Recalculating: Steve Chapman on a New Century - Steve Chapman

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understandable that conservatives responded to the speech with their hearts, because it didn’t have much to appeal to the brain. All the inflammatory denunciations and ostentatious muscle-flexing couldn’t disguise the flimsiness of Bush’s case.

      Consider the reasons he cited:

      - Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and hopes to get more. The president unrolled a list of nasty weapons that Iraq has long possessed — anthrax, mustard gas, sarin, and VX nerve agents, which could be used to kill millions of people. But that raised an inconvenient question: Why hasn’t he used them against us? Answer: He knows he would be destroyed. That hasn’t changed.

      - The only reason Hussein wants such weapons is for aggression. Bush says that’s “the only possible use” they could have. Nonsense. Half a century of experience with the Bomb makes it clear that weapons of mass destruction are valuable only for deterring attack, not facilitating it.

      That’s why we spend billions on nuclear missiles we never use. Given our desire for “regime change” in Iraq, Hussein has understandable motives for wanting such protection. It’s worked for North Korea, hasn’t it?

      - Hussein is too crazy to control. Bush got a rousing ovation when he declared, “Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.” In fact, Bush himself has relied on it for more than two years. If it’s not an option, why didn’t Bush set out to attack him immediately after taking office?

      The truth is, Hussein has sometimes been aggressive but never suicidal. We don’t have to wonder if he can be deterred. He already has been, over and over. He could have used his chemical and biological armaments during the Gulf War or anytime in the last 12 years. But he didn’t. Trusting Saddam Hussein to place his personal and political survival first has not only been a strategy, it’s been a successful one.

      - He might give unconventional weapons to Al Qaeda. “Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans — this time armed by Saddam Hussein,” said the president. This is a fantasy. The administration has tried in vain to prove that Iraq had a hand in the Sept. 11 attacks. And the Central Intelligence Agency, in a classified assessment last fall, dismissed the possibility that Hussein would give his most lethal weapons to an uncontrollable terrorist organization that might turn against him.

      The only instance in which he might do that, said the CIA, was if the U.S. were to launch an all-out war — because he would no longer have anything to lose. Bush’s solution is the surest way to precipitate the very nightmare it’s supposed to prevent.

      - He’s a sadistic dictator who tortures his people in horrible ways. A recent report from Amnesty International found, “Detainees in their custody are tortured with electro-shocks, suffocated with plastic bags over their heads, burned by cigarettes, beaten with metal pipes and gun barrels, and have chili peppers put in their eyes or on their genitals.” But that wasn’t Iraq — it was the Philippines, where U.S. troops were sent last year to train government soldiers in fighting Islamic extremists.

      We work with a lot of countries where torture is reportedly common — including Turkey, Pakistan, Russia and Egypt. Amnesty International says there are about 70 around the world. There is only one, though, that bothers Bush enough to invade. Reciting gruesome tales from Iraq is good for stirring an audience, but as grounds for war, it’s completely bogus.

      This State of the Union address resembled one of those fast-paced thrillers that manages to keep you on the edge of your seat even though the plot is full of holes. It was easy to get swept away by it, but only if you didn’t think too much.

       To understand that America can fail badly in a war, you have to be old enough to recall the carnage of Vietnam

       Thursday, March 6, 2003

      The rest of the world may be opposed to a U.S. attack on Iraq, but here in America, there is general agreement that we are right and everybody else on Earth is wrong. American public opinion was in favor of taking out Saddam Hussein after the Sept. 11 attacks, and it still is. Who cares if this war, which we intend to fight for the good of humanity, doesn’t appeal to most of humanity?

      Polls suggest that a large majority of Americans endorses the Bush administration’s drive toward war, though support has eroded in recent months. In January 2002, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 71 percent of the citizenry favored military action to get rid of Hussein. Today, support is down to 63 percent. Opposition, meanwhile, has risen from 24 to 31 percent. But that’s still a 32-point gap, the polling equivalent of a landslide.

      Why do Americans take such a different view from Europeans and other pesky foreigners? One reason is that we have great faith in our own good intentions, and no amount of contact with reality can shake that confidence. Right now, we’re prepared to do whatever is necessary to rebuild Iraq as a peaceful and prosperous country. Never mind that we had the same mission in mind for Afghanistan, but lost interest about 10 minutes after the Taliban fell. A short memory is a great boon to self-esteem.

      George W. Bush himself, who once scorned nation-building, now offers himself as the nation-builder extraordinaire. His mission is not just to remove a menace, but to plant a flowering democracy that will blow the seeds of liberation across the Middle East.

      Skeptics abroad have their doubts, both about our motives and our staying power. That has something to do with all the Middle Eastern dictators we’ve been happy to snuggle with over the years out of lust for their oil. If we wanted to promote human rights in the Arab world, we could have started with Saudi Arabia, whose ruling family is repressive enough to make Gen. Franco look like Captain Kangaroo.

      Let’s face it: Human rights and democracy have never been a big factor in our foreign policy. We have no trouble working with the military dictator who rules Pakistan. We don’t mind seeking help on North Korea from China, which is about as democratic as an Alabama jail. Bush has forged a partnership with Russian President Vladimir Putin even though his tactics against rebels in Chechnya would make a buzzard retch.

      Americans undoubtedly approve of invading Iraq because, as American Enterprise Institute polling expert Karlyn Bowman puts it, “people have known Saddam Hussein for a decade and think he’s a thug.” But they also start from the assumption that taking care of him will be easy.

      They have that belief for a simple reason: In recent decades, almost all our military ventures have been successful and virtually painless. The first Gulf War spilled amazingly little American blood, given the scale of the undertaking. U.S. soldiers in Bosnia were less likely to die than U.S. soldiers not in Bosnia. Not a single American boy or girl died in the war in Kosovo. Those interventions that have gone badly (Somalia, Lebanon) were so brief and small-scale that they can be forgotten.

      To understand that America can fail badly in a war, you have to be old enough to remember the endless, pointless carnage of Vietnam. That’s why, in the ABC News/Washington Post poll, the highest support for the Iraq invasion comes from 18-to-34-year-olds, while the lowest comes from those 65 or older.

      It’s hard for a lot of Americans, particularly young ones, to imagine things going very wrong — either during the war itself or in the occupation that follows. So war has regained its allure of romance and glory.

      If you wonder why people support the war, you might consider why people buy sport-utility vehicles. It’s not because SUVs fill an urgent practical need, but because they carry an aura that a lot of Americans like to project: brawny, rugged, fearless. Enthusiasm for this war serves likewise to convey toughness and bravery in a manner requiring no effort.

      It’s no surprise that two-thirds of men favor military action, compared to only half of women. Tough guys aren’t afraid of a little bloodshed, at least if it’s on the other side of the planet. Only women and wimps — like those effeminate Europeans — bother looking for ways to avoid a fight.

      But pride goeth before a fall, and if Americans persist in launching military crusades around the globe, we’ll eventually

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