Stopping A New War With Iraq
An Interview With
Phyllis Bennis
TomPaine.com, 8 August 2002
As the United States, United Nations, and Iraq argue over
renewed weapons inspections in Iraq, Congress has
begun to debate launching an attack to oust Saddam
Hussein. Recent Senate hearings, leaked Pantagon
battle plans and subsequent cautious remarks by some
senators reveal that the capital's top political and military
circles are divided on attacking Iraq.
Phyllis Bennis is a fellow at Washington's Institute for
Policy Studies and is author of the upcoming book,
Before And After: US Foreign Policy and the Sept.
11 Crisis. She was interviewed by TomPaine's
Steven Rosenfeld about the latest rationale offered
by supporters of a new war, the human costs of an
attack and the current politics on the issue.
TomPaine.com: We’re being told that the US
must go to war pre-emptively against Iraq
because Baghdad might some day soon succeed in
building dangerous weapons and give that weapon
to either an anti-American terrorist group, or even
use that weapon against the US or American
interests abroad. What’s wrong with this analysis?
Phyllis Bennis: Pretty much everything is wrong with this
analysis. Number one, no country in the world, not even
the strongest power in the world, like the US is today,
has the right to attack a country that has not attacked it.
Pre-emptive strikes are illegal - period. That’s the first
thing wrong with it.
The other thing that’s wrong with it is this notion that we
can go to war on ‘spec.’ That’s unacceptable. This idea
that we might see weapons being built sometime in the
future, and the government in Iraq might give them to
some terrorist group, that might use them against
somebody that we might like - this is nuts. This is not
the basis on which you go to a war that you know will kill
in the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, possibly in the
thousands of American troops. This is simply
unacceptable for the world’s sole superpower or for any
other country.
TP.c: In testimony you wrote for the recent Senate
Foreign Relations Committee hearings on going to
war with Iraq, you mention the possible human toll:
death; disease; destruction. And you say a heavy air
bombardment of Baghdad, a city of four- to
five-million people, would be like bombing Los
Angeles or some similar-size American city. Is that a
fair comparison?
Bennis: I think it is. I was, I must say, shocked, when I
read the leaked battle plan in the pages of The
Washington Post and later The New York Times, that
talked about a new plan, one that was being called the
‘Inside-Out Plan.’ That plan would start with an effort to
isolate the Iraqi leadership, cut off Baghdad from
commanders in the rest of the country, and it went
through this very long description of how Baghdad now is
studded with anti-aircraft weapons and surrounded by the
crack troops of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guards.
Now that may all be true. I have no idea. When I was
there [in 1999] I didn’t see the city studded with
anti-aircraft batteries, but there well could be.
What it did not even mention is that Baghdad is also filled
with somewhere between four- and five-million human
beings - grandmothers, children, families, schools,
hospitals, old people - just like Los Angeles, just like
San Francisco. So the notion that you could sort of
launch what was described as ‘a massive air attack’ to be
followed by a significantly smaller ground assault than the
earlier plans (one that would include something like
70,000 US ground troops instead of 250,000 US
ground troops) but taking no account of who would die
under that massive air assault ...
Baghdad is a crowded, over-populated city. Like all
countries in crisis, rural populations that can no longer
survive in the countryside migrate to the cities looking for
work, looking for housing - in desperation looking for
anything they can find. The notion that the US would
contemplate a "massive air attack" on a crowded civilian
city is an abomination.
TP.c: So how credible were the Senate Foreign
Relation Committee hearings on going to war with
Iraq?
Bennis: Well on the one hand it was obviously good that
the Senate was beginning to take some responsibility for
addressing this issue in a substantive way. The problem
is, of course, is that the hearings should have brought
before the Senate a wide range of opinions about what
policy in Iraq should be: those who have expertise in
humanitarian conditions; those who have diplomatic
expertise, as well as those who have either support or
opposition to going to war.
As it turned out, they invited only what they thought were
going to be hard-line supporters of going to war, and a few
individuals who they thought might be softer supporters of
going to war. In fact, what was I think interesting about
those hearings was that even some of the most hard-core
supporters of war against Iraq did not come out as
cheerleaders for war in this context. They came out very
cautious. They came out urging care be taken, that there
not be any hasty judgments. They came out calling for
more investigations, for more discussion. And I think
that’s a very important indicator that ruling circles in the
United States today are not unified on this question.
TP.c: By that I take it you mean the Secretary of
Defense and other top Pentagon brass appointed by
the president want to go to war. The State
Department is more reluctant. Some members of
Congress are expressing reservations ...
Bennis: There’s a great deal of ambiguity in elite circles
right now. And at a moment when the elites, those in
power, are divided, that’s the moment when anti-war
voices can be heard in an entirely maximal way. So that
this is a moment - because this is now very much a
political issue, this is going to be driven by the polls. This
is not something that’s being driven by military necessity.
It’s being driven by politics.
The members of Congress, the Senators, the White
House, the State Department, are going to be looking at
how many faxes they get from people saying, ‘Don’t go to
war.’ How many calls to the various comment lines
saying, ‘We don’t want a war with Iraq. We want the US
to be a nation of laws, not a rogue state.’ How many calls
to members of Congress while they are in their districts -
all of these things are going to have much more
importance right now than any other time.
Copyright 2002 TomPaine.com
|
