September 26, 2002
REWARDING PROLIFERATION:
Blair’s dossier on Iraq: an argument for peace (Paul Rogers, 25 September 2002, OpenDemocracy)[T]he dossier demonstrates a paradox. It describes Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons, yet, if taken at face value, the existence of such weapons and their availability for use means that any war with Iraq is likely to be extremely dangerous. It would certainly have the potential for the use of weapons of mass destruction by Iraq, and possibly by the US.In a world in which political wisdom prevails, that ought to encourage the urgent search for effective alternatives to war. In its own way, the dossier is actually an argument against a war.
This is the most absurd argument against war, suggesting as it does that all a dictator need do is acquire weapons of mass destruction and his regime is home free. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 26, 2002 2:16 PM
I think what he's saying is slightly more reasonable than you suggest: that having our troops attacked by bio-chem weapons is not a good thing; that a war will probably create a serious risk of such an attack; and that it would be nice if there was some other option that would avoid or lessen the risk to our troops.
What this option is, we are not informed by Paul Rogers. I suspect that he has "WAR = BAD" imprinted on his brain, such that any other option - including sitting around waiting for a bio-chem attack on our own soil - is better than war, even if that war proves to be the best plan of a bad lot.
So if you have the weapons we won't attack you under the Rogers Doctrine, right?
Posted by: oj at September 26, 2002 4:02 PMOJ: Almost certainly not, as under a Rogers Doctrine we would be busily conducting "an urgent search" for other alternatives, and deploying them first, rather than going to war. Now there's nothing necessarily wrong with considering your options, but Rogers seems to want to set that consideration as a primary goal, rather than actually solving the problem.
Which leads me to think he's more interested in being pacifistic than being effective; as long as we're sitting around pondering, we're not making war, and Rogers prefers that ineffective stagnancy to an effective war.
I'd also point out that in Rogers' mind, we are not yet "at war", but an argument can be made that we were "at war" throughout the '90's, since Saddam Hussein was continuing to develop his weapons and we continued fly-overs throughout that period. He is at war with us, ergo we're at war whether we want to be or not. But Rogers seems to think that it's only a war once we deliberately and publicly respond to Hussein's belligerency with a show of force and huge headlines in the newspaper saying "WAR!"
Okay, maybe I'm just being stubborn, but an "effective alternative to war" is by definition not a war.
Posted by: oj at September 26, 2002 5:26 PMOJ: I heartily agree with you. I'm just saying that regardless of what we do, Saddam Hussein is already at war with us. So if he is at war and we go with "something other than war", the net result is still a war, one which we would suffer losses at first because we're trying to find "alternatives".
Posted by: Just John at September 26, 2002 9:29 PMAnd there we agree.
Posted by: oj at September 26, 2002 10:42 PM