Ciao!

hi. i've been reading your posts since i found a link to it (hope you dont mind) and if i'm correct, you are a professor of political science? anyway, you seem 'knowledgeable' about the issue on Iraq so can you please enlighten me on the "weapons of mass destruction" which triggered the US to wage the war? have these weapons been found at all? i have been reading some anti-war claims and this is one argument against the war...
well, overall, it's a pleasure reading your writing (and some of your friends' as well:)). take care and God bless.

I'm not quite a professor, though I teach political science courses. I'm a grad student about to finish my dissertation (any day now, really).

You raise a good point regarding WMDs. I think some items have been found. If there were NO such items, why didn't Iraq cooperate w/ UN inspectors more fully? It did slowly keep revealing more evidence up to the day of the invasion (such as the mobile labs they previously denied).

Also, they did use some banned weapons in the war. They fired Scuds and Al Samoud missiles into Kuwait. Those were banned WMDs.

Perhaps some of the WMDs are now in Syria, or burried, or blown up, or dumped in some terrible way (e.g. high levels of chemicals in the water near Basra), or just stashed away someplace. All possibilities.

The WMD issue gave us the LEGAL right to go to war w/ Iraq. But I think the real reason was regime change and democratization. That strategy was outlined by Wolfowitz some time ago. Of course, this can be spun in multiple ways — from "imperialism" to "strategic democratization" — the point is that toppling Hussein's regime and promoting democracy in the region was a priority agenda for many in Washington some time ago. The idea was to topple the worst regime in the region, send an example to the rest, then install and support a liberal representative democracy. If it pans out, it could be a huge win for regional stability.

The main reason for Al Qaeda and such groups isn't US policy, but rather the internal domestic policy of those regimes. Most of them use their state-run press to blame the US for all its problems. Even while they horribly mismanage their economies. Iraq, for example, had one of the higher per capita incomes in the region — even during the sanctions! But that money went to military hardware and Hussein's palaces. It may not be quite as bad in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon ... but it's a regional phenomenon. I think the Iraq war underscored (at least in my mind) that we really mean what we say when we say we support democratization in the world.

I hope Mugabe and all the other French-backed dictators are paying attention.

the reason why Iraq might have only reluctantly cooperated:

"North Korea, Iraq, Iran and others know that the United States can be held at bay only by deterrence. Weapons of mass destruction are the only means by which they can hope to deter the United States. They cannot hope to do so by relying on conventional weapons" (Waltz 2002, p.351-2).

So appear as they have some to deter and cooperate in order to get people in the UNSC behind you. It still does not say that they have WMD. I have read about the use of Al-Samoud and Scuds, but even that has been disputed. It might be that it was some other kind of weapon and no Scud or Al-Samoud. However ... knowledge sketchy.

so bomb every country that is not a democracy? will north korea be next?
and regarding the media... i wonder how much the press of the US is implicitly state-run too.
the issue with north korea and their nuclear program has captured my interest although i haven't been following it lately. the north korean news agency tells the story in a way that the US is to blame for the nuclear program they are working on now. how it all started with their need for electricity and then the US comes and threatens them (putting military forces in the South)... from their side of the story, the US is pretty much depicted as an unfair and uncompromising state. but then i read news from CNN or the New York Times and none of North Korea's

electricity problem is mentioned. i don't know if that actually has been reported by the US media.
i guess both sides cannot be true in its entirety --- the press of one country would most likely support its own side. so i guess the moral is take from every side and process the 'facts' and have your own stand.

Melanie:

The problem w/ our post-modern world is that (supposedly) anything can be disputed. Facts are only facts if we choose to believe them. Whether the missiles that hit Kuwait or not were Scuds or Al Samouds, they landed well outside the distance Iraq was allowed under the UN mandate. Hence, they were illegal. But most evidence pointed out that they were Scuds and Al Samouds (also some Chinese Silkworms). Of course, some press cited doubts (w/ no counter evidence, mind you), which was picked up by other press. So, since objective history no longer exists -- it's all based on different "narratives" -- that was as good as any other report.

Also, I think the Waltz article on deterrence is, I think, outdated. His long-standing theory of deterrence is no longer workable. Asymetric warfare has ruled that out. For example, Argentina had no qualms about going to war w/ the UK even though the UK had weapons of mass destruction (nuclear missiles) and a superior military. And we've not decided to invade North Korea all these years, even though they only now are developing nuclear weapons. There's a number of small African countries we might not like (Lybia) but we've not invaded them despite their having no WMDs.

A subtle assumption in the Waltz doctrine you quoted is that the US would otherwise AUTOMATICALLY attack these countries and/or that these countries somehow are JUSTIFIED in challenging the US (and general international stability). I'm not sure either of these two hold. Not to mention that chemical and biological weapons are certainly not a deterrence to the US. After all, we have better protective equipment than anyone else out there. If the Iraqis had used such weapons, more of them (and especially their civilians) would've been affected than us. And nuclear weapons are only a direct threat to the US if they are carried by ICBMs, which only a small handful of countries can even hope to possess (and I've no doubt that our nuclear umbrella will be up in a decade or so).

Finally, Waltz' theories of deterrence and international political stability are based on rational actor models. I'm not sure we can put Hussein or Kim Jong Il in that category. Sure, their behavior can be predicted and we can discern reasons for their actions, but it's not the same as rational action. Nuclear deterrence between the US-USSR-China has lasted as long as it has because our leaders are rational actors. Even in the most confrontational of moments. How would Hussein have behaved in the Bay of Pigs crisis?

No, I don't think we'll bomb every country that's not a democracy. But it'd be nice to put them all on notice. Let them know that their behavior is no longer tolerated. It'd be nice if Mugabe wasn't invited to Paris to be wined and dined. It'd be nice if leaders of free countries refused to negotiate w/ brutal dictatorships on such friendly terms, selling them weapons, backing them financially. It'd be nice ...

As to the question of the media. I think facts are objective realities. Let's look at North Korea. Their electrical grid collapsed. Why? They have no energy for simple needs. Yet they have the electricity to start a nuclear and space program? People are starving to death while Kim Jong Il lives a life of absolute luxury? So who's to blame for their problems?

I wish people would realize that American and most other western media are quite free. There's a dramatic difference between the New York Times and North Korean propaganda. Times reporters are critical, they dig for information. Sure, sometimes they make mistakes. And they'll admit it. Remember the Iraq war and the Iraqi Information Minister? The truth of the war wasn't determined by sifting the "facts" and making one's own stand. His information was irrelevant. US troops were at the airport, even if he said they weren't. They were in Baghdad, even if he said they were "committing suicide at the walls". It wasn't a relative truth. It was a brutal, objective fact.

Miguel, I think you've played too many games of 'risk'. I wonder if they could design a version of that game that takes into account the people that live in the countries that they players trample through and take over. Somehow make all the individual lives be part of the role playing too.

Did you ever read any of Anne Rice's vampire series? I read them in highschool. One element of one of the oldest vampire's character was that he was plagued by his super sense of hearing. He could hear everyones thoughts- he had to teach himself to tune them out. I still think about that characteristic.

I realize that I focus much more on the micro than then macro levels of politics. I guess that's not a hawk's position.

In a chinese fortune cookie kind of way, the world could be viewed as balanced between the polar differences.

what's with your weblog, anyway? when I try to post it won't let me go back and fix anything (it'll let me type one letter and then jumps to the end) and it cut me off on the last post. Have you put parameters on me?

I was in K-zo for a few hours on monday- it's my finals week otherwise I would have stayed longer. I saw Dan's shop and thought of you when I drove by Parkmont. Next time I'll catch up with you.

I think that's not a bad idea. And I do take the welfare of innocent people into account. I think many "hawks" do, too. I think my position is that Hussein was a brutal tyrant who killed as many as 1 million of his own people. So ... how do you deal w/ that? I mean, I'd really like to know. As of yet, I've not heard any kind of counter-proposal that would remove Hussein as a brutal tyrant and help give a better life to the Iraqi people that didn't involve some violence. If the records from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are correct, the four-week war killed less Iraqi civilians than Hussein killed on many DAYS of his regime. And I don't mean during the Iran-Iraq war; I mean from executions. And then there's the torture, rapes, and other atrocities. So ... how do you deal w/ that? Please, I'm dying to know.

I've never doubted the fact that Saddam needed to go. My problem with going to war was how the US admin. went about it. We could argue about this for days, I know, and I do respect your opinion that we gave them many options and more than enough time. I just would have like it to have played out with more international involvement.

It's unfortunate that Amnesty International & Human Rights Watch are not given more press- before the war I only knew that Saddam was bad. Since it's started I've learned about his legacy of atrocities and it turns my stomach to listen to. But are human rights issues why we invaded Iraq?

Actually, I do think that human rights was the reason why we attacked Iraq. There's much talk about the Wolfowitz pre-9/11 plans ("An American Century") that called for attacking Iraq. One spin on it is that it was "warmongerism" or other such stuff. Possible, but I doubt it.

But I think the plan is not warmongerism, but rather a profound change in US foreign policy. The idea is that it's in our national interest to promote American values -- democratic representative government and all that. Iraq was the key because we had better reasons for attacking it (I won't go into all those, but you can imagine). It's also the worst regime in the region, a great threat to regional stability. It's also, oddly enough, the best possible "blank slate" to build a democratic regime (secular, middle class, oil wealth, modern, etc).

The basic idea was the terrorism was due to the oppressive regimes in the Middle East. To cure that, we'd have to set up regime change. Already we see some dividends. The Arab media is slowly turning to a less anti-American stance. The "Arab street" is beginning to see that we did take care to avoid civilian casualties, etc. And if we leave quickly enough -- and leave a country on solid footing -- we'll not look like imperialists at all. And that's the goal. Instead, pro-democracy movements in the region may start looking to us for support more than ever. It could really have a huge impact in the region.

As to the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The travesty was that they did tone down their reports very very heavily leading up to the war. They were so opposed to the war, that they lessened their human rights appeals. This was a common denominator across the anti-war movement. Many even proclaimed that they'd refuse to talk explicitly about Hussein's atrocities because it'd weaken the anti-war cause. Too bad, using little white lies to back up a moral argument against a war isn't very noble.