Disgraced ex-President Bill Clinton recently reiterated his ignorance of military strategy by arguing that we shouldn’t go after Saddam Hussein until Osama bin Laden had been taken care of. I can only assume Clinton also argued against finding Jeffrey Dahmer back when the Unabomber was still on the loose.
Despite the queasiness shown by Clinton and our more fickle allies in Europe—the notable exception being our steadfast friend Tony Blair, who courageously ignores the domestic political risk of standing with the U.S.—most of the world agrees that Saddam Hussein is a volatile threat and a danger to world stability. The only dispute that Clinton and many European leaders have with the U.S. and Britain is whether Hussein poses a present danger.
There is no question that we should act now to depose Hussein and give the gift of freedom to the people of Iraq. The case for immediate action is simple:
Iraq’s weapons program is just a few years away from creating a nuclear bomb. Osama bin Laden, meanwhile, would love to get his hands on a nuke. Hussein and bin Laden have a common enemy—the United States—that they want to see destroyed. The motivation of Hussein and bin Laden are different, however: Hussein wants to live with power, while bin Laden would embrace a martyr’s death. Hussein, therefore, won’t initiate a nuclear conflict with the U.S. for the same reason that the Soviet Union didn’t: mutually assured destruction. Bin Laden, on the other hand, doesn’t have to worry about mutually assured destruction; he’ll accept death, and his organization is too globally dispersed to be a realistic target for nuclear retaliation anyway.
So, if Hussein wants to see the United States attacked with nuclear weapons, he’ll build them himself and hand them over to bin Laden, who will be more than happy to deliver them to us.
Saddam Hussein is just one example of the threat dictatorships pose. Because dictators divert national resources to the fulfillment of their own desires, external enemies are always needed to distract the citizenry from their own despair. That’s why Hussein tells starving Iraqis to blame their plight on the U.N. oil embargo. What Hussein doesn’t mention is that the embargo only exists because Iraq broke the agreements that ended the Gulf War, such as allowing unfettered access to U.N. arms inspectors. While Hussein claims the embargo is killing his people—an embargo that would have been prevented if only he’d kept his word—he still manages to find plenty of money to maintain his palaces and build his weapons.
Whether to accumulate power and prestige or to avoid losing it, there usually comes a time when a tyrant resorts to war. You don’t have to study world affairs very long to realize that repressive regimes are the cause of nearly all the world’s conflict. Only when full freedom penetrates every part of the globe will there be any real possibility of peaceful planet. And if the United States were to lead the way in lifting the veil of repression that still darkens a frighteningly large portion of the globe, then perhaps more people around the world would have a reason to love—or at least respect—our great nation.
Ironically, the people who are preaching in the name of peace are advocating the riskiest path of all. It is sometimes necessary to go to war now to prevent a far more devastating war in the future. Stability is not served by postponing action against threats that will only grow stronger over time. If we sit back and do nothing while Iraq continues to pursue weapons of mass death, we may not find out whether they’ve succeeded until those weapons are used against us. Do we really want to wait that long?
