These are two of my weekly newspaper columns from 2002 (both are also available online):
So what's the real reason?
By Rich Lewis, Aug. 29, 2002
http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2002/08/29/edito18.txtThe idea of the United States attacking Iraq in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein is so ridiculous -- so stupid -- that the Bush administration can't be serious about it.
I am convinced that the constant and increasing threats to go and blast Saddam must be part of some complicated diplomatic strategy. But I'm having a hard time trying to figure out what it is.
Maybe we're trying to signal dissident forces in Iraq that if they make a move on Saddam, we'll be right behind them.
Maybe we're trying to provoke Saddam into making the first move -- so that then we can really cream him and claim it was self-defense.
Maybe rather than trying to provoke Saddam, we're just trying to freeze him -- make him so paranoid that he decides to behave.
Maybe the administration is just trying to distract attention from the economy with war talk -- which is dangerous but not nearly as dangerous as actually going to war.
I don't know. In fact, one of the reasons I'm writing this column is in the hope that the people who read it will come up with explanations that haven't occurred to me. Because, as I said, there just has to be some hidden agenda behind all this war talk. The idea of attacking Iraq is just too breathtakingly insane to take seriously. It couldn't possibly solve any of our problems and would almost certainly make them much worse.
Not to mention the likelihood of thousands of nice, young Americans dying horribly -- right along with thousands upon thousands of Iraqis, some of whom will be soldiers, but many of whom will be innocent men, women and children who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The main motive given for attacking Iraq now is that Saddam is planning to use weapons of mass destruction on us. Killing him -- and however many others get in the way -- is justified in order to prevent him from killing others in the future. You know, do unto others before they do unto you.
The problem with this reasoning is that it is a blanket excuse for violence that can never be refuted. It turns any perceived threat into a justification for war. And no one can prove that the obliterated enemy wasn't planning to attack first.
This all reminds me of that Tom Cruise movie that came out this summer -- "Minority Report" -- in which the police arrest and destroy people who haven't committed any crime -- but who a bunch of psychics in a swimming pool say will commit a crime. Just imagine George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld floating in that pool.
The hard fact is that we will not be justified in attacking Saddam until he has attacked us or someone we have pledged to defend. Period. That may be painful; it may cost lives because he just might attack us first -- but it is the price of behaving morally.
But forget all that. Who cares whether it's right or wrong to blow up a guy if you get what you want out of it?
Well, that's the other problem. Killing Saddam -- and a lot of other people in the process -- will not make the world a safer place -- and it is utterly laughable to claim otherwise.
First, we may sweep into Iraq with all our high-priced killing machines and not even take out Saddam. He might just slip away and set up shop somewhere beyond our reach -- transformed by us into an international Islamic hero, a beacon for every nutball fundamentalist from Kansas to Kashmir.
Can't happen, you say? Think Osama.
But suppose we do manage to evaporate Saddam. Who exactly is coming in behind him? Thomas Jefferson? Mahatma Gandhi? Please -- Iraq will be boiling stew of political and ethnic unhappiness, with lots of groups eager to wipe out lots of other groups. If somebody grabs control, who's to say he won't be another Saddam? Or like Osama.
Of course, we could try to run the place, or put in a puppet. That'll go down nicely with the Arab world, where we are so popular.
And speaking of the Arab world -- where we are so popular -- is there a better way to prove that we are the Great Satan than to charge in, guns blazing, killing countless Iraqis? It's hard to believe this will advance the cause of worldwide peace. Whose version of this war will be taught to millions and millions of Arabs and Muslims? George Bush's? They'll listen to Osama.
Like I say, attacking Saddam would be insane. That is so obvious.
Therefore the Bush administration must have some clever motive in suggesting it.
If I could only think of what it might be....
*****
Winning would be losing
By Rich Lewis September 26, 2002
http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2002/09/26/editorial/rich_lewis/lewis1.txtHave you noticed just how weird this whole war thing has become?
I mean, the president and his team keep rattling their swords, insisting they have to go and wipe out that bad guy in Iraq — and they will do it, darn it, no matter what anybody else says.
And who needs the snooty French or the treacherous Germans anyhow?
And those chicken-hearted Democrats are just plain unpatriotic.
And we've got the troops and the tanks and the really big guns to roll in there and squash Saddam flat and put the world right again.
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And we have to do that. And we will do that.
And then... nothing happens.
Weeks go by and George Bush and Don Rumsfeld keep talking about going.... but like Estragon and Vladimir in "Waiting for Godot," they stay.
In fact, I sometimes feel like we're living in the unwritten third act of Samuel Beckett's two-act absurdist play.
Like Estragon and Vladimir, we seem stuck in a gloomy and hopeless situation, threatened on all sides, at the mercy of a cruel universe, and wanting nothing more than to get back to the good life that we had just a long moment ago — before the Twin Towers and the stock market fell. Before smallpox and color codes.
Beckett's two characters spend the entire play waiting for Godot to come to them, which he repeatedly promises by messenger to do, but never does.
In our cracked world, Godot waits for us to come to him, which we repeatedly threaten to do, but don't.
And usually when war is imminent, the leaders of both sides are busy making noise and shaking their fists at each other. Like the Israelis and the Palestinians. Like the Indians and the Pakistanis.
But the situation with America and Iraq is strangely different.
George Bush is out every day verbally pounding Saddam and shaking his fist so hard he risks carpal tunnel syndrome. Saddam, on the other hand, is as silent as Godot.
Sure, the Iraqi foreign minister pops up now and then to hurl a few insults at the United States and plead innocence, but where the heck is his boss? Has anyone told Saddam that 250,000 American soldiers might be knocking on the door of his palace any day now? If so, he seems to be taking it pretty well.
Believe me, I am not complaining. Any day without war is a good day in my book. Especially this war.
It isn't that I doubt that Saddam is a bad character. He is. Just like a bunch of other bad characters who happen to be in charge of whole countries. Like the "axis of evil" co-stars in North Korea and Iran.
It isn't that I doubt that we could rub Saddam off the Earth like a spot of bird doo off the hood of a car. Our Army could pound his army into sand.
Those are not the important issues.
Chances are that we would get bogged down in a bloody and expensive action in Iraq that would leave that country in chaos and, possibly, civil war.
We would ratchet up anti-American hatred throughout the Arab world.
We would further tighten the political vise around the heads or own allies as we force them to make ugly choices about whether they are "for" us or "against" us.
But forget all that. Imagine that we charge into Iraq tomorrow — and that Saddam rushes out in his nightgown, takes one good look at all those imposing American boys with guns, and drops dead of a heart attack.
Imagine that the entire population of Iraq gasps in unison, blinks twice — and then starts dancing in the streets, joyfully hugging the Americans who have liberated from the beast, Saddam.
In short, imagine that we get everything we wanted at virtually no cost.
It would still have been a horrible mistake.
Why? Because we would have endorsed the acceptability of striking another country pre-emptively on no grounds other than suspicion of future crimes. For thousands of years, it was considered a country's right to smash competitor powers whenever and wherever they could, with little or no justification. Might made right. It is a miracle of human progress that such behavior is now widely viewed as uncivilized and unacceptable.
It would be shameful if our country now asserts the rightness of attacking an enemies just because you can. Other countries will surely want to do the same; we will surely want to do the same again. On what grounds could we possibly oppose them, or stop ourselves?
The present situation may be absurd. But it is far better than unleashing a free-for-all of international military opportunism.
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