With each passing day the United States comes ever closer to launching a new war against Iraq. And yet, before it has even begun, thousands of people are already marching in the streets demanding that our government not take any forceful action against Saddam’s regime–lest, they say, innocent civilians are harmed in the process.
These opponents of war–and indeed its defenders also–would do well to read The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq. On this issue alone, meaning specifically the issue of what is best for Iraqi citizens, Pollack is clear. Describing the present situation for civilians in Iraq, the author quotes John Sweeney, a veteran correspondent for the BBC, saying: “I have been to Baghdad a number of times. Being in Iraq is like creeping around in someone else’s migraine. The fear is so omnipresent you could almost eat it. No one talks.” The reason for this, Pollack shows, is bound up in how Saddam’s government rules its people.
“This is a regime,” says Pollack, “that will gouge out the eyes of children to force confessions from their parents and grandparents. This is a regime that will crush all of the bones in the feet of a two-year-old-girl to force her mother to divulge her father’s whereabouts . . . This is a regime that will burn a person’s limbs off to force him to confess or comply . . . that in 2000 decreed that the crime of criticizing the regime (which can be as harmless as suggesting that Saddam’s clothing does not match) would be punished by cutting out the offender’s tongue . . . This is a regime that will drag in a man’s wife, daughter, or other female relative and repeatedly rape her in front of him . . . that will behead a young mother in the street in front of her house and children because her husband was suspected of opposing the regime. This is a regime that used chemical warfare on its own Kurdish citizens–not just on the fifteen thousand killed and maimed at Halabja but on scores of other villages across Kurdistan.” It is a government, in other words, that uses force as its mandate for rule and not, as we understand it, the proper consent of those governed. It is a regime that respects noone’s individual rights–not even their right to life itself. It is a society where everyone lives in constant fear–afraid to speak, or even to think, anything that can be construed as against the government that rules them with an iron fist.
Given this much, how can anyone oppose the U.S. government’s use of force against Saddam’s regime in the name of these very same citizens being oppressed? That is one of the questions–albeit a minor one–that the readers of this book, who find themselves in the anti-war camp, must answer.
The Threatening Storm does not actually pose such questions, however, and it is not written as a polemic against those who favor peace–whether they are currently serving in office, teaching in academia, or marching in the streets. Rather, the book was written for anyone “struggling to understand the problem we face with Iraq and the options available to the United States.”
The book begins by “describing the history of U.S.-Iraqi relations over the last twenty years as a way of understanding how the United States and Iraq reached the unhappy stand-off that currently prevails. It then describes the state of Iraq today: its economy, its political system, the state of its people after three decades of Saddam’s misrule and a decade of sanctions, the state of its weapons of mass destruction as best we understand them, Saddam’s terrifying security apparatus and how it keeps him in power, Iraq’s support for terrorism, and the state of its armed forces. It also describes how Iraq is perceived by its various neighbors and how those states would like to see the United States handle Saddam. Finally, it lays out a range of U.S. policy options and considers each one in turn: its advantages, its disadvantages, its strengths and weaknesses.”
The author’s conclusion is that “through our own mistakes, the perfidy of others, and Saddam’s cunning, the United States is left with few good policy options toward Iraq, and increasingly, the option that makes the most sense is for the United States to topple Saddam, eradicate his weapons of mass destruction, and rebuild Iraq as a prosperous and stable society for the good of the United States, Iraq’s own people, and the entire region.”
Pollack advocates this only grudgingly and in the tone of a man fully cognizant of what it may perhaps mean to thousands upon thousands of truly decent human beings. As the author himself points out, war should only be employed as a last resort. In the case of the threat posed by Iraq, however, it is to this last resort that we have come.
For any person in America who takes their life and their freedom seriously–for anyone from anywhere that realizes the ominous threat Iraq poses to civilization itself–this is the most important book you can read. It will give you all the facts you need to make what just might be the most important decision of your political lifetime: whether to call for and support a war against Iraq (as well as when to do so).
The book, however great, is not without its faults though. The author is at times too generous to those who are against going to war with Iraq (or with anyone who threatens us for that matter). He says it is wrong–“vicious slander”–to label such people as appeasers, noting that there are reasons why the U.S. should pause and think before invading Saddam’s totalitarian regime. (These reasons he rightfully identifies as the direct threat al-Qaeda poses, as well as the threat posed by other regimes such as Iran.) But the author is wrong to conclude that noone in American politics today is an appeaser. There really is no other name for some of the people who currently hold office–or are building up their campaign to do so in the near future.
Despite such errors, and they are few as well as minor, The Threatening Storm is immensely valuable. If Iraq is the most important foriegn policy decision of this decade–and I believe it is–there is no other book printed recently that deserves to be read as much as this one.
