Why a War in Iraq Is a Bad Idea

(First published in March 2003)

The Security Council meets today to decide whether or not the United Nations will sanction a war against Iraq. Advocates say the war is defensive – necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from harming us later. Opponents say the war is aggressive, unnecessary, and wrong. They say the arguments for this war fail to meet the moral and pragmatic tests that justifications for war must pass.

Part of me wants to review the reasons for and against conflict, but I’d like to look instead at some historical arguments I encountered in the online edition of the New York Times. The article reviewed Eisenhower’s opposition to war against Egypt in the mid-1950s, Kennedy’s decision not to attack Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis, and Reagan’s limited military response to Qaddafi’s regime in Libya during the mid-1980s.

In each case, people excoriated the leader of the troublesome country. Many saw Egypt’s Nasser at the madman on the Nile, and Britain wanted to take him out to protect the Suez Canal. The U.S. dearly wanted to overthrow Castro, and Qaddafi headed Washington’s list of most hateful characters twenty years later. In each case, presidents figured that war did not serve America’s interests as well as other kinds of pressure. In each case, the threat passed: the U.S. became Egypt's friend the moment Sadat visited Jerusalem; Castro and Qaddafi, if not entirely benign, have aged and quieted down.

Bush will launch this war, no matter how much opposition he encounters here and in the rest of the world. If the United States and Britain win the war quickly, as seems likely, people may judge the attack a success. I’ll offer another criterion for judgment: Does this war help us to defeat Al Qaeda? War with Iraq makes victory over Al Qaeda super-problematic. Set aside, for now, the moral arguments against this aggressive action. The pragmatic view argues that we have another war to win. The war first started on September 11, 2001. Whatever Bush and his advisors say, the campaign against Baghdad makes Al Qaeda’s eradication unimaginably more difficult.