Thomas Friedman Op-Ed in the NYT
Thomas Friedman has a good op-ed in today’s NYT: Tell the Truth. He criticizes the Bush Administration for badly bungling the diplomacy needed to build support for war, for failing to spell out the legitimate arguments for war, and for lying with at-best-tenuous connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq to falsely legitimize war.
Because of its high handed attitude and stupid unilateralism — European anger over Bush stems in part from Kyoto, etc. — the Administration has made it next to impossible to legitimize the possibly necessary unilateralism that apparently has to happen to enforce a decade’s worth of UN resolutions. Even in the practical art of diplomacy, this Bush Administration compares unfavorably to the previous one on the eve of the first Gulf War, when SoS Baker spent time and effort to meet face to face with allies to build support; this Bush Administration apparently believes phone calls are sufficient.
Far more serious is the deceitful linkage of Iraq with Al Qaeda to justify war. Friedman rightly recalls the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, also based on falsehoods. And we all know how Vietnam turned out. The Administration’s desperate reaching for connections shows that they are either inept or distrustful of the American people. Inept because a history of the folly of starting democratic wars based on lies is clear; the Administration should know this. Distrustful because they don’t believe the American people can handle legitimate argument and debate on whether to prosecute this war; the Administration should trust Americans, and realize that only democratic processes can legitimize wars fought by a democracy.
Anyway, the kernel of Friedman’s op-ed — which is the kernel of the liberal argument for war — is in these two paragraphs:
Tell people the truth. Saddam does not threaten us today. He can be deterred. Taking him out is a war of choice ? but it’s a legitimate choice. It’s because he is undermining the U.N., it’s because if left alone he will seek weapons that will threaten all his neighbors, it’s because you believe the people of Iraq deserve to be liberated from his tyranny, and it’s because you intend to help Iraqis create a progressive state that could stimulate reform in the Arab/Muslim world, so that this region won’t keep churning out angry young people who are attracted to radical Islam and are the real weapons of mass destruction.
That’s the case for war ? and it will require years of occupying Iraq and a simultaneous effort to defuse the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to create a regional context for success. If done right, such a war could shrink Al Qaeda’s influence ? but Al Qaeda is a separate enemy that will have to be fought separately, and will remain a threat even if Saddam is ousted.
As a side note, this last point leads back to John Lewis Gaddis’s article in Foreign Policy about an American grand strategy for transforming the Middle East. Friedman perhaps could also have noted that Saddam will not live forever, and the collapse of his regime with his death — be it by coup, revolt or natural causes — will require US troops to prevent massive sectarian bloodshed and starvation whether there is or is not an invasion. The US will have to intervene in the future, no matter what the circumstances of “regime change”; doing so forcefully gives us the best chance to prevent “regime change” from becoming a humanitarian catastrophe.