Gulf War II  

The Logic of War

by Stefan B. Herpel

There are many reasons that a country wages war; the official reason, the real reason, and the myriad explanations given to sell the former and obscure the latter.

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If the war hasn't started by the time this issue of Liberty hits the newsstand, it likely will start very soon thereafter. We have had a lot of time to think about and digest the administration's arguments for war, and it is important, I think, to try to determine what has really driven the thinking of American policymakers.

Whatever one may think about the merits of past American military engagements, history suggests that official reasons for war frequently do not correspond to the actual reasons. Government has often relied on various forms of deception to build public support for, or overcome public opposition to, war. There are typically two parts to the official deception. One is to conceal the factors that are really driving the war policy. The other is to emphasize considerations that are invalid or, while conceivably valid, are in fact of little or no importance to the policymakers themselves.

Generally, an attempt to analyze what is really driving a government's war decision will not, by itself, provide a basis for assessing the necessity or morality of the war. Once the real reasons for a war are discerned, they may turn out to be valid, despite their concealment by the government. Likewise, the reasons the government has disingenuously offered to the public to justify the war may actually have merit, despite the fact that policymakers have privately rejected them. One can imagine, for example, a government dominated by policymakers of a realpolitik mindset rejecting as irrelevant a humanitarian argument for war, while invoking that argument in its public pronouncements precisely because it knows it will appeal to a certain segment of the population, thereby expanding the base of public support for the war. Even so, if the government is not telling the truth about its reasons for embarking on something as important as war, we ought to know about it.

George Kennan, the venerable historian and diplomat, recently observed that, because of all of the unforeseeable consequences that wars inevitably have, the prejudice in the current age should always be against war, as long as there is some peaceful policy option. My own view has been that the known risks and costs of a second Gulf War plainly outweigh its benefits, and that a continuation of the policies of containment and deterrence (with an inspection regime) is preferable to war. Lately, however, I have wondered whether there is a need to revisit my utilitarian calculus, as the distance we have advanced toward war and the implications of reversing course at this late stage are immense.

After threatening for more than a year to remove Hussein by force, and after having moved more than 200,000 troops into the region, pulling back now, in the midst of anti-war protests here and around the globe, will likely embolden our adversaries and cause allies in dangerous regions of the world to re-evaluate their ties with the U.S.

Let's consider the situation, and the reasoning that we are faced with.

The Official Reasons for Gulf War II

1. The Alleged Link Between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein

The administration has repeatedly stressed the connection between Hussein and al Qaeda. A link between a secular Muslim government like Hussein's, which has executed mullahs, and a fundamentalist organization like bin Laden's has always seemed suspect. If there were truly a link, revealing it would be a powerful way to galvanize public support for a war, because of the fear and sense of vulnerability engendered by Sept. 11. But the administration has notably failed to support this charge with credible evidence.

The claim that the government floated for months in late 2001 and 2002 was that Mohammed Atta, the chief hijacker in the 9/11 attacks, had met secretly with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague in April 2001. The CIA at some point concluded that this claim could not be corroborated, and government officials eventually stopped talking about the alleged meeting without ever acknowledging the lack of reliable evidence to support it.

In his speech before the United Nations on February 6, Secretary of State Powell offered different evidence in an attempt to substantiate his claim of a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network." This time, the principal evidence concerned a terrorist named Abu Musab Zarqawi and a terrorist organization, Ansar al-Islam. Powell claimed that Iraq was harboring "a deadly terrorist network headed by Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda lieutenants." During his speech, the secretary also showed a photograph of what he said was a chemical and explosives factory being operated by the terrorist organization Ansar al-Islam in a Kurdish area of northeastern Iraq. According to Powell, the organization has ties to the regime in Iraq and has given sanctuary to al Qaeda operatives who fled during the war in Afghanistan.

This was an important speech and there is every reason to believe that Powell was making the Bush administration's best case for a connection between Hussein and bin Laden's group. But at least two significant weaknesses in the secretary's case were quickly exposed. Ansar al-Islam is an organization that has engaged in terrorist acts in Kurdistan, and is intent on replacing the two dominant political factions in Kurdistan, the KUP, and the KDP. A New York Times article that appeared the day after Powell's speech quoted a senior official of the KUP, who was said to be familiar with intelligence on Ansar al-Islam, as saying he did not "know anything about this compound." The article also reported that Kurds pointed out that Khurmal, the village named on the photo, was not controlled by Ansar al-Islam, but was instead controlled by Komala Islami Kurdistan, a more moderate Islamic group. Moreover, if there is a chemical plant in that part of Iraq, the secretary did not explain why the U.S. had not "taken it out," especially given the close relationship the U.S. has with the Kurdish leadership in Kurdistan and its continuing overflight operations in northern Iraq.

As for the allegations regarding Zarqawi, CIA Director George Tenet, offering Congressional testimony on February 12, qualified much of what Powell had said or implied in his U.N. speech. Tenet said that Zarqawi was not "under the control" of Hussein. He indicated that Zarqawi took money from bin Laden, but also that Zarqawi and al Qaeda were independent.

Kenneth Pollack, the former Clinton administration official who advocates the war option, acknowledged last year in "The Threatening Storm: the Case for Invading Iraq," a book that is drawing praise from both supporters and opponents of the war, that, so far as we can tell, any ties between bin Laden's group and Hussein are "tenuous and inconsequential." Secretary Powell offered nothing in his speech of February 6 that would warrant a different conclusion. Indeed, the secretary's new evidence of a link was, at best, only marginally better than the earlier evidence.

It is, of course, possible, as President Bush has stated, that at some time "Iraq could decide . . . to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists." Hussein could sell or give away weapons of mass destruction to al Qaeda, despite their ideological and political antagonism. But it also possible that other states, states that are more active in the arms trade than Iraq, such as Iran, North Korea, and China, could transfer WMD or important components used to manufacture them.

In any event, what is pertinent is not the existence of a possibility, but rather our best assessment of its probability. Pollack, who maintains that "terrorism is the least of the threats posed by Iraq to the interests of the United States," argues persuasively that this is unlikely. He notes that Saddam has distanced himself from international terrorist groups in the last two decades "because he cannot be certain how they will act and how their actions will affect his own security." This concern would be "ten times" greater if WMD were involved, Pollack says, which explains why, to the best of our knowledge, Saddam has never previously made such weapons available to terrorist groups. Indeed, Pollack contends, Saddam knows that if the United States were to "tie [him] to an act of terrorism conducted with WMD, he would pay an exorbitant cost for it."

Removing Hussein from power would indeed make it practically impossible for him to transfer WMD to any terrorist organization in the future. But it simply does not make sense to think that our policymakers have chosen war for the purpose of eliminating an unlikely possibility, especially given all the known risks and direct costs (between $100 and $200 billion, by most estimates) of a second Gulf War, which include some of the very risks the war is ostensibly designed to prevent. As former NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark recently observed, if our military action divests Saddam of effective control over his own WMD before U.S. forces have an opportunity to assert control, the chemical and biological weapons that he surely still possesses could fall into terrorist hands. Another risk is that Saddam will be driven into an unholy tactical alliance with al Qaeda, and that terrorist attacks will be launched to coincide with a war. There is also a risk that while Saddam is going down to defeat, he will launch a missile with a chemical warhead into Israel, prompting Israel to strike back with WMD of its own, or that Hussein will use biological or chemical weapons against Shiite or Kurdish populations in Iraq.

There are, of course, additional known risks other than those the war is supposedly being waged to prevent. One is that Hussein could destroy infrastructure, including oil wells and related equipment, during an attack. Another is that war could inspire the overthrow of moderate Arab states, or lead to inter-ethnic fighting in Iraq of the kind that occurred in Yugoslavia following the fall of its strongman, Tito. The veteran journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave, who knows Pakistan well, has said that a second Gulf War could even lead to a breakup of Pakistan, with anybody's guess as to who would end up with control of that country's significant arsenal of nuclear weapons. Perhaps the most serious risk to the West, which I happen to think is a virtual certainty, is that war will lead to increased anti-Americanism in Muslim populations and to more terrorism against Americans and their interests. Bassam Tibi, a moderate Muslim scholar who teaches in Germany, argued persuasively in his 1997 book, "The Challenge of Fundamentalism," that the first Gulf War led to a dramatic increase in militant Islamic fundamentalism. And we know that the first Gulf War was a major inspiration to bin Laden and his network in their jihad against the West. A second Gulf War, whose objective of regime change is far more ambitious than that of Gulf War I, will likely lead to even greater radicalization of Muslim populations throughout the world.

In short, in light of all of the known risks of this war, it is not plausible that the mere possibility of WMD transfer to al Qaeda has motivated policymakers in the Bush administration to embrace the war option.

Nevertheless, the government's statements regarding ties between al Qaeda and Hussein appear to have had the desired effect on public opinion. A Knight-Ridder poll conducted in early January of this year showed that 65% of respondents believed that Iraq and al Qaeda "are allied and working together to plan new acts of terrorism." That belief has even colored public views of who was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. Despite the fact that fifteen of the hijackers were Saudis and none of the remaining four were Iraqis, 21% of the respondents in that same poll believed that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi citizens, 23% believed that some of them were, and 6% believed that one of them was. A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted in early March of this year revealed that 45% of the respondents believed that Saddam Hussein was "personally involved" in the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.

2. Iraq's Military Threat to the U.S. and its Allies in the Gulf

President Bush has pressed the case for war by saying that "the Iraqi dictator must not be permitted to threaten America and the world with horrible poisons and diseases and gases and atomic weapons." The idea of Saddam acquiring a nuclear weapon is not a salutary prospect. But the notion that the acquisition of a limited nuclear capacity would pose a direct military threat to the U.S. is not credible. Nor would Saddam pose such a threat even if he were eventually to develop nuclear weapons with sufficient range to reach the U.S. Just as leaders of the Soviet Union understood the consequences of initiating the use of nuclear weapons, so Saddam would have to know that any nuclear attack against the U.S. would be met with overwhelming retaliation.

While President Bush has suggested that the only conceivable reason Saddam wants a nuclear weapon is to use it, this is an obvious fallacy. There are undoubtedly regional reasons why Saddam wants such weapons — Israel has many nukes and Iraq's arch enemy Iran is closer to development of a nuclear weapon than Iraq is — and nuclear weapons would enhance Saddam's prestige in the Arab word. We know from the history of the Soviet Union during the Cold War that having a large arsenal of weapons does not necessarily carry with it an intent to use them against a foreign adversary. Acquiring one or two nuclear weapons would give Saddam greater influence over other Gulf states (some of them our allies), but there is little chance that he would actually use the weapons against any neighboring state unless he were attacked first with similar weapons.

3. Iraq's Violation of U.N. Resolutions

This issue requires little comment. The Security Council declared in Resolution 1441 (2002) that Iraq was in violation of Resolution 687 (1991), which, among other things, required Iraq to provide an accurate and complete disclosure of all aspects of its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that Iraq has violated that resolution. But there are many countries that are in violation of U.N. resolutions, including Turkey, Morocco, and Israel, and those violations are seemingly of little or no importance to the U.S.

There are two other considerations that suggest that Hussein's violation of U.N. Resolutions is not what is driving American policy. When President Bush and other officials first broached the subject of war, they made clear that its purpose was to effect regime change in Iraq, and not merely to coerce Saddam into behaving differently (as was done in Gulf War I). While regime change could presumably be authorized by the United Nations if that were deemed necessary to compel compliance with earlier U.N. resolutions, deciding beforehand to use such a drastic remedy demonstrated that the Bush administration had embarked on a policy that was completely divorced from the legal framework of the U.N. President Bush ultimately made a decision to attempt to seek U.N. Security Council approval for a war, but the fact that he came to this decision late, and has since made it clear that the U.S. will go to war with or without U.N. approval, means that the institutional imperatives of the United Nations will be observed when it is in the interests of the U.S. to do so, and disregarded when it is not.

4. Humanitarian Reasons

Saddam Hussein is undeniably a brutal despot , presiding over a cruel and repressive regime. President Bush has suggested that removal of Hussein would improve the lot of his people:

"On Saddam Hussein's orders, opponents have been decapitated, wives and mothers of political opponents have been systematically raped as a method of intimidation, and political prisoners have been forced to watch their own children being tortured. America believes that all people are entitled to hope and human rights, to the non-negotiable demands of human dignity. . . . Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves [the Iraqi people] and threatens us. When these demands are met, the first and greatest benefit will come to Iraqi men, women and children. The oppression of Kurds, Assyrians, Turkomens, Shi'a, Sunnis and others will be lifted. The long captivity of Iraq will end, and an era of new hope will begin."

Even in the speech from which these remarks were taken, however, they were offered as an afterthought, not as a principal reason for going to war with Iraq, and that is how they are usually presented. In any event, there are many cruel and terrible dictators in the world, and many regimes that treat their citizens miserably. One thinks immediately of the Sudanese government, which since 1984 has waged a terrible war in the South (only recently halted by an uneasy truce) that has claimed more than a million of its citizens' lives. Charles Taylor, the leader of Liberia, has not only been a brutal despot in his own country, he also sponsored the rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone, whose main method of terror was to hack off the limbs of civilians, including children. There has been no talk by this administration of regime change in the Sudan or Liberia. In short, the lot of Iraqis may be improved by Gulf War II, depending on how the war is conducted and its aftermath, but this is not a consideration that provides an important motivation to American policymakers.

The Actual Reasons for War

1. Oil Security

Administration officials are quick to denounce any implication that oil is a factor. For example, Richard Perle, the chairman of the administration's Defense Policy Board, said recently, "I find the accusation that this administration has embarked upon this policy for oil to be an outrageous, scurrilous charge." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in an interview with Al-Jazeera, the Arab television network, that suggestions that oil is behind U.S. policy are "[u]tter nonsense." The secretary added, "This is not about oil, and anyone who thinks it is is badly misunderstanding the situation." The suggestion that it is "outrageous," "scurrilous" or "utter nonsense" to claim that oil is a factor is sheer hyperbole. After all, in "A World Transformed," a 1998 book co-authored by the first President Bush and Brent Scowcroft, his National Security Advisor, Scowcroft justified the first Gulf War by saying that our "vital interests" were such that "we couldn't possibly allow Iraq a stranglehold over the oil supplies of the industrialized economies." Bush I echoed that point by alluding to the "economic stakes of Iraq's invasion," which he described as flowing from "the economic impact of Saddam's control of so much of the world's oil supply."

But there are compelling reasons to believe that oil is no less important to Gulf War II than it was to Gulf War I. Kenneth Pollack, the former Clinton administration official who is a proponent of war, has not been as reticent as administration officials in citing concerns about oil supplies and prices as a primary reason for waging Gulf War II. In The Threatening Storm, Pollack contends that Saddam hopes to use the acquisition of nuclear weapons to fulfill his goal of "call[ing] the shots in a grand Arab coalition" of Middle Eastern states. Pollack believes that if Saddam were to achieve his goal of "dominance of the Gulf oil region and its oil supplies," that "would constitute a dire threat to U.S. national security." Saddam "threatens the economic health of the world," Pollack argues, "because all of the evidence we have suggests that if [he] controls the Gulf oil fields, he will use this power to advance Iraq's political interests, even to the detriment of its economic interests and the world's." He would "be willing to cut or even halt oil exports whenever it suited him [in order] to force concessions from his fellow Arabs, Europe, the United States, or the world as a whole." Pollack goes so far as to claim that if Saddam were to attain that kind of dominance over the other oil-producing states in the Mideast, the result could be a "new Great Depression."

Plainly, the oil motive is a plausible one, especially for those decision-makers within the administration who believe that, if Saddam were to dominate the Gulf region, he could cause oil to be used as an economic weapon against the U.S. and the West. There is evidence that points to oil as a principal factor underlying the administration's Gulf War II policy. As reported by the Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs and others, the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University completed a study (together with the Council on Foreign Relations) in April 2001, which was reportedly presented to Vice President Dick Cheney, who was then heading the Energy Policy Development Group (also known as the "Energy Task Force"). The study, which was entitled "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," concludes, for a variety of supply and demand side reasons, that the energy sector is in "critical condition" and predicts that an energy crisis, not unlike that of the early 1970s, "could erupt at any time." The Baker Institute study notes that the U.S. "has forged a special relationship with certain key Middle East exporters, which . . . we assumed, would adjust their oil output to keep prices at levels that would neither discourage global economic growth nor fuel inflation." The pre-Sept. 11 study suggests that those assumptions might no longer be justified because "[t]hese Gulf allies are finding their domestic and foreign policy interests increasingly at odds with U.S. strategic considerations, especially as Arab-Israeli tensions flare."

The Baker Institute study emphasizes the importance of two Gulf states to any future energy problems — Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Saudi Arabia is the world's largest exporter of oil and has the world's largest known reserves. Iraq, even with U.N. and multilateral sanctions in place, is still one of the largest exporters and, at 112 billion barrels, has the second largest known reserves. The study emphasizes that Saudi Arabia has been our key oil ally but indicates that its ability to remain cooperative on oil pricing and supply is questionable, in part because of the actions of Iraq, our principal oil adversary:

Iran and Iraq accuse Saudi Arabia of seeking higher production rates to accommodate the economic interests of the United States, Japan, and Europe at the expense of the needs of local populations, creating internal pressures in the Arabian Gulf region against a moderate price stance. Bitter perceptions in the Arab world that the United States has not been evenhanded in brokering peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have exacerbated these pressures on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council countries and given political leverage to Iraq's Saddam Hussein to lobby for support among the Arab world's populations.

But Iraq has done more than just impose political pressure on Saudi Arabia and our other oil allies in the region. According to the Baker Institute study, it has periodically elected not to sell all the oil it could in an attempt to drive crude prices higher, and it has otherwise "demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon." While Saudi Arabia has thwarted those efforts, the study concludes that its continuing ability or willingness to do so cannot be taken for granted:

Over the past year, Iraq has effectively become a swing producer, turning its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest to do so. Saudi Arabia has proven willing to provide replacement supplies to the market when Iraqi exports have been reduced. This role has been extremely important in avoiding greater market volatility and in countering Iraq's efforts to take advantage of the oil market's structure. Saudi Arabia's role in this needs to be preserved, and should not be taken for granted. There is domestic pressure on the GCC leaders to reject cooperation to cool oil markets during times of shortfall in Iraqi oil production. These populations are dissatisfied with the 'no-fly-zone' bombing and the sanctions regime against Iraq, perceived U.S. bias in the Arab-Israeli peace process, and lack of domestic economic pressures [on the U.S.].

The Baker Institute study reports that Saddam has also been engaged in a "clever public relations campaign" designed to link Arab oil policy with the Arab-Israeli conflict, and to "stir up anti-American sentiment inside and outside the Middle East." Saddam has succeeded to some extent in "recast[ing] himself as the champion of the Palestinian cause . . . among young Palestinians."

Finally, the study recognizes that the U.N. and multilateral sanctions imposed on Iraq have created a policy dilemma for the U.S. On the one hand, sanctions (especially prohibitions on foreign investment in Iraq ) have "had a severe effect on potential Iraq production," and relaxing them would "quickly add capacity to world oil markets." On the other hand, allowing more Iraqi oil to come to market would "encourage Saddam Hussein to boast of his 'victory' against the United States, fuel his ambitions, and potentially strengthen his regime." Saddam could use oil revenues to build weapons of mass destruction, which would make him even more powerful in the region. The study does not discuss war as an option, and instead recommends an easing of sanctions coupled with "highly focused and enforced sanctions that target the regime's ability to maintain and acquire weapons of mass destruction."

Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force issued a report on May 17, 2001 which is known as the "National Energy Policy." That report, like the Baker Institute study, emphasizes the idea that America is now facing "the most serious energy shortage since the oil embargoes of the 1970s," and warns of more serious energy problems in the future that, if left unsolved, "will inevitably undermine our economy, our standard of living, and our national security." The portion of the "National Energy Policy" report dealing with international issues of energy policy describes Saudi Arabia as having been "a linchpin of supply reliability to world oil markets," but does not mention concerns about the future dependability of Saudi Arabia that were evident. While it would have been impolitic for the Bush administration to voice those concerns publicly, it is easy to imagine hard-headed realists in the administration like Cheney and Rumsfeld entertaining them. It should be remembered that Cheney and Rumsfeld were serving in high-level positions in the Ford administration when the Arab oil embargo wreaked havoc on our economy and contributed to Gerald Ford's defeat in the 1976 presidential election.

The "National Energy Policy" report does not mention Iraq by name, but it plainly recognizes the policy dilemma posed by the U.N. sanctions regarding Iraqi oil exports and foreign investment, and recommends a policy review of sanctions with respect to their impact on U.S. "energy security." In addition, it acknowledges that another policy challenge is posed by the periodic efforts of OPEC to cut back on exports and cause an artificial rise in price, without mentioning Iraq's role in those actions. Again, one can easily imagine Cheney and Rumsfeld sharing the Baker Institute's view that those actions of OPEC are, in part, the result of pressure from Iraq, which has attempted to exploit the widespread belief in the people of the Arab states that the U.S. is not being evenhanded in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The report also observes that by 2020, "Gulf oil producers are projected to supply between 54 and 67 percent of the world's oil." As such, it concludes, this region will "remain vital to U.S. interests"and to "world oil security," and the Gulf will therefore "be a primary focus of U.S. international energy policy."

The Sept. 11 attacks would have provided an impetus — and a political opportunity — to go to war over oil security issues of the kind described only five months earlier in the Baker Institute study. Following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, concerns about the dependability of Saudi Arabia as an oil ally could only have intensified as the role of bin Laden and other Saudi nationals in both the hijackings and the funding and promotion of militant Islamic fundamentalism generally, became increasingly clear. Meanwhile, the administration appeared to reject one of the principal oil policy prescriptions of the Baker Institute study —- the recommendation that the U.S. make serious efforts to defuse tensions in the Arab-Israeli conflict. If anything, those tensions have been allowed to worsen since President Bush assumed office. With that policy option ruled out, the most important remaining proposal of the Baker Institute study was the recommendation to phase out oil-related sanctions against Iraq, a proposal that would have had the undesirable effect of strengthening Hussein politically and militarily in the Gulf region.

Removing Hussein by force and replacing him with a friendly regime offered some clear advantages over relaxation of sanctions. War would simultaneously eliminate our principal oil adversary and create a new oil ally to supplement or perhaps replace the questionable Saudis. Iraqi oil could be tapped and brought to market without fear that it would strengthen an unfriendly regime and lead to greater use of the oil weapon against the West. And the level of public fear that was engendered by 9/11 would make it far easier to sell a war to the public than before, at least if it was pitched as something necessary to combat terrorism.

One lesson learned from the first Gulf War was that oil and its effects on the economy did not sell. In "A World Transformed," the first President Bush and Brent Scowcroft acknowledged the public relations disaster caused by Secretary of State James Baker's statement in November 1990 that the reason we were prepared to fight Gulf War I was "jobs, jobs, jobs." Concern about pitching Gulf War II in this way would be even greater today, because this time Hussein has done nothing nearly as conspicuous as invading a neighbor state.

2. Protection of Israel

Another factor driving this war is the belief that it will promote Israel's security interests. A recent article in the Washington Post reported that supporters of Ariel Sharon believe he and Bush have "the closest relationship in decades, perhaps ever, between a U.S. president and an Israeli [head of] government." Sharon has made no secret of his desire for regime change in Baghdad, describing it as of "vital importance." And he and Bush are also in agreement with the policies that Sharon's Likud government has been pursuing with respect to the Palestinians.

A number of Bush's neoconservative advisers, including Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, are longstanding hawks on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and strong advocates of regime change in Iraq. According to a report in the Washington Post, Perle was part of a study group that, in 1996, proposed to Israel's then prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that he abandon the Oslo peace accords and reject the idea of trading "land for peace." The Post quoted the study group as recommending that Israel should "focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq."

Stanley Hoffmann, a distinguished Harvard historian, has been particularly blunt in his criticism of the influence of this faction in the administration, insofar as it tends to view Israel's interests as coinciding with those of the U.S.:

And finally there is a loose collection of friends of Israel, who believe in the identity of interests between the Jewish state and the United States — two democracies that, they say, are both surrounded by foes and both forced to rely on military power to survive. These analysts look at foreign policy through the lens of one dominant concern: is it good or bad for Israel? Since that nation's founding in 1948, these thinkers have never been in very good odor at the State Department, but now they are well ensconced in the Pentagon, around such strategists as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.

Sharon and the neoconservatives in the administration not only believe that removal of Hussein will greatly reduce a significant security threat to Israel, but also reportedly would like to see democracy established in Iraq, in an attempt to promote it elsewhere in the Gulf. They believe that, because democracies are less likely to be hostile in their foreign relations than dictatorships are, democratization of Iraq and other Arab states would be beneficial for Israel.

If this view actually carried the day within the administration, then the establishment of democracy in Iraq could be viewed at least as a subsidiary motive for the war policy. But in contrast to the views of the neoconservative faction in the Pentagon, many in the State Department doubt that democracy can be readily established in Iraq or other Middle Eastern countries because the political traditions in those nations are so antagonistic to it. They also believe that, even if conditions allowed for the establishment of democracy, there is a very real risk that militant fundamentalists could win power in democratic elections in most of the Arab states. Lending credence to that fear, Arnaud de Borchgrave has reported that "two highly placed Saudi non-royals" told him that, if free elections were held in Saudi Arabia today, and bin Laden were running for prime minister, he would "win in a landslide."

The State Department view (and the presumed view of Cheney and Rumsfeld) has apparently prevailed, as the Bush administration announced recently that a post-War Iraq would be ruled by a U.S. military government for two years following the war. The plan, reportedly, is to remove the top echelon of the Baath Party leadership of Iraq, while leaving the rest more or less in place under U.S. military rule. In the end, the establishment of democracy in Iraq does not seem to have assumed importance even as a secondary factor underlying U.S. war policy.

3. Preserving American Credibility

Richard Perle and others have stressed that maintenance of U.S. credibility absolutely requires that we wage war if Hussein does not comply with our demands. If the U.S. backs down now, in the face of protests here and in Western Europe, our adversaries will be emboldened, and our allies will no longer regard us as dependable. Likewise, retired General Wesley Clark, who was opposed to the run-up to war with Iraq, now says that we have gone so far in threatening war and moving troops into position that we have to engage in war to preserve credibility.

This, however, is probably a superfluous factor to those who have supported war from the start for other reasons. Indeed, some commentators have implied that Perle and other advisors may have intended from the beginning to create a situation in which the credibility argument could be convincingly invoked.

Of course, those opponents of war who regard the U.S. as a "rogue superpower" will not be concerned about any damage to U.S. credibility that would result from a pullback of our forces.

4. Politics

The political climate created by Sept. 11 made this war possible. Without Sept. 11, the U.S. almost surely would have continued to address the problem of Saddam with some version of the containment and deterrence measures it had been using since Gulf War I, perhaps combined with some easing of foreign investment prohibitions in Iraq. It is also likely that the ability to fight Gulf War II with an all-volunteer military, as opposed to a draft, has contributed to public support for the war.

Author and political commentator Joe Klein goes further than this, suggesting that one political angle to the war is "the Karl Roveian hope that all those perplexed elderly Jewish Pat Buchanan voters will butterfly over to the Republican column in 2004." Others have suggested that the real Roveian hope is that the war will deflect attention from the administration's failure to capture bin Laden in the year and a half after the president said he would get him "dead or alive," and its failure to address the more urgent situation in Pakistan, where al Qaeda cells are freely operating and, according to some captured al Qaeda fighters, working to develop chemical weapons and rudimentary nuclear devices, and where some 11,000 madrassas are still teaching 750,000 Pakistani boys that "jihad is the noblest of human endeavors." Rove would not be doing his job if he were not considering the political advantages of a second Gulf War, but it is hard to assess the extent to which such considerations may be driving policy.

If Gulf War II is won quickly and with a minimum of casualties on both sides, the divergence between the government's stated reasons for going to war and the real reasons will become less important even to people who are aware that there is a difference. That, in my view, would be unfortunate. A government that deceives the people about something as important as war cannot be trusted to tell the truth during times of peace.

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