[Nasional-e] Feeling isn't argument

[Ambon]

Feeling isn't argument
  William Pfaff IHT  Thursday, January 9, 2003

'Moral clarity'

PARIS President George W. Bush continues to repeat moral arguments for a
U.S. attack on Iraq because his domestic political adviser, Karl Rove, has
convinced him that the "moral clarity" of his declarations about the war
against evil and the wickedness of Saddam Hussein have proved a decisive
electoral asset.
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However, his current difficulties in consolidating U.S. and international
opinion behind an invasion of Iraq lie in the realms of reason and evidence.
His speeches have, in those respects, offered nothing new to demonstrate
that the United States should attack Iraq here and now, with or without a
new United Nations mandate.
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No one needs to be convinced of Saddam Hussein's iniquity. Scarcely anyone
in the Western world defends him or pretends that international society
would not be a better place if he were gone. But speeches such as the one
the president gave at Fort Hood in Texas last Friday, again claiming that
"either you're with those who love freedom or you're with those who hate
innocent life," say nothing to those who need to be convinced that military
intervention in Iraq will actually leave the Middle East better off than
before.
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Bush's critics include pacifists who are against war itself, and others who
defend international law by opposing cross-border interventions, or at least
those not warranted by some immediate and overt offense against
international norms.
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Genocide in Africa, and barbarous tribalisms and nationalisms there and in
the Balkans, have in recent years made a widely accepted case for military
interventions that offer a high probability of doing more good than harm,
which is the traditional philosophical justification for "just" war.
However, the administration has failed to answer the many people in America
and in allied countries who want prudential, political and practical
evidence to convince them that intervention in Iraq provides such a case.
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Take the weapons inspections. There has been a steady, critical commentary
by administration officials concerning the UN inspectors, even though,
supposedly in order to protect U.S. intelligence sources, the inspectors are
not being provided the evidence that the United States claims to possess
about the location of mass destruction weapons and facilities.
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Accordingly, and despite its failure to account for certain stocks of
chemical and biological agents, Iraq's strategy of accepting inspections and
allowing full access to its installations has thus far lent a certain
plausibility to its claim to have renounced mass destruction weapons. One
would have thought that in order to justify its policy, the Bush
administration would do better to help the inspectors.
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It surely can do the administration no good to have the inspectors come in
at the end of this month with a report consistent with Iraq's claims. Even
if Washington then makes dramatic new accusations, if these, too, are
undocumented, the United States would fail to make its case.
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Critics of the Bush administration's policies are concerned about the
balance of harm and good reasonably to be expected from a war, and about the
war's likely long-term consequences for American foreign relations. They
would like a more intelligent discussion of strategic outcomes than
unsupported assurances that the Arab world, including the Palestinians, will
welcome "liberation" by the United States, allied with Israel.
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Senator Chuck Hagel, the influential Nebraska Republican and a friend of
President Bush, is one such person. He came back from a Middle Eastern trip
in mid-December to tell the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations that
invading Iraq "will neither assure a democratic transition in Iraq, bring
peace to Israelis and Palestinians, nor assure stability in the Middle
East." He specifically rejected the argument that "the road to Arab-Israeli
peace" goes by way of Iraq's invasion. Almost daily reports from Washington
convey a contrary claim. They describe how an Iraq war would successfully be
fought, how post-intervention Iraq would be governed and how regional peace
would prevail. All this is given to the press by interested parties.
Attacking another country to accomplish "regime change" is a grave matter in
human terms, and in the effect it will have on international norms and legal
precedent. An attack on this particular country, in these particular Middle
Eastern political circumstances, against a culturally charged background of
strained Islamic-American relations and difficult U.S. alliance
relationships, demands much franker, more open and more serious debate than
Bush's policy has received until now.
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If the affair goes badly, the administration and the Republican Party will
pay. But the American nation may be done lasting harm.
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Tribune Media Services International