Saddam’s Insanity Offense,
Or, They’re Coming to Take Him Away (Ho Ho! Hee Hee! Ha Ha!)
So far, the pro-war forces have mustered three complementary arguments for direct US military action against Saddam’s regime in Iraq. They are, roughly:
- Saddam is on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons that he will use to attack the United States or, at best, unacceptably intimidate his neighbors
- Even if Saddam doesn’t use nuclear weapons himself, he consorts with terrorists who will use them with impunity
- Even if Saddam doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction, he is a cruel, brutal dictator who violates treaties, oppresses his own people, and the world would be better off without him.
As the debate unfolds, it seems that Point 1, by far the most convincing, is the toughest to substantiate, both on the count of how close Iraq is to nuclear capabilities, and on whether Saddam would really use them in any way other than self-defense. Point 2, which would also justify action if true, is by no means clear, especially when you define “terrorists” more narrowly to mean Al-Quaida and related Islamist groups with proven ill-intentions toward America. So that leaves us with Point 3 – indisputably true, but also true of many regimes around the world that we have no intention of toppling, thus providing scant justification for an enormous and costly operation in Iraq. The shell-game quality of these arguments, now that they’re being put to the test in public discussion, is causing a considerable erosion of support for the administration’s “regime change” plans, both at home and abroad.
Robert Bartley’s op-ed piece in Monday’s Wall Street Journal (“What We Learned”) attempts to rally the forces by concatenating the most persuasive elements of all three arguments into a formula that justifies US military action. The lynchpin of Barley’s principle is that Saddam is, objectively, “a madman.” If that’s so, and he is seeking to arm himself with nuclear weapons, then he must be stopped, regardless of how close he is to obtaining them or whether he actively conspired with Al-Quaida on the September 11th attacks.
Bartley summarizes the case against Saddam’s sanity as follows: “Saddam Hussein stands out with madman actions such as starting wars, repressing his own people, deploying poison gas on civilians, trying to assassinate a former U.S. president, and breaking agreements with the U.S. and world community.”
OK, Saddam has started two external wars – one against Iran in the early 1980s, with the enthusiastic backing of the United States, and the other against Kuwait, with what he believed was the tacit approval of the United States. Only after he had committed the prestige of his regime to the invasion of Kuwait did he realize how serious an error he made, and by then it was too late to do anything but brass it out. He survived the war, and circumstances make it inconceivable for him to espouse anything other than anti-Americanism. Both wars, and Saddam’s behavior in general, represents opportunism, not insanity.
As for repressing his own people using brutal methods, Saddam is, unfortunately, by no means unique in the world. While we in America commemorate the attacks of September 11, 2001, citizens of Chile remember that date in 1973 as the day that General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the democratically-elected government of Salvadore Allende (in a spectacular and bloody example of US-backed “regime change”), ushering in 20 years of brutal repression. Pinochet was recently spared from standing trial for his crimes, but the excuse was age, not insanity. The sad fact is that murder and coersion are, historically, proven rational strategies for holding onto power, and bullying a defenseless population is qualitatively different from attacking a well-armed foe.
It is true that Saddam breaks international agreements, and he’s a damn fool to do it when he’s looking down the guns of the world’s supreme military power. But it’s a far cry from seeing how much you can get away with in re-asserting your own sovereignty to dropping a nuke on Washington, DC. However much we dislike what he’s doing, Saddam seems to be acting rationally in his self interest as he sees it, not flailing out in some wild and unpredictable way.
None of this is meant to defend Saddam as a good guy or worthy leader. He's a thug, a tyrant and a menace - but he behaves in a way dicated by his interests and can be contained, deterred, and, with concerted international action, prevented from obtaining the material for a nuclear weapon. There are many bad regimes around the world we need to watch, and Iraq's is certainly one of them. But that's a far cry from justifying an invasion - especially one undertaken without the support of regional and global allies.
The one mark of true insanity that can be hung around Saddam's neck is the plot against George Bush senior, who was, at the time, already out of office, making him doubly not worth killing. At least Kaddafi put out the hit on Reagan while he was still President. And Castro was in power in Cuba when the CIA tried to poison his cigars. But why waste your ammo on an ex-president unless you’re a complete nut case? I guess they’ve got him there. Time to roll the tanks.
10:26:47 PM 
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