William Safire’s voice is generally one to be reckoned with. His arguments on behalf of the case for war on Iraq tend to be more nuanced and more detailed than those of others on the right — and certainly than the administration’s. But today he overreaches in a big way.
For the U.S. to attack Iraq, we need evidence of an imminent threat from Iraq, or, failing that, Iraq’s direct participation in global terrorism. As evidence of the latter, Safire cites the name of an Iraqi intelligence officer who “headed a force of some 120 Arab terrorists backed by about 400 renegade Kurds who were remnants of a defeated separatist group.” This force “was sent by Saddam into the portion of northern Iraq under U.S. aerial protection to assassinate the democratic Kurdish leadership and to establish crude chemical warfare facilities in remote villages near the Iranian border.” This force was aided by another figure Safire names, an Al-Qaida officer who helped organize Saddam’s anti-Kurdish force. Safire reports that both these men were captured by the Kurds and are now talking to “American counterterror agents,” providing evidence that Saddam has developed a “cyanide cream” that kills on contact and that he tried to ship out to the West through Turkey (where it was intercepted).
So what does the prove — aside from what we knew already, that Safire has really good sources among the Kurds? We already know Saddam has used chemical weapons in the past and is probably doing everything he can to develop them further. We already know that Saddam would like to wipe the Kurds off the face of the earth. What we don’t have, and what Safire’s detailed information does not further provide, is any conclusive evidence linking Saddam directly to the 9/11 attacks or any other indication that he is presently an active international threat on a scale that demands massive military intervention.
Saddam is an evil dictator. But what strategy will best protect the West from terrorism and lead Iraq toward a more democratic future? The harder the go-it-aloners struggle to make their case, the more it looks like they have chosen their martial course in advance, and are now working overtime to assemble scraps of evidence that might, kinda, sorta support that course. If the U.S. is to launch a pre-emptive, unilateral strike against a nation halfway around the world we’d better know why we’re fighting.
Safire writes: “The need to strike at an aggressive despot before he gains the power to blackmail us with the horrific weapons he is building and hiding is apparent to most Americans, including those who will bear the brunt of the fight.” Since much of the U.S. public and the U.S. military has big questions about Bush’s Iraq war plan, this statement sounds like wishful thinking.
