“What If” War

If you had to choose someone as a symbol of the war in Iraq, who would it be? Would you name President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein? A good case could be made for each. But granting that, my own choice nonetheless would be Pfc. Jessica Lynch.



Why Pfc. Lynch? Because her public image was, at least in the early stages of her fame, largely a product of misinformation and hype. And the same mix seems to have been heavily at work in the rationale for this war.

I don’t want to be unfair to Pfc. Lynch. To her great credit, at the time she was injured and captured she was where she was supposed to be and doing what she was supposed to do. The same apparently cannot be said of the decision-making process that led us into Iraq.

But I don’t want to be unfair to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretaries Rumsfeld and Powell, CIA Director Tenet, or National Security Adviser Rice either. So let me say flatly that I don’t believe any of them lied. Instead, with the possible exception of Tenet, they seem to have wanted something so badly — a war to overthrow Saddam — that they believed more than the evidence supported about the threat he posed to the United States. Believing that, they went out and sold the war.

In some ways I don’t blame them. Although I opposed the war, I took for granted the existence of the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) just as they and everyone else did. But I reasoned that WMDs were Saddam’s version of a deterrent and, as such, not a threat unless and until he was attacked. That made them an argument against war.

Administration officials now defend their decision on the basis of what Saddam might have done at some point in the future if we hadn’t moved against him. But this manner of arguing is too conjectural by half, especially if the question one is trying to settle concerns the morality of the war.

To put it simply, Nation A isn’t entitled to attack Nation B on the basis of what A thinks B might possibly do somewhere further down the line. At the very least, a just war requires a clear, demonstrable, proximate threat. There was none in Iraq. And some of the church people who strenuously defended the morality of going to war should now be voicing regrets at having been so self-confidently wrong on that crucial point.

It will be objected, however, that the war had another objective as well: overthrowing an evil tyrant in order to set the stage for a peaceful, democratic Middle East.

Obviously, these were and are desirable outcomes. But two things can be said in reply. First, neither objective is of the kind recognized in classical just war theory, although someone might plausibly argue that they ought to be. Second, a stable, democratic Middle East is nowhere now in sight. Will it ever be? Come back in a decade. By then we may know if the war helped or hurt.

Because we were mistaken to go into Iraq, it doesn’t follow that we now ought to get out. Cutting and running would do immense harm — not least, to Iraqis who’ve chosen to cooperate with us. The United States is morally obliged to try to set things right. How long that will take and at how great a cost in lives and treasure are anybody’s guess. That’s not what we were hearing this time a year ago.

Russell Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, D.C. You can email him at RShaw10290@aol.com.

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Russell Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, DC. He is the author of more than twenty books and previously served as secretary for public affairs of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops/United States Catholic Conference.

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