Invading Iraq or Courting Calamity?

Many people who support the anticipated US war on Iraq say that Saddam Hussein's government is a menace to many of the 22.5 million Iraqis over whom he rules and a threat to the security of the United States and the stability of the Middle East. As a result, a regime change would be beneficial, not only for anyone who worries about being attacked by Iraq but also for the Iraqi people. The US will swoop in, unseat Hussein, institute democracy, and everyone will be better off in the long run. Right?

For those who believe this scenario, the anticipated effects of an invasion of Iraq are worth a closer look. The Pentagon's current announced plan is to drop over 3,000 bombs on targets within Iraq over two days, destroying political and military headquarters, and essential infrastructure, according to the New York Times. The aim of the attack, according to Pentagon officials, is to "shock" the Iraqi army and "break its will to fight".

The plan is reportedly based on "Shock and Awe", a strategy developed by the Pentagon in the early 1990s, which calls for a barrage of 800 cruise missiles over 48 hours. In an interview with CBS, Harlan Ullman, one of the authors of the plan, compared the psychological effect to that of dropping atomic bombs on Japan. "Rather like the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima," the effect would be to make Iraq's army give up immediately, he said. "There will not be a safe place in Baghdad," predicted one Pentagon official.

Ullman imagines the attack: "You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power and water. In two, three, four, five days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted." It is widely estimated that 100,000 Iraqis died in the first Gulf War, but documentation of suffering, starvation, and exhaustion is not available. According to the Pentagon and the British Ministry of Defence, electrical systems on which essential sanitation and water purification systems depend would be targeted.

Due to the collapse of Iraq's economy from sanctions and regular US bombings for the last ten years, "the bulk of the population is now totally dependent on the government of Iraq for a majority, if not all, of their basic needs", according to a UN report quoted in the Washington Post. If the US invades, over ten million Iraqis, including two million refugees, will be left with diminished or nonexistent access to food and medicine, leading to starvation and outbreaks of cholera and dysentery, in "epidemic if not pandemic proportions."

The first Gulf War resulted in over two million refugees. Iranian officials expect more than one million refugees to cross its borders alone; UN officials fear that other neighboring countries could close their borders to those fleeing an invasion, escalating what would already be a major crisis.

Ironically, the sanctions regime has robbed half of Iraq's population of economic self-sufficiency, leaving them dependent on Hussein's regime and less likely to revolt than at any other time. The last time that Iraqis overthrew a (US-supported) tyrant and instituted a democratic government, in the revolution of 1958, the existence of a large, educated middle class was widely acknowledged as the primary cause. If the US wants a real democracy in Iraq, which is itself very doubtful, it's largely to blame for strengthening Hussein's grip on Iraqi society, leaving a violent and immanently disastrous regime change as the only option.

The Administration's real goal is to have a US-friendly regime in power. When Sunni Muslims in southern Iraq and Kurds in the north began a major rebellion during the Gulf War, they asked for the US to provide them with arms captured from Saddam Hussein's army. Not only did the US refuse, but US air cover mysteriously disappeared at the critical moment, allowing Hussein to crush the rebellion with gunships. (US support for Hussein goes all the way back to 1963, when the CIA sponsored the coup that eventually put him in power. After an interlude during which Iraq was a "terrorist state", diplomatic relations were reopened in 1983 -- by none other than Donald Rumsfeld -- just in time for US companies to provide Iraq with materials for chemical weapons and nuclear reactors, nerve gas, and military helicopters, which were used in the Iran-Iraq war.)

But if an invasion would be potentially disastrous for Iraqis, it isn't clear that it would be good for the US either. Besides facing a long ground war with thousands of US casualties (something that the US public is wary of), the US may make itself more, rather than less vulnerable to terrorist attacks by invading Iraq. As a CIA report quoted in the New York Times said, "Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions." Hussein's son, Uday, recently threatened the US publicly. "If they come, September 11, which they are crying over and see as a big thing, will be a real picnic for them," he said. A "terrorism expert" recently quoted in the Globe and Mail said that "if Saddam knows he's going down, he'll use everything he's got."

Even assuming that Hussein will give up so quickly that he won't have a chance to use what he has -- if he has anything, it's anthrax and VX nerve gas that US companies sold to him in the 1980s -- there is still a much greater danger of any weapons that exist falling into terrorist hands during an invasion. If, for example, chemical agents are being hidden in the homes of scientists, they will cease to be under Hussein's control the moment that bombs begin to fall. Perhaps they will find a new home through the black market?

If the American government's goal is to prevent terrorism and help the Iraqi people, two courses of action seem necessary. First is acknowledgement that the threat of retaliation, rather than preemptive invasion, is a much more effective means of keeping Saddam Hussein from using his weapons, if indeed he has them. Second is an understanding of the long history of US intervention in Iraq and the 1.5 million lives it has cost. If we want the Iraqi people to be free from Saddam Hussein's rule, are we really willing to unilaterally inflict an atrocity many times the magnitude of September 11th in order to achieve this? Who, exactly, is the US to play such number games with human lives when its own policies caused unspeakable horrors in the past?