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Saturday, March 08, 2003
Josh Marshall comes out against the war in Iraq, saying "I think the those costs now outweigh those gains".
This is pretty big news -- though it is rather unrealistic to assume that any major anti-war sentiment will be developing along these lines in the nine days left until the war is declared.
The substance of Marshall's worry in regards to the White House on Iraq has always been its bumbling way of building an alliance on this war. Surely, Marshall acknowledges the fact that a real coalition on this war does exist (here's a link to an OxBlog post on the Gang of Eleven to which we can add the Gang of Eight Eastern European Governments). But all along, Marshall has been particularly worried by the Turkey situation, how the North Korea situation will impact upon the Iraq war, and what this war is doing to long-standing coalitions and to the United Nations.
The fact of the matter is that as much of a horror it was to see the Bush administration's willingness to sell out the Kurds, the deal simply didn't materialize. For whatever reason, luck shone on the Kurds, and they face a better possible future in post-war Iraq than they would have if Turkey had been included in the coalition.
As far as the North Korea situation goes, given that this war will take days, can it possibly be that much of a distraction from the Korean crisis? Yes, the lack of a policy on North Korea is startling and disturbing and seems continually to be leading to a worse situation -- unless Kim Jong Il is just begging for appeasement, in which case it can be given to him any time before he detonates. Marshall must be granted the fact that the Bush administration has been wrong-headed on North Korea and that that has put us already into crisis mode. And he is correct to assert the point that this must be discussed, not just for political reasons, but for security reasons, here and in South Korea. But the Iraq situation won't go away until it's ended -- and, as Ken Pollack has said, we never have, nor likely ever will have again, the willingness of the American people and our allies to take Saddam out of power. For this reason, ensuring that Saddam is taken care of quickly helps us to bring the issue of North Korea to the fore -- hemming and hawing on Saddam will make dealing with North Korea more difficult.
The third point is more thorny. Can we really afford to jettison our relationship with the United Nations and NATO? The first answer is an outright "No." Yes, the United States is the only major Democratic military power behind either, the strongest economy, the most consistent on human rights, etc. But the United States is not ready to govern the world, and that's what getting rid of the UN, NATO, and other alliances will mean -- if we are to hope, as many hyperbolic statements from the right have suggested, that this Iraq action can finally deligitimize the UN as the false engine of international diplomacy it really is, then we would have to recognize alongside that that the United States would have to fill the gap of mediating all armed conflict -- we're just not ready for that role. It is conceivable, in the coming century, that the United States might even grow beyond its 50 states to become a force that does actually govern larger parts of the world, spreading its democracy and its Constitution -- but until that happens, American oversight would be largely dependent on military intimidation, an attitude we cannot afford.
Given that, the question must really be asked: is this war going to put us in a position of truly jettisoning the UN and NATO? I think the answer is "no." The UN is too young to be expected to efficiently handle all causes for major conflict -- one permanent member of the Security Council is a Communist dictatorship and another was the same situation until just over a decade ago. What this situation will teach the UN is how to play this game of catch-up. Of course, we won't expect military retaliation from any of the countries we're dissing -- the whole premise upon which France and whomever is the other scapegoat of the day base their anti-war argument is a desire not to go to war. After this war is over, they'll jump in on the opportunities a free Iraq offers just as easily as if they'd been with us all along, and in all reality it seems that they'll be more likely to join in from the beginning next time.
Josh Marshall is clearly not a dove -- he's been for this war for some time. And he clearly has seen Saddam as a top-level problem for far longer (witness his 11/16/2000 post hoping that Gore would "loose some of that mojo on Saddam Hussein!"). But I think that his newly anti-war stance is built upon horrible things that could have happened but didn't (the sell-out of the Kurds), problems that might be higher-priority but won't go away any quicker without this war (North Korea), and the issue of shunning an alliance that can probably be rebuilt just as quickly as it was demolished (UN/NATO).
It is undeniable that Bush is bumbling to his place in history...but it looks like somehow he just can't manage to mess this one up, and will end up in a positive place in history for it.
Steven I. Weiss 9:23:00 PM
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