Could we go to war by mistake again?

I was on C-Span this morning talking about Iraq.  The program is now up on their website.  A lot of questions focused on the past:  why we went to war in Iraq, who should be held accountable for the mistake and whether oil was a motive.  The moderator, Rob Harrison, tried to keep the focus on the future, but he was only partly successful.

While I too worry more about the future than about the past–there is more you can do about it–I regard it as healthy to ask why we made a mistake like invading Iraq.

I am convinced oil had little to do with it–we were getting oil from Saddam Hussein, and we are getting some oil from Iraq now.  Few American companies have benefited from Iraq’s new openness to foreign oil companies, and most of those are active in Kurdistan.  The stuff is sold on a world market at market prices.  No need to invade anyone to get it.

One caller suggested we were unhappy with Saddam because he wanted customers to pay for oil in a currency other than dollars.  Lots of oil producing countries have tried that trick, which has been abandoned as often as it has been adopted.  The day will come, but it is not here yet.  And it is certainly nothing to go to war about.

There are two other explanations for the mistake that strike me as far more likely:  the argument that a democracy in Iraq would transform the region and concern about weapons of mass destruction (WMD).  There is no doubt that many within the Bush 43 administration were arguing the former.  They were dead wrong:  the Arab world regards today’s Iraq as a catastrophe, not a model democracy.  The Arab spring owes nothing to Iraq.  But the argument likely carried some weight in 2002-3.

The more decisive argument was WMD.  I can’t know what was in George W. Bush’s head, but in the public sphere that was the argument that was prevalent, and prevailed.  We had only recently been attacked, on 9/11 (2001, for those too young to remember!).  The Bush 43 administration claimed that Saddam Hussein was harboring international terrorists and pursuing nuclear and biological weapons (he was known to have chemical weapons, and to have used them against Iraqi Kurds).  It was a small step to concluding that he represented a grave and imminent threat to the United States, which is what Colin Powell argued at the UN Security Council.  Condi Rice won the day with her warning that the smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud.  I doubt she or Colin Powell knew the premise they were acting on was wrong.

We are now facing in 2011, and soon 2012, the same argument with respect to Iran, more than once. This does not mean that the argument is wrong.  There is lots of evidence that Iran is trying to assemble all the requirements, including non-nuclear high explosive technology, to build atomic weapons.  There is nothing like the cloud of uncertainty that surrounded Iraq’s nuclear program.  But still we need extra care to make sure that we have pursued all other avenues to stop Iran from going nuclear before deciding to use our military instruments.

There is ample evidence that the Obama administration has in fact done this:

1.  We’ve tightened sanctions, and gotten others to tighten theirs.

2.  We’ve offered negotiations, which so far have been fruitless.

3.  Cyberattacks and assassinations targeted against key technologies and people, respectively, occur often.

4.  Support is flowing to the Iranian opposition, perhaps even to ethnic separatists.

5.  We’ve repeatedly said that no options are off the table.

Trouble is, none of this guarantees that Tehran won’t go ahead anyway, hoping that possession of nuclear weapons, or more likely all the technology required to build them, will end American attempts to topple the theocratic regime.

If so, we still have to answer one further question:  will military action make us better off, or not?  Certainly in Iraq it did not.  It is easy enough to imagine that the Arab spring might have swept away Saddam Hussein, as it has other autocrats. Iran’s green movement, quiescent as it is for the moment, could still be our last best hope, not so much for ending the nuclear program as for removing the fears that have fueled it since the days of the Shah. Military action would do serious damage to dissent in Iran, especially as it will have to be repeated periodically to prevent Tehran from repairing damage and moving ahead with redoubled determination to build nuclear weapons.

If there is anything worse than going to war by mistake, it is doing it twice.