Department: International Affairs
Audience: all
Course description: Is the coaltion and its member governments REALLY in trouble if they don't find Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)in Iraq? The answer is no, because there's more to Weapons of Mass Destruction than Weapons of Mass Destruction.
I hope it is an affront to anti-war supporters to claim that the WMD issue is a Red Herring. "HEY!" I am sure they are screaming now, "WMD as a red herring is OUR argument! It's a red herring BEFORE the war. How DARE you say that it's now a red herring AFTER the war!"
I very much doubt that any of THESE people will bother to read on. However, I hope others will click the link to find out what the hell Dean Ptah is talking about when he says there's more to Weapons of Mass Destruction than Weapons of Mass Destruction...
The focus on finding WMD in Iraq is a red herring, mainly because it is a focus on the mere end-products of the process of creating WMD. It is like pulling the fangs off of a rattlesnake: The design parameters of the rattlesnake include the possiblity of losing its fangs, so its got the capability of growing new fangs. Its obvious that, if you pull it's fangs, it's not a danger now. However, the threat will return given enough time.
The frantic search for WMD is as fatally flawed as the UN Weapons Inspections regime's focus on finding a "smoking gun". The emphasis on finding a complete and smoking gun totally evades and ignores the fact that the gun may be dismantled. For instance, barrels of mustard gas were found, and warheads capable of carrying mustard gas were found, but because of the little detail of the mustard gas not being loaded in said shells, the antis quickly claimed it wasn't a smoking gun.
Well, considering the fact that a smoking gun is a gun that's been fired, they could claim that evidence of use of WMD could not be produced since the alleged warhead is now blown to smithereens, HA! HA!
Let's indulge in a thought experiment. Suppose, in a fit of stupidity, the United States agreed to unilaterally disarm its nuclear capability. How would the world verify that the Americans indeed did so?
Why immediately, the lefties would hop up and scream the obvious, of course: Disarming the Americans NOW would mean nothing unless their capability to create new weaponry in the future was also eliminated! They would call for the complete shutdown and dismantling of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and all the facilities at Alamoguardo. Savannah River Plant would have to be shut down, cleaned up, and plowed over. There would have to be bans placed on the employment of Nuclear Scientists by the military. In fact, it would be a serious mistake not to shut down the entire commercial nuclear power industry, since the plutonium in the fuel rods could be taken out and recycled into bombs! And what about the research reactors? Some are of appreciable wattage to make several bombs. Why, to make absolutely sure, all the nuclear engineering departments in all the American Universities would have to be eliminated, and every nuclear physicist and engineer would have to be jailed, re-educated, or executed to make positively, absolutely sure that American capability to rebuild nuclear weapons is forever prevented!
Oh, and for good measure, the Americans should pass and approve a Constitutional Amendment banning the development and use of Nuclear Weapons. And finally, to ensure that there is no political incentive to reverse these progressive measures and rebuild nuclear weapons, the Republican party should be banned, and the Americans required to elect only Democratic leaders to all national offices!
Let's now apply this lesson to Iraq. (That noise you hear is the screaming and gnashing of teeth at this UNREASONABLE DEMAND that the same standard be applied equally to non-Americans! Ignore them. They're hypocrites.)
The focus on the physical WMD detracts from the more important, long term issue of the capability to create WMD. There are the physical weapons, and there is the know-how to make the weapons. Short term visible products versus the long term invisible capability.
And as usual, the lefties and the antis focus on the short term visible issues, propose band-aid solutions, and continue to prove themselves incapable of grasping, much less solving, the long term invisible issues.
How much would you worry about leaving a loaded gun lying around where a child under ten could get at it? You'd be an idiot NOT to worry about it! Now, dismantle the gun completely and lay the parts around. How much would you worry? It'd depend on the kid, right? Most kids wouldn't have the know-how to put the gun back together again, so why worry? In fact, the kid that's smart enough to put the gun back together again is probably a kid that's smart enough to know the dangers of guns (Like I was ;) ). In fact, the only threat the dismantled gun represents is if a thug or a bully forced the smart kid to re-assemble the gun for him to use in his own nefarious plans.
The issue of Iraqi scientists not wanting to talk candidly and privately with the UN weapons inspectors was not one of several problems that the weapons inspection regime encountered.
It was the main problem. These guys were the smart kids, being forced by the dumb, ignorant, but vicious bully, to reassemble the guns he wanted. They knew that, even though all the WMD could have been found, accounted for, and destroyed, that they, they, were the real keys to Saddam's ability to eventually get WMD. Saddam's past ability to keep them from talking privately with the UN Inspectors proved his future ability to make them get back to work and rebuild the entire WMD production infrastructure.
Remember the research papers found in the home of a prominent Iraqi Scientist? Sure, its not WMD: Just the DNA, the blueprints, for WMD.
Remember how he continuously refused to officially and publicly disavow any desire to develop WMD? He couldn't, if he wanted to retain control over the Iraqi scientific community, which was his goose that, given time and the lifting of sanctions, would eventually lay the golden WMD eggs he wanted.
It's time to get real about the modern world we NOW live in. It's the Information Age. Computers are important, but the KNOW-HOW to make computers is more important. Automobiles are important, but its KNOW-HOW that makes the differences that separate a Yugo from a BMW even more important.
Technology. Knowledge. Know how. Those are the real coins of the realm in this day and age.
Yes, in a way Putin may be right about the possiblity that Saddam could still be sitting on a weapons cache of WMD, ready to release it at the right time by himself or to terrorists. We DO need to verify that there are no WMD eggs lying around. In fact, for all we know, that suitcase of Anthrax found in Brazil could have come from Iraq.
But there's a firm grasp NOW on the neck of the WMD laying Goose. Sanctions were intended to starve that very Goose of the materials needed to lay WMD. What does Putin think, that Saddam can build his own WMD, by himself, without the aid of his scientists or his industrial infrastructure, or his bank accounts to pay for the materials?
Conclusion
Finding physical WMD in Iraq is important, but what was more important was incapacitating the infrastructure required to construct that WMD, as well as the isolation and liberation of those possessing the know-how to build WMD from the madmad who forced them to build WMD for himself. Focussing on physical WMD reflects typical, short term thinking and emphasis on the visible issues, and ignores the long term, invisible issues that are the real challenge in our day and age.
Focussing on the former, while ignoring the latter, is true simplisme of the highest quality.
edit: It's a YUGO, not a HUGO. (*blushes*)
Edit: 5/7/03 Thankfully, it's starting to look as if the sailor who died in Brazil didn't die from Anthrax.
Edit: 5/7/03 An interesting explanation for why Saddam didn't use WMD states that he had the WMD in pieces to facilitate hiding them effectively, but couldn't un-hide them quickly enough to re-assemble them in time for use. This made me think about my analogy of the dis-assembled gun. A very safe gun indeed, but not one that's practical to use when you wake up in the middle of the night to discover you have an uninvited "visitor" in the house.
This is a good explanation: Saddam took elaborate pains to keep out of sight and stay in motion, very rightly having a great deal of respect for Coaltion reconnaissance abilities. It would have been reasonable for him to believe that the possible WMD sites were being monitored also, and that any attempt to assemble WMD would have been detected.
Another possible explanation is that using WMD would have been useless. Any spy in the United States watching the reports from the embedded reporters would have known that our ground forces were prepared to deal with it. In fact, once the war started, using it would have only proved Dubya's point, and would have pissed us off anyway. For all his miscalculations, Saddam knew how to play to the anti-american audience.
Posted by ptah at April 30, 2003 09:13 AM