Smoke & Mirrors
No WMD in Iraq. So What?

David M. Fine | June 3, 2003

Yesterday I read an article on the US News website which purported to explain how the Bush Administration could have possibly missed the boat on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It paints Colin Powell as an ethical moderate, refusing to use certain shaky intelligence when under pressure from colleagues to do so. If, at the end of it all, no one finds any WMD, who gets the blame? "It would be a colossal intelligence failure" the article quotes a senior administration official.

But certainly an "intelligence failure" - that's spin for, we lied - that is utterly irrelevant after the fact. We still invaded and conquered Iraq, only now our motive appears to be that we did it because we can, might makes right, and imperialism is back in town. WMD was the smoke and mirrors we needed to provide enough justification to the American public and certain members of the international community so as to not look like a superpower on a rampage, drunk with power.

And it worked. Large numbers of Americans bought that Saddam needed to be overthrown, and even linked him to the September 11th attacks. Much of the American intelligentsia were optimistic that the overthrow of Saddamn would improve the world in and of itself simply by liberating the Iraqis of his autocratic reign and create a democratic, or somewhat liberal government in the Middle East as a counterweight to the other nations there. In that idealized vision, we were the benevolent superpower forcefully cutting out a tumor in the Middle East.

But, by invading Iraq preventively, the U.S. violated a longstanding rule of international relations: you don't just invade sovereign states. Look at what happened when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990? Bush Sr. repeated ad nauseum, "this aggression will not stand". Someone at the U.N. should have echoed Bush Sr. after the U.S. began the bombing to point out the irony.

There is a qualitative difference, however. America, whatever its failings, whatever the insider deals with Bush cronies, will rebuild Iraq. And the Iraqis, over time, barring anarchy erupting there, will have a better life than they did under Saddamn. But a lot of people lost their lives in the transition and a lot more people are enduring really hard times. We will have to see how the patient heals to assess whether the surgery was worth it.

In the final analysis, the American invasion of Iraq was about one thing: power. America wanted to invade Iraq because Saudi Arabia is proving an unstable place to maintain troops in the Middle East, and is an ally compromised by internal political realities, one of which is rabid anti-American sentiment mediated by militant Islam. Conveniently, Iraq possesses the second largest oil reserves of any nation in the world, and was ruled by a dictator that no nation was particularly fond of. While Saddamn didn't pose a significant threat, he was probably doing his utmost to work mischief where he might. Last, anything we could do to westernize the Middle East would be in our interest, and Iraq would be a good command center for that project. From a geopolitical standpoint, invading Iraq was a win-win for the Bush Administration.

And the French, German, and Russian opposition to America's invasion of Iraq was about one thing: power. Not one of these European and Eurasian heavyweights liked the idea of America dictating how it would repaint the geopolitical scene. Yes, France and Russia have historically had dealings with Iraq, and likely had some business there, but this doesn't explain their opposition to the war: they could have had dealings with the new Iraq, too, had they wholeheartedly stuck by the Americans in their pursuit of snuffing Saddamn.

Nor did America's "we're just going to invade, who cares what you think" attitude make those nations any more amenable to the idea. In fact, the U.S. likely solidified their opposition by amassing troops in the Middle East before going to the U.N. When the U.S. decided the try a dash of diplomacy, as an afterthought of their recipe of L'invasion d'Iraq, it was too late. The other powers had already had dust kicked in their face.

So, after the dust has settled, there's no WMD, and we're left to chalk it up to bad intelligence. Oh, we were wrong? We spend how many billions of dollars on intelligence each year and we were wrong? Oh well, no big deal. Saddamn was an evil bastard anyway. Next question?

~ David M. Fine email: dmfine(at)gristforthemill.org

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