A War of Conquest
It is clear that the President’s careful orchestration of international understanding for the need to enforce UN Security Council Resolutions regarding the disarmament of Iraq was a mistake. Not that he hasn’t done an excellent job of orchestrating; he has. The President has the nearly-unanimous consent of Congress, a unanimous 17th Security Council Resolution (1441), 18 European allies plus Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and the physical (if grudging) acquiescence of the Gulf States including Saudi Arabia.
It is clear that the President’s careful orchestration of international understanding for the need to enforce UN Security Council Resolutions regarding the disarmament of Iraq was a mistake. Not that he hasn’t done an excellent job of orchestrating; he has. The President has the nearly-unanimous consent of Congress, a unanimous 17th Security Council Resolution (1441), 18 European allies plus Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and the physical (if grudging) acquiescence of the Gulf States including Saudi Arabia.
No country (except maybe Israel) ever worked so hard to establish purity of motive, technological ability and breadth of coalition. But still it is said, “There is no convincing evidence.” Or the French formulation, “disarmament through inspection,” which perhaps makes more sense in French, but we doubt it. Prof. Higgins famously intoned, “The French don’t care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly.”
The entire American exercise has failed to convince those who didn’t want to be convinced. It is fair to ask why.
Maybe they simply don’t understand a war for something other than conquest – because conquest is their history. How did the French, British, Belgians, Germans, Dutch, Russians, Chinese, Ottomans, Portuguese and Spanish get all those colonial holdings they raped and pillaged? When did Mexico sign on with Cortez? When did the Congo volunteer to King Leopold? The colonial powers and others also fought countless wars to establish their own borders with the greatest possible spread. Now that their empires have been stripped and their borders fairly well established (except during the breakup of Yugoslavia), the colonial powers want to call a halt to the whole of history.
President Bush will not convince them that our military aspirations are different from theirs – but the fact that Americans had to return to Europe to die in WWII because we left after WWI speaks far more eloquently than he could. So stop trying. Let’s just call it a “war of conquest,” announce that we’ll colonize Iraq, and do the business we set out to do. What’s the worst that can happen?
We’ll be called “colonialists,” “warmongers,” “cowboys,” and “ugly Americans.” We already are. Our President can be called “worse than Hitler” by German youth. He already has been. We will be accused of “ruining NATO” and “undermining the UN.” We already are, even though in fact it is the French that have done both. We can be denied German assistance if we are attacked in Iraq with chemical weapons. Oh right, they already announced that they would deny us.
If we do this ugly job and do it well, Iraq will be liberated and the world will have one less maniacal dictator with his hands on WMD to worry about. The axis of evil will be one leg short. And maybe there will even be progress toward President Bush’s goal of institutions in the Arab and Muslim world that meet people’s basic aspirations – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for starters. At that point, the old colonial powers can call us whatever they like.