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[Previous entry: "Fisk contagion"] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Supranational bodies 101"] 31 May 2003: "Pernicious conflation"
Looking back over my various entries regarding the Iraqi WMD issue, I realise that I have come very close to walking into the trap laid by those opposed to the war, or at least come so close that it would be difficult for an onlooker to tell the difference. The trap in question is the conflation of the issue whether, and the extent to which, the various members of the Bush administration (notably Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Fleischer and Bush himself) overstated the case against Iraq, notably regarding the stockpiles of bioweapons and CW agents possessed by Iraq, on the one hand, and the validity of the case against Iraq as distinct from these overstatements on the other.
Where are the WMD? Well, reasonable people weren't entirely sure that there were many, or even any, WMD in Iraq, a skepticism which was not fatal to support for the war. As Ken Pollack argued in The Threatening Storm, the main worry about Saddam was that he was demonstrably determined to acquire an arsenal of WMD, including nukes, and that he was demonstrably willing to use chemical and biological WMD wherever he thought he could get away with it. (And he had a history of massively overestimating what he could get away with.) It was this ambition that presumably made Saddam skittish about inspectors and thus kept him in violation of the cease-fire terms for the 1991 Gulf War, a violation which provided the legal basis for going to war again (that is, for resuming a war that never really ended).Emphases in bold mine. Yesterday, I cited the leader "Secret weapons" in this week's Economist; the arguments made therein are remarkably similar: One of the main problems with the evidence concerning Mr Hussein's WMD was always that it was both boring and complicated. Many of those who opposed the war never bothered to acquaint themselves with it; many who now allege that the proof was cooked up in London and Washington have forgotten it. Much of the evidence was, in point of fact, compiled by United Nations weapons inspectors during more than a decade of patient labour, complicated by Mr Hussein's attempts to bamboozle them. Then there was Iraq's previous record of making and using WMD. Mr Hussein asked the world to believe, on trust, that he had unilaterally destroyed his noxious weapons and the means of making them.Emphasis in bold, again, mine. I have been accused variously of being an apologist for the Bush administration, and of backpedalling. The accusation of backpedalling seems more than a little unreasonable, given that in this entry (of 16-Apr-2003), I commented that: I was in favour of this war, but had I had to base my decision solely on the case made by the Bush administration, I would not have been.In March, I gave the reasons why I supported this war, and the notion that Iraq formed an immediate threat to Britain, America or any other western nation was not among them, while in February, I commented that the administration's case would be very compelling if it wasn't loaded down with a lot of damaging and unnecessary ballast.Going beyond the timespan of my own blog, The Threatening Storm was published in September of last year. The charge of apologism, too, is disingenuous; in the same March entry, I listed a number of topics on which I took, and continue to take, issue with the Bush administration. In fact, one may find critiques of the adminstration's policies scattered throughout my scribblings (if one actually bothers to look). I wholeheartedly agree with Ted Hinchman when he says (in the same entry) that it is time for judicious criticism; however, the conflation of issues I have described is in this post is anything but judicious. On a historical note, I find it amusing that parallels are being drawn with the Gulf of Tonkin incident; the parallel is apt in more ways than those that brandish the example realise. The Tonkin incident was indeed a manufactured pretext, not unlike the "imminent threat" posed by Iraq; but also like the Iraqi "threat," the pretext proved unnecessary, since it soon became evident that the North Vietnamese government had started infiltrating PAVN combat troops into the South around the same time. Thus, the revelation that the Tonkin incident had been a fake did not nullify the existence of casus belli. And so it is with the current situation. It is not my intent to whitewash any wrongdoing on the part of the administration, but the accusations should be the correct ones. After all, if the critics exaggerate the case against the administration, then surely they are committing the very sin of which they accuse the administration. |
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