George Conway
is a super-bright guy and an excellent blogger. However, he got carried away, I think, when he wrote this:
I’ve been trying to make sense of the Administration’s foreign policy for quite some time now, and I think I’ve finally got it. In 2002, the President identified three countries – Iraq, Iran, and North Korea – as an “axis of evil,” an axis of terrorist states that were pursuing weapons of mass destruction. We invaded the one member of this axis, Iraq, that was the least likely to obtain nuclear weapons, the one that wasn’t even close to being close to building the bomb, and, in doing so, at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of American lives, and the burden of being embroiled in a lengthy, unsuccessful occupation, managed to succeed in empowering the second member of the axis, Iraq’s neighbor and longstanding enemy, Iran, which the Administration has left free to pursue the enrichment of weapons-grade uranium, all while essentially ignoring North Korea, which has now, it appears, successfully detonated an atomic bomb. It’s all clear now.
Let's take a more in-depth look at the way things appeared in 2002. At that time, Iran had no nuclear weapons and, though it was working to develop them, was years away from accomplishing this. North Korea was at or near the point of having a nuclear device. Iraq was widely believed to have WMD. It had no nukes, but there was reason to believe that it was quite interested in reconstituting its program for developing them.
As of 2002, Iraq had attacked neighboring countries twice in the past 20 years. Iran had not attacked anyone in its modern history, as far as I know. North Korea, in its capacity as a Communist client state, had attacked Sourh Korea approximately 50 years earlier.
In the event it was attacked, North Korea had the ability to strike back very hard against South Korea. Iraq lacked a similar capacity, though there was some fear it could inflict minor damage on Israel. Iran was also thought to be able to inflict damage on Israel through Hezbollah.
It was unclear whether or to what extent we could set back North Korean and Iranian weapons programs through air attacks. Ground invasions of these two countries seemed out of the question. It was reasonably clear that we could end the WMD threat posed by Iraq through an invasion, though the cost of that invasion and a subsequent occupation would likely be high, and possibly very high.
Iraq and Iran were Islamic nations and both had connections with Islamist terrorists. North Korea was a Communist nation with no real known connection with Islamist terrorists.
Under these circumstances, it hardly seems illogical for us to have taken military action against Iraq, and not the other two axis of evil members. Iran was years away from having a nuclear capacity and there was time to deal with that problem. North Korea was perhaps too far down the same road to attack and, even without nukes, was capable of launching a formidable attack on South Korea and on our troops there. Moreover, North Korea was not closely connected with Islamic-fascism, which was our primary concern. Neither Iran nor North Korea had engaged in recent aggression, and in neither case was it clear that the only military action under serious contemplation would be effective in halting WMD production.
Iraq, as noted, was different in virtually all of these respects. It already had WMD, and it had a history of aggression but probably could not attack other countries in response to an attack by us. It had associations with terrorists, and we were confident we could bring down the regime and in so doing end its WMD threat.
Finally, let's consider the point that, as it turned out, by toppling Saddam we have strengthened Iran. This is something I expect we'll be hearing much more about going forward, but how telling an argument is it?
Whenever we have two deadly enemies both of whom are competing regional powers, successful military action against one will strengthen the other. For example, we certainly strengthened the Soviet Union's hand by defeating Germany in World War II. But we still were better off having done so, and I believe we are better off having only one deadly enemy state (the less demonstrably blood-thirsty of the two) left in the Middle East. Imagine, for example, the pressure on Saddam Hussein to build up his WMD program and reassert himself as a regional force for radicalism that would have resulted from Iran's rise.
Certainly, the overthrow of Saddam has made Iran a player in Iraq. But that's really a side-show, though not an insignificant one. The big question is whether we will stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Nothing we did in Iraq precludes us from preventing Iran from going nuclear. If don't do so -- either because we rely solely on diplomacy or because we take military action but it's ineffective -- it won't be because we took out Saddam Hussein.
JOHN adds: Another basic point should be made, I think, when comparing Iraq with Iran and North Korea. There was never any realistic possibility of invading either Iran or North Korea as of 2003, or now. Iraq, on the other hand, was in violation of numerous United Nations resolutions, and regime change in Iraq had been the stated policy of our government for some years. Iraq, too, was shooting at American airplanes. It was possible to assemble an international coalition to overthrow Saddam; it would not have been possible to do the same with respect to either Iran or North Korea. I've always thought that the most important reason for overthrowing Saddam was to begin the process of bringing reform and democracy to the Arab world, which is the administration's long-term strategy for ending the threat of Islamic terrorism. (I think the administration considered that the most important rationale, as well.) The only feasible place to do that was Iraq.
So: There was only one "Axis of Evil" country, Iraq, that we realistically could have dealt with via invasion and overthrow as of 2003. Comparisons of the threat posed by Iraq to the threats posed by Iran and North Korea are, I think, meaningless to the extent they imply that we should have invaded one or both of those countries instead. (Recall how John Kerry constantly referred to Iraq as the "wrong war," as though there were some other war he would have supported.)
None of this means, of course, that the decision to overthrow Saddam was correct. History will be the judge of that, and many years may pass before we know the answer one way or another. But criticizing the Bush administration for dealing with Iraq differently from Iran and North Korea is, I think, rather silly.
