[This struck me as the best and most concise argument in purely mainstream terms I've seen so far. A good debate brief]
Financial Times; Jan 26, 2003
War in Iraq will hinder the war on terror
By David Gardner
Osama bin Laden did not get what he wanted after September 11, 2001. Statements he made even before the bombing started in Afghanistan show he was hoping for an indiscriminate and disproportionate response from the US and its allies, a spur to Muslims to rise against the west and western-allied regimes across the Islamic world. He was disappointed. The US response was measured, based on widespread, active support and obviously right.
What had been wrong was to have abandoned Afghanistan in the early 1990s, after the success of the US-Pakistani-Saudi-backed campaign to drive the Soviets out. That joint venture had blooded Mr bin Laden and his tens of thousands of "Arab Afghan" volunteers and the future Taliban among the Mujahideen. It gave them a taste of victory against a superpower and then left them a shell state in which to incubate al-Qaeda.
A war in Iraq now would be as false a step as that cavalier abandonment of Afghanistan was then, and more damaging. It would provide Mr bin Laden with the groundswell of support he was denied after the attack on the twin towers and the Pentagon. An assault on Iraq is the best recruiting sergeant imaginable for his absolutist brand of Islamism, an ideology bordering on fascism. It is this undeterrable creed and the band of zealots sympathetic to it that is the foremost threat to liberal values and international stability alike, not Saddam Hussein.
Mr Hussein can be deterred from using his rogue weapons. His much- reduced regime is no immediate threat, even to his neighbours. Turkey, Iran, Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia would all like to see the back of the Iraqi tyrant but all fear what forces could be unleashed by war. They see Washington's concentration on Iraq, while failing to engage actively with or deal even-handedly in the Israel-Palestine conflict, as fuelling rage across the Arab and Islamic world that has never before reached this pitch. The bin Laden network's monstrous bet that it can trigger a clash of civilisations may be evil but it is not mad, at least if Washington's skewed priorities remain as they are.
The reasons the Bush administration is so determined to have a war with Iraq are threefold.
First, an overwhelming demonstration of US military force will undoubtedly be awesome and give the average tyrant great pause. It should deter all but the most determined challenge to US interests. It may also erase part of the sense of vulnerability Americans feel after September 11. But what this exemplary display of firepower will not do is land a single blow on Mr bin Laden and his ilk. To much of the world, and all of the Islamic world, it will look as though Washington, frustrated by the lack of any quick way to defeat the asymmetric threat of al-Qaeda, is nevertheless determined to stage a show of its unprecedented power in a conventional war.
The second reason relates to strategy in the Middle East. It is not about oil in the narrow sense - wanting to seize control of Iraq's reserves. It is something more ambitious. Over the past century, the Gulf has always been under the clear control of an outside power or its local proxy. It was Britain in the first half-century, succeeded by the Anglo-American-installed Shah of Iran and then, as de facto policeman and US-backed bulwark against Islamist Iran, Mr Hussein himself.
The past decade or so has been an anomaly: current arrangements for
controlling the Gulf are unsatisfactory, because the US has constantly to
intervene directly, and Baghdad, though defeated, refuses to lie down.
>From there to the conclusion that control of Baghdad would not only
clarify the position in the Gulf but also provide the lever with which to
refashion the whole Middle East in America's democratic image seems but a
short step for neo-conservatives in Washington.
This vision of Arab despots falling like ninepins is indeed seductive. But it is a fantasy. Change in the Arab world will be a longer, harder and much messier task, in which an America that has backed and bankrolled autocracy will first have to re-establish its own democratic credentials with the Arabs.
Third, there is the question of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The conviction that Mr Hussein is still developing such weapons, and that these might fall into the hands of terrorists, is the most often and overtly stated purpose of US (and British) Iraq policy. The possibility that any Jihadist group around the world might acquire and use such weapons is so appalling that almost any action to prevent it might seem justified. But why should Iraq be the prime locus of such concern, rather than, say, Pakistan, which has nuclear bombs and a swaggering, well implanted Jihadist movement (whereas Iraq has neither)?
The available evidence indicates that Baghdad's weapons of mass destruction capability is confined to residual chemical and biological weapons. Despite much portentous rhetoric, and extensive catalogues of what Baghdad has got up to in the past, neither the US nor the UK has produced clear evidence beyond this. As we know, Mr Hussein has used chemical weapons against Iran and the Kurds. They, however, were not in a position to reply in kind. The Iraqi dictator was told what retaliation he could expect if he used chemical or bio-weapons during the last Gulf war and was deterred from doing so. Nothing in Mr Hussein's history, moreover, indicates that he would subcontract to freelances - much less Islamist groups he has always treated as a threat to his regime - the weapons he sees as part of the mystique of his power and reason for his survival. The situation in which that might change is precisely that in which his survival is threatened.
Mr bin Laden, of course, would use anything he can get his hands on - and is probably waiting for war to start to do so. That is why his network and milieu, not Mr Hussein, should be the priority. As things stand, the US does not have the legitimacy it should have in the Arab and Islamic world if it is to attack the bin Laden phenomenon effectively. It will not acquire this standing by an attack on Iraq for which it has failed to make the case.
Iraq should be kept in quarantine, with an intrusive UN inspectorate in place to inhibit any further WMD development. Those who dismiss the inspections route forget that the 1991-98 inspections uncovered much more than the Iraqi arms destroyed in the Gulf war and subsequent bombing. Then - as a matter of regional stability and strategic self-interest - the US and its allies must tackle the Israel-Palestine question. They must insist that the two sides come to a two-states solution providing security for Israel and justice for the Palestinians.
That is what will provide the legitimacy and the local allies needed to crush al-Qaeda and similar organisations, which are the clear and present danger. Attacking Iraq will proliferate, not combat, that threat.
The writer is a member of the Financial Times editorial comment staff