"Even the liberal New Republic, " supports slaughtering Nicaraguan peasants and health care clinic nurses...
THE WORLD Bureaucratic Screw Up by Robert Lane Greene
Only at TNR Online Post date: 06.03.03 "Bureaucratic": To modern ears it ranks up there with four-letter swear words. So when Paul Wolfowitz told Vanity Fair that the administration had focused on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when making its case for war "for bureaucratic reasons," some cynics cheered: Here, finally, was proof that America and Britain had gone to war on fraudulent grounds. Germany's conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung sneered that "the charge of deception is inescapable;" Britain's Daily Express chose slightly less bureaucratic language for its headline: "JUST COMPLETE AND UTTER LIES."
But for this to be true, the definition of the word "bureaucratic" would have to be "dishonest." It isn't. Even taking Wolfowitz's comments out of context, it's clear that the antiwar set is grasping for straws. Wolfowitz said that the focus on WMD came about because it was the only issue that members of the administration could all support as a casus belli. Far from being sinister, that's actually quite reassuring. If, as Wolfowitz suggests, the only thing the various squabbling members of the American foreign policy establishment could agree on about Iraq was that it possessed WMD, then the evidence they saw must have been pretty compelling. The State and Defense Departments, it is widely known, are locked in a fairly constant struggle with one another. Yet according to Wolfowitz, they were both ready to concede the fact that Iraq's WMD programs posed a threat large enough to justify war.
As Iraqi WMD remain conspicuously absent some six weeks after the war's end, it is growing increasingly plausible that Americans were misled into thinking the WMD threat was more imminent than it was. It goes without saying that it would be devastating to the credibility of our intelligence apparatus if it turned out that certain intelligence officials played up the WMD risk to tell George W. Bush and the Pentagon what they wanted to hear. It would likewise be devastating to the administration's credibility if it turns out that political hands exaggerated the claims intelligence officials were making.
But let's assume--as even opponents of the war did--that it was reasonable to believe Saddam was actively pursuing WMD. Then, even if we never find any weapons, would the war's legitimacy be undermined? The discovery of mass graves, hundreds of millions of dollars plundered by government officials, testimony of torture victims, and much more has revealed that, if anything, Saddam Hussein was more of a monster than any of us gave him credit for. And even if he didn't have WMD (and that is still a big if), he certainly wasn't a run-of-the-mill, relatively harmless thug who could simply be contained. With apologies to the wretched Zimbabweans, Saddam wasn't even Robert Mugabe, who, despite his tyranny, hasn't been known to gas his people, invade his neighbors, and sponsor suicide bombers.
So, having knocked Saddam from power, it turns out that America may have done so for the wrong reasons. But imagine this, a scenario a thoughtful antiwar friend posed to me before the war: Your neighbor, you have good reason to believe but cannot definitively prove, has purchased weapons that could be used against your family. You further believe, based on his history of violence, that he's prone to using them. (He's been arrested on a few aggravated assault charges over the years.) Would your going over and killing him be immoral, given your thin evidence? Possibly. But what if, upon having dispatched him, you find in his home grotesque evidence that he was a serial murderer, and that his victims had included his own family--meaning his capacity for violence is much deeper than even you suspected. You may initially feel guilt for having attacked him for the wrong reasons. But in the end, you have killed a vile murderer who would otherwise have escaped justice, perhaps to kill again. Are you a dangerous vigilante, or a hero?
This question isn't easy. Western ideas of justice are based on the presumption of innocence, so it must not be suggested lightly that governments be overthrown because we merely suspect them of wrongdoing. Still, whatever you think the answer to this question is, adding a Wolfowitzian twist to the analogy only strengthens the case for action. Suppose that for a long time you were the only one worried about your neighbor, but now the bleeding heart across the street (let's call him Bolin Bowell) and your sensible downstairs tenant (Cony Clair) say they too think they've seen the neighbor tooling around in his shed with what look like dangerous weapons. With your suspicions supported by others--moreover, by people inclined to give the ex-con a break--it becomes even harder not to act.
In the end, then, what's truly striking about Wolfowitz's Vanity Fair comments was not what they revealed about policy-making, but about Paul Wolfowitz's tin ear. Wolfowitz allowed that the administration had chosen WMD as the focus of the case against Iraq (not the sole basis, just the focus) because it had the broadest currency within the government. We can safely assume that this means it was expected to have the broadest currency outside the government as well: the State Department likely argued that WMD was the only justification that could be sold to allies and the United Nations; domestic political operatives probably argued that they could only sell an attack on Iraq if Saddam was depicted as a threat to America.
That the government thinks this way is hardly a shock; but it rarely gets said aloud. And when it does it reveals a level of cynicism which most Americans prefer to pretend doesn't exist--even if they're vaguely aware that it does. With much of the world is still smarting over the divisions of the Iraq war, and with Bush headed to the Middle East to talk peace with Israelis and Palestinians, Wolfowitz's timing could not have been worse.
Robert Lane Greene is countries editor at Economist.com.