Iraq
War Effort Impedes Security at Home
Under the pretense of safeguarding our nation’s security, President George W. Bush waged an unprovoked, pre-emptive military invasion of the nation of Iraq. Whether that war has made our nation and world more secure is certainly open to challenge. What is not open to challenge is the staggering financial cost of the war–$79 billion for just the first phase alone.
Real War–Virtual Weapons?
The Persian emperors used to have courtiers whose job was to whisper regularly in the rulers’ ears the message that they were only mortal. Looking at the Persian Gulf today and the respective pitfalls of U.S. President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the Iraq war, it appears the courtiers’ profession needs reviving. Someone should be telling modern heads of state to avoid decisions based on weak evidence, unsubstantiated statements, and false hope. Contemporary leaders, like those of yore, ought to heed warnings to discount heady advice brought by people with their own agendas, be they the likes of neoconservative counselors to Bush and Blair or Hussein’s Baathist advisers.
The Other Looting
Chaos and lawlessness have gripped large parts of Iraq following the U.S.-British invasion. The country’s civilian population finds itself bereft of jobs and even basic services. Museums, hospitals, universities, power stations, water plants, and telecomm facilities have been stripped bare by looters, leaving the country in dire straits. Several weeks after the end of major fighting, ordinary Iraqis have seen little in the way of benefits from whatever reconstruction is going on. Indeed, the focus of the occupation regime is more on emergency repairs than on a major rehabilitation of Iraq’s dilapidated and war-destroyed public infrastructure.1
The United States in Iraq: An Experiment with Unilateral Humanitarianism
Operation Iraqi Freedom, the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the U.S. and its coalition partners, embodies a new approach to post-conflict humanitarian action. This approach unifies security, governance, humanitarian response, and reconstruction under the control of the Department of Defense. Humanitarian action is unilateral in character and linked inextricably to the U.S. security agenda in the context of the global war on terrorism. The UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations, traditionally the coordinators and implementers of humanitarian assistance and post-conflict reconstruction programs, are expected to play supportive roles within an effort managed by the Pentagon.
Iraq: Integrity and Ethics in Formulating and Interpreting Intelligence
On June 6, Randy Cohen, the New York Times’ resident ethicist, appeared on CNN’s NewsNight where he and host Aaron Brown began talking about ethics and integrity in the conduct of public business and in the statements and actions of public figures. Near the end of the time allotted for the discussion, Brown mentioned weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq. Cohen replied in part: “I think this is the big ethical story of the week: Many people are asserting … that the president lied about [WMD] in order to get our country into a war.”
Recycling Wars
Tell it to the troops on the ground, not to mention the indigenous population. They know that war can go on even after it has “ended.”
The Need for UN Police
The aftermath of the Iraq War has shown us that good soldiers are not always good cops. They cannot replace a professional international police force able to rapidly deploy and reestablish the rule of law in post-conflict hot spots. Most Iraqis would tell you the world needs such a force right now. The United Nations should be tasked with making this a reality.
Credibility Gap over Iraq WMD Looms Larger
When all three major U.S. newsweeklies–Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report–run major features on the same day on possible government lying, you can bet you have the makings of a major scandal. And when the two most important outlets of neoconservative opinion–The Weekly Standard and The Wall Street Journal–come out on the same day with lead editorials spluttering outrage about suggestions of government lying, you can bet that things are going to get very hot as summer approaches in Washington.
Iraq: The Challenge of Humanitarian Response
The new world order on display in Iraq places new demands on the U.S. humanitarian community. The Wolfowitz-Perle doctrine of pre-emptive action against perceived external threats preserves a role for humanitarian intervention. In fact, it may make humanitarian response a growth industry. The role of relief organizations in Iraq raises many questions, however, and these questions deserve the continuing attention of the movement that sought to avoid this war in the first place.