BUSH'S 'IRAQ PROJECT'

...There are, I would argue, six varied and highly complex branches of the Iraq project...

...If Saddam and his followers are able to (Continued on page 18) mount a substantial resistance, then Iraqi casualties will be much higher, American casualties will become significant, oil production facilities are likely to be damaged, chemical and biological weapons may be used, greater violence may break out between Palestinians and Israelis, friendly governments in Jordan and Pakistan may be destabilized...

...The fruits offered on this branch are customarily found on trees other than those planted by the military...

...An image is not an argument...

...Military optimists assure us that they are unlikely to happen...

...But the likelihood of fighting in urban areas seems to ensure that there will be many civilian casualties...

...it is in urgent need of moral assessment and justification...

...The expectation that the practices and benefits of secular democracy will be unambiguously attractive to people whose beliefs and desires have been shaped by very different cultures and religious traditions is a sign of naivete...

...Threats that we may use nuclear weapons in response to Iraqi use of chemical and biological weapons indicate a likelihood that proportionality will not be observed in the conduct of the war...

...and the administration can be given credit for including them on its wish list of objectives...

...put before us...

...The fruits of this branch then are mixed, but will, in the absence of a clearly recognized just cause, be poisonous...

...In its more ambitious aspect, the Bush vision also includes the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a task that must be achieved if there is to be lasting stability in the Middle East...

...In my own estimate, the fruits of the tree are mixed and uncertain...

...Yet the administration's reluctance to accept international agreements and its hectoring attitude to international organizations and reluctant allies will lead many nations to see the war as an arbitrary exercise of power...

...The criterion of proper authority has been met internally: the policy is set by the president and has been approved by Congress...

...Most of these possible developments will do very little good for anyone and are likely to make a bad situation worse...

...Will the transformation be tainted by its origin in hostile force and by the way it directs the oil resources of the country to its own ends...

...Third, the administration has argued for the political, social, and economic transformation of Iraq...

...and technological progress makes the norm of noncombatant immunity easier to observe than in the past, especially in regard to aerial warfare...

...Surely an important part of the continuing regard for the United States is the confidence of other nations that we will not attack them, that we will resolve our disputes with them in ways that are more than the assertion of our enormous power...

...On this branch we can see the two objectives, interrelated but distinct, of Iraqi disarmament and regime change...

...Deposing and disarming Saddam are worthwhile goals, and achieving them would make a better future for the people of Iraq, for the region, and for the world at large...

...in this essay it is a way of organizing considerations about the war in Iraq, especially those considerations that stretch beyond the just-war framework as it is commonly applied...

...Assessing the Iraq project as a war involves assessing it first as an effective means of achieving the goals already mentioned...

...All I can do here is offer an impression of the consensus among my colleagues who work on these issues...

...It is true that the Middle East would benefit in innumerable ways from becoming more like the Middle West...

...Assessment of the comparative justice of the two sides clearly favors the United States, but the historical record also reveals that the United States has been far from consistent in its treatment of Saddam Hussein...

...The second branch of the tree grows from the need to use force...

...If the Iraq project graduates from coercive diplomacy to war, as it gives every indication of doing, it is likely to achieve the objectives of disarmament and Saddam's removal without great difficulty, but not without some significant negative results...

...Some of these branches will actually bear fruit, but what kind of fruit is a matter of considerable uncertainty...

...Fifth, the Iraq project has to be assessed as an effort to halt the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction...

...it will clearly be satisfied if things go well, but it may not be if things go badly...

...It would be more prosperous, more stable, more secure, and more able to deal with the aspirations of its peoples and with the rest of the world...

...Still, it should be clear that a war on Iraq is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for this imagined transformation...

...There are alternative methods of containing Saddam and eliminating the threat he presents...

...This, of course, is an even grander project than the "liberation" of Iraq, and its fruits are even more speculative...

...The elimination of corruption, the enfranchisement of women, the deradicalization and pacification of religion are all desirable outcomes...

...If Saddam is ousted on terms that include the destruction of his deadly arsenal, obviously some progress will have been made toward controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction...

...The tree that is the Bush administration's Iraq policy has branches that in turn have branches...

...Should the administration achieve these goals without war, its campaign of pressure and threat would count as a beneficial and responsible exercise of power...

...We will not be in a position to know until well after the war is concluded...

...Precisely for this reason, it is valuable to pause and assess...

...Will Iraq emerge from war as a stable state that is able to enjoy the promised benefits of this transformation...

...Still, the tree already has a certain shape, and we can make some reasonable judgments about the quality of the likely fruits...

...If this is done in a way that fails to establish an international consensus on how to control such weapons, however, we are likely to find that the progress on this issue is temporary...

...The inescapable obstacle to achieving this goal is that, by waging war against Iraq, the United States will only deepen Arab suspicions of our willingness to treat them with respect and fairness...

...Everyone agrees that UN authorization would be a powerful source of legitimacy, but not everyone thinks it is necessary, either legally or morally...

...and considerable damage will be done to the infrastructure of Iraq and to the ability of many of its people to survive...

...That must mean controlling the nuclear arsenals of India, Pakistan, and Israel as well as North Korea...

...Still, it is right for the administration's defenders to reply that some progress is better than none and that Saddam's weapons must be destroyed...

...Meanwhile, we should look at the course of events next door in Iran during the third quarter of the twentieth century, when a modernizing government was installed by the exertion of U.S...

...policy will not be of decisive import in the short run...

...As I write this in late February, I am in the predicament of not knowing how the story will turn out...

...In sum, the criterion of last resort is not met...

...It has also been a matter for political dispute whether the project will be a unilateral work of the United States, a common task for a comparatively small coalition, or a broadly endorsed enterprise of a global majority...

...The first is an exercise in coercive diplomacy...

...Based on this reading of the issues, the war should not be considered just, even though its objectives have considerable moral and political merit...

...The administration announces that it will take care to minimize civilian casualties...

...If the administration succeeds in disarming Iraq or in engineering the removal of Saddam Hussein, it will deserve accolades, even if one harbors serious reservations about the way it got there...

...Will the American people and the American government commit military and economic resources for a sufficiently long time to carry through and to protect the transformation...

...Nothing less than coercion would have concentrated the minds of Saddam Hussein and of the world's political leaders...

...The Iraq project has been at the center of this administration's attention for more than a year...

...As we can see from the actions of Russia and China in the current crisis, there is little desire to oppose the United States for the sake of opposition...

...If the administration is right in claiming that there are grave risks to our own national security in a world in which weapons of mass destruction are not closely regulated, then the next step must be to remove such weapons from other areas of acute political conflict...

...but what if they are more like Palestinians, whose situation has provoked them to profound and continuing resistance...

...Thus the major objective has wobbled between getting Saddam Hussein to surrender his weapons of mass destruction and effecting regime change in Baghdad...

...The West, both in its major religious traditions and in the normative structure of international law, has insisted that any war must meet the moral criteria proposed in just-war thinking...

...Still, war is not simply a more-or-less effective and costly way to achieve certain objectives...

...At the very least, thousands of people will be killed...

...Here the problem of how to deal with North Korea makes manifest the incomplete and improvised character of the administration's efforts...

...The Iraq project, though laudable in some of its goals, falls short of the requirements of justice and is not an apt instrument for bringing about the better world its proponents put before us...

...There is no grave and imminent danger of the sort that might justify a preemptive strike...

...Fourth, the Iraq project is a proposal for the po-litical, military, and diplomatic transformation of the entire Middle East...

...The United States is too powerful and too necessary to international order...

...We have to ask whether the highly attractive fruits of this branch-democracy, prosperity, and an open society-are a likely harvest or whether they are brightly painted fictions...

...Sixth, the administration sees the Iraq project as a step toward a new international order, one explicitly premised on American hegemony...

...Failure to resolve the more acute problem with North Korea will mean that any gains from destroying the Iraqi arsenal will be trivial...

...Of course, Iraqis are not Persians...

...About this there are no important divisions between the administration and most of its critics...

...There has been no direct attack by Iraq on the United States and its allies...

...Consequently, the enduring fruits of this branch will be very difficult to reach...

...Briefly, it runs thus: No just cause for war has been established...

...If these consequences are avoided, the administration will point to the accomplishment of its short-term goals at minimal cost as an undeniable gain...

...power and was subsequently repudiated in the Islamic Revolution of the late 1970s...

...There is no proven link between Al Qaeda and Iraq...

...There is a high probability of success, given the overwhelming military and technological resources of the United States...

...We remain, in the phrase cherished by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, "the indispensable nation...

...Yet, if they do, a sizable proportion of the public will decide that the undeniably worthy goals of the project are not worth the negative outcomes...

...If Saddam Hussein were to yield or to fall, these objectives would be within reach without the costs and sufferings of even a short war...

...I call it the "Iraq project" rather than something more specific because its purpose and justification have varied widely as it has come to greater definition...

...The fruits of such conduct and the precedent it sets for other nations are likely to prove bitter...

...Negative reactions to U.S...

...Still, there is dispute about the need for international authorization...

...Will the forces of resistance in Iraq be sufficiently strong over time to prevent or reverse a transformation that will be interpreted by its critics as an exercise of imperialism and economic exploitation...

...The requirement of proportionality covers many of the issues already touched on...

...A preemptive attack on Iraq and the continued assertion of our right to preempt elsewhere will surely diminish that confidence...