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Part 6

Iraq & A Hard Place Part 5 - 

US Strategic Interests

0, 2003 74: AM CST

The most important reason the United States will soon be invading Iraq is that our vital strategic national security interests are at stake. That many people do not understand this is entirely forgivable, because it is not immediately obvious. As I have shown in previous articles, we are not invading Iraq for its oil or for the political gain of George W. Bush. The argument also has very little to do with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Unfortunately, for practical reasons this is not an argument that the Bush administration can easily make to the public.

There is no doubt that the number one threat facing the United States today is international terrorism. The United States has had isolated incidents of domestic terrorism, but we do not have, and never have had, a domestic terrorism epidemic. Many Americans dislike the United States – or, at least, its government. But as a rule, Americans simply do not commit acts of terrorism.

Why not? Dictionary.com defines terrorism as “the unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.” In other words, terrorism is the use of violence to achieve political change – an act that Americans, by and large, do not engage in.

As much as I despise them, we can largely thank Jerry Springer and reality TV for this. They allow any idiot a chance to get a national, or even international, audience to say whatever foolish thing they please. Furthermore, we have newsletters, web sites (like this one), public access cable, PBS, NPR, and countless other ways for anybody with something intelligent to say to find an audience. The first amendment right to freedom of speech, one of our most precious freedoms, is also our greatest shield against terrorism because it provides us with a peaceful outlet to vent our frustrations.

Furthermore, we have the ability to directly influence our government through fair and open elections. This ability pervades every level of our government. If we don’t like what our government is doing, we can express that peacefully, both in speech and in action. Americans do not need to resort to terrorism. In fact, in a society with as many peaceful ways to address problems as ours has, violence is almost always counterproductive.

In the nations that have spawned the terrorist threats against the United States, the situation is exactly opposite. There is not a single Arab nation in which the citizens have the right to change their own government. Their “free press” is currently limited to a single satellite television news network. A network, incidentally, which is state owned, sensationalist, and highly biased. Furthermore, these nations all score abysmally low on the State Department’s annual report on human rights. These people live in nations where conditions are terrible, and they can do and say little about it. Rightly or wrongly, many of them blame the United States for it, and so we take the brunt of their anger.

But their anger isn’t the problem. Many Europeans are angry at the United States these days, but nobody worries about the terrorist threat from France or Germany. The problem is that Arab Muslims have no other outlet for their problems. Any lasting victory in the war on terror must center on changing this situation. It is my contention that the number one US strategic goal for the near term future must be a complete transformation of the political situation in the Middle East. This is an extraordinarily difficult goal. It will likely require a commitment on the scale of the cold war. It will require vast resources and sacrifice on the part of the American people.

One way to achieve this goal is to remove the lifeline that keeps the current regimes in power: oil money. To do this, we have to reduce or eliminate our reliance on Middle Eastern oil. We can achieve this in several ways. Liberals tell us we should achieve this by energy conservation and switching to alternative fuels such as hydrogen fuel cells. Conservatives tell us we should search for new domestic energy sources, such as drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and building new nuclear power plants.

The problem is that even if we choose to implement both sides of the equation by squelching our demand for energy and increasing our supply, it will take a great deal of time to achieve any results. The automotive industry is telling us that hydrogen cars are at least a decade away, and it will take at least another decade before they become the norm on the nation’s highways. Similarly, building nuclear power plants will take years, or even decades. This approach, ultimately, will work, but it will take a great deal of time, no matter how much money we throw at it.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 demonstrate that we cannot afford to wait for this glacial process to play itself out. Instead, we have to find a way to jumpstart it and compress it. This is a multi-pronged effort. It includes spending government resources to speed up research and development on hydrogen fuel cells. It will probably include opening up the ANWR to drilling and building more nuclear power plants. But if we really want to get the process over with in less than forty or fifty years, we will need a catalyst to speed up the reaction.

Taking down Saddam Hussein’s regime can provide this catalyst, if we are very careful to replace it with a strong, representative government. In the first place, we will gain one country in the “democracy” column and remove one from the “oppressive dictatorship” category. This, all by itself, is well worth the effort. But a democratic, US-friendly Iraq would have far reaching consequences throughout the region. Coupled with an array of semi-free news organizations already about to launch in the Middle East, a truly free press based out of Iraq will provide an immediate outlet for Arab anger and resentment. Furthermore, an example of an Arab democracy will send a powerful message to the people of Iran, where the oppressive ruling government is already facing strong opposition from within, and to other Arab peoples. And it will give us a strong strategic military position in the region.

As I pointed out in a previous article, Iraq’s oil isn’t worth its price to the United States. But it can have an enormous strategic impact on the region. With a little bit of luck (and perhaps some US influence), Iraq may be persuaded to keep from rejoining OPEC. Over the long term, rising oil exports from Iraq and Russia, combined with new energy supplies and alternate energy sources, may prove to be enough to break OPEC. This will cut the financial knees out from underneath the remaining totalitarian regimes in the Middle East. This is a largely hypothetical scenario, and relies on more than a little bit of luck – but it is within the realm of plausibility.

It should be obvious, however, why President Bush cannot announce this plan to the world. As soon as this plan is announced, we will lose a great deal of support from the regimes in the region. While the US military is perfectly capable of fighting and winning a campaign against Iraq without allies in the region, it would be far more difficult, and it would very likely be a huge, bloody mess. It is far better to keep the other Arab regimes on our side for the time being. In fact, I am somewhat surprised that Bush has gone as far as he has in announcing this kind of a vision.

A free and democratic Iraq may prove to be absolutely critical to our strategic interests. It will certainly prove to be highly important. It is an achievable goal, and it is worth paying a high price for. Beyond our own interests, it will also prove to be of great value to the rest of the world. This is, by far, the most important reason for the upcoming US invasion.

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Part 6