to concern itself more with casualties from friendly fire? About a war where one side can destroy the other’s military and civilian infrastructure without fear of retaliation? It seems less like warfare than an application of punishment. Our planes drop their bombs from heights beyond the reach of Iraqi air defenses. Our missiles are launched from ships beyond the range of Iraqi artillery. For the men and women in our military who fire these weapons, the war is much like a video game.
Let me repeat: I am not proposing that we fight this war in a way that gives the Iraqis a chance to counterattack. Quite the contrary. My point is that we should never allow ourselves to be in the same situation as Iraq. When religiously motivated peace activists call upon us to “beat our swords into plowshares” for the cause of peace, they should take a step back and consider what it would be like to find ourselves facing adversaries who would be able to calmly plan how much of the United States they should destroy in order to get us to see things their way.
Would you like to find us with an adversary contemplating whether they should take out our power grid on Monday? Blow up the Hoover Dam on Tuesday? Destroy all our ports on Wednesday? Blow up the Washington Monument and Statue of Liberty on Thursday to demoralize us a bit? All this while we could do nothing to defend ourselves. Far-fetched? Saying that would mean that you cannot picture any military power on the planet — Iraq, Korea, Syria, China — willing to use an overwhelming military advantage against us to gain its way in the world arena; that you cannot picture any other country acting as we are in our confrontation with Iraq in pursuit of what it considers its vital national interests. “Vital” interests are not always perceived rationally or morally. Ask the victims of Genghis Khan or Stalin.
We also have learned in recent months that we cannot place our national security in the hands of the “international community.” We now know that international peacekeeping alliances such as the United Nations cannot be counted upon when the going gets rough. The European powers that placed obstacles in the way of military action against Iraq protest that they did not think it was time to give up on negotiations and international pressure. The implication is that they would have been willing to send in their troops if the inspectors had turned up evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and complicity with terrorist groups.
Do you believe that? Put me down as a doubter. Can anyone picture the European powers sending tens of thousands of troops into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein if that kind of evidence had been turned up? They were reluctant to send troops to Bosnia. They were reluctant to send troops to stop the killings in Rwanda. United Nations’ support for military intervention in troubled areas has come to mean little more than giving Security Council approval for the United States military to strike. I am not being glib when I say that I suspect the most the Germans and French would do, if the inspectors turned up solid evidence that the Iraqi’s were coordinating planned terrorist strikes throughout Europe, is give a weary approval for the United States to invade. The “world community” is not going to send meaningful numbers of troops into a hostile setting. There is no “world community” that can be counted upon to protect our security or vital interests.
The dream of world federalism and the end of the nation-state system has lured the intellectual community since the end of World War II. The promise has been that an international peacekeeping force can be used to bring about the end of war and a peaceful resolution of national conflicts. We are seeing that there is no international peacekeeping force that can be counted upon when there is a high price to be paid in blood and treasure. Whether or not it was wise and just for the United States to attack Iraq, it is clear that Saddam Hussein would be able to do whatever he wants in the Middle East without fear of the United Nations going to war to stop him.
Beat our swords into plowshares? If we did, who in the “world community” would come to our defense if we were faced with a hostile military power determined to impose its will upon us? An irrational fear? Well, whatever one thinks of Israel’s policies in the Middle East, consider what its fate would be if it did not have a powerful military and if it did not have the military support of the United States. How would Saddam Hussein and Syria deal with a disarmed Israel? The point is that, even if you take the position that Israel has no right to exist, we would not want to find ourselves at the mercy of powerful enemies the way Israel would be in such a weakened state. And in the real world, there will be powerful enemies.
