The recent discussions on the apparent intelligence failures rendering the war unnecessary have caused me to reexamine the "run-up" to the invasion. What sticks out is not the debate about intelligence, but the diplomatic impass engineered by the French, and to a lesser extent Germany and Russia. There was general agreement prewar that Iraq had WMD. This statement is not meant to minimize the disagreement that did exist, or the few lonely voices sounding alarms about the veracity of our intelligence. For the purposes of this thread I will stipulate that such doubts were raised, although this was not the main thrust of the anti-war opposition driven by the three powers above. French opposition (I focus on France, since Mons. De Villepin was the most prominent diplomatic opponent) was ostensibly driven by principled objections over the immorality of war, and later, by a desire to let the new inspection regime work indefinitely, despite continued road-blocks thrown in their way by Saddam. In fact, the French were motivated by a desire to "contain the American hyper-power" and create a new franco-centric power center. One of the great unanswerables of the prewar manuverings is what would have happened had the French been less cynical, and more interested in truely disarming Saddam? Imagine an army of US, British, French (Polish, Spanish, Italian, Danish, etc.) soldiers massed on Iraq's borders with the full backing of the UN, while inspectors, accompanied by UN troops combed Iraq searching for WMD. Would Saddam have capitulated, revealed his WMD programs, or provided "credible evidence of their destruction?" Did French intransigence make war more likely? Allors, mes amis, which was truely more important Chez Chirac, La Gloire ou La Guerre?
French opposition (I focus on France, since Mons. De Villepin was the most prominent diplomatic opponent) was ostensibly driven by principled objections over the immorality of war, and later, by a desire to let the new inspection regime work indefinitely, despite continued road-blocks thrown in their way by Saddam. The European opposition connects directly to the intelligence mess. The opposition came from the idea that Hussein was an <I>immediate threat</I> - the argument being that if isn't an immediate threat, there's no reason to rush to war. The inspectors were in the country, and the various opposition countries wanted to give them more time. Outside of one goofy French statement unilaterally against war, all the other comments by all nations (France included) was that they wanted more concrete intelligence, more concrete evidence that war was a necessity. The various Bush intelligence gaffes - nukes in 6 months, etc - were used to make the threat bigger than it was, and to make the case that war was the only option. That's why the intelligence issues are so important to the discussion. The U.S. never made the case that war was an absolute necessity in the eyes of other countries, and looking back, it appears that they were right. In fact, the French were motivated by a desire to "contain the American hyper-power" and create a new franco-centric power center. This is all just as big conspiracy theory as the idea that the U.S. went to war to profit Bush's friends. There's much more evidence that Europeans are more careful in going to war because they've seen the death and destruction firsthand, whereas modern Americans have never really experienced war on our own soil and don't realize that its not a video-game. They also have far more experience dealing with rebuilding and the issues that come with that then we do.
The inspectors were only granted access because of the credible threat of force by the U.S. That's debateable. The inspectors were granted access only when a UN resolution passed. All the war threats Bush was spouting didn't get access until the UN came together. You could make a case that Saddam listens to the UN but not the US. I suppose this accounts for their languid response when confronted with this horrors of the various wars during the breakup of Yugoslavia. Absolutely. Europe is war-shy because they've had to deal with its real effects firsthand. They will always look to construct diplomatic solutions if at all possible. Sometimes that's good, sometimes not. like the marshall plan? Europe experienced the challenges of reconstruction firsthand. We experienced it from oceans away. There's a huge difference in knowing how to deal with the details of post-war reconstruction that virtually all of Europe understands that we simply can't.
You could make a case that Saddam listens to the UN but not the US. Or, I should say listens to UN threats when backed by willpower, but not the US under any circumstances.
glad you corrected yourself, since i was about to post a long list of all the UN resolutions Saddam "listened" to! but the point remains, who provided the willpower in this last instance? and wouldn't the UN itself have been more credible had it made an attempt to provide "willpower" on its own? and to return to the point of the thread, didn't France undermine the effective use of UN "willpower" by turning the security council into nothing but a forum for its own vain posturing?
I think I'm close to agreeing up to a point here. The threat of UN force advocated and pushed by the U.S. was terrific. Bush could have stopped there and claimed a major diplomatic victory, for threatening to put action to the UN's words. He got the weapons inspectors back in, and I would have actually admired him for getting something done through diplomatic measures. His actions after that point, though, belied it all. It's ashame that we now know that containment, was working, and inspections with the threat of force would have continued to ensure that they worked. Had Bush claimed victory and to keep vigilant eye on proceedings there, he might be seen a great statesmen. I still wouldn't like him for many other reasons, but I would have to admit that he'd done a good thing, and the right thing.
my point is that France, with her endless dickering over enforcing the resolution(s) removed "creditable threat of force" from the equation. Saddam never believed the US would really attack, due largely to France continuing efforts for block US action at the UN. In so doing she made war more likely by making it extremely unlikely the inspections could bring the desired result: credible evidence that Saddam had destroyed his WMD.
France was agreeing to approve a resolution to use troops if we gave inspectors 30 more days. Is saying 30 days or troops are on the ground really removing a threat? The credible threat did work because Saddam allowed the inspectors back in. That was in large part due to President Bush's speech where he said The UN has these resolutions and we need to see that they are enforced. The whole UN woke up, and sure enough inspectors went back into Iraq. The next step would have been to keep working to ensure that the inspectors had the access they needed. France's only hesitancy seemed to be that they believed that Bush was going to invade no matter what and they wanted to exhaust all the diplomatic efforts including threat of force before that happened. I will say that until just reading this thread I never realized how close Bush was to having a accomplished a great move of statesmenship. I knew all the little pieces but hadn't put them together in the larger concept. History has shown that the French were correct. According to former Bush administration member, O'Neil, as well as others that is exactly what was planned.
