"Victory" in Iraq  

Behind the Smoke & Mirrors

by R.W. Bradford

The war on Iraq isn't about Osama bin Laden, weapons of mass destruction, liberation, or even oil.

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Americans have long been extraordinarily gullible. They entered the Great War on behalf of Britain, France, and Russia on the belief that doing so somehow constituted "saving the world for democracy," despite the fact that the countries it saved were no more democratic than Germany, whom they sought to destroy. They enacted Prohibition, on the conviction that simply outlawing alcohol would end a range of problems from public drunkenness to childhood poverty to the absenteeism of factory workers. They fought World War II in the belief that by allying themselves with the bloodiest dictator in history, a madman who without the slightest doubt actually sought to rule the world, they were saving the world from a madman who sought to dominate the world. They declared a War on Drugs in the belief that arresting users of recreational substances that were neither tobacco nor alcohol and incarcerating them for lengthy periods of time and running television commercials about the dangers of non-nicotine, non-alcohol drugs would end the harm done by drug use. They declared a War on Poverty in the belief that taking from the well-off and giving to the less well-off would end the sad state of affairs in which fully 25% of our population lived in poverty, which was defined as having to get by on less money than three quarters of the American populace.

Americans' reaction to the War on Iraq again illustrates this gullibility — indeed, it suggests that Americans have transcendent gullibility and have passed into the netherworld of those hopelessly addicted to bamboozery.

Consider why Americans have concluded that conquest of Iraq is such a Good Thing. The regime of Bush II has offered Americans three rationales for conquering Iraq:1) Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and deserves to be punished.

The administration repeatedly suggested that Saddam was behind the terrorist attacks, despite the fact that the 9/11 terrorists were part of a fundamentalist Moslem revolutionary group that stood diametrically opposed to modern, secular socialist Moslems like Saddam — and despite the fact that there was not so much as a scintilla of evidence that Saddam was involved in the 9/11 attacks. And the campaign was successful: on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq, nearly half of all Americans believed Saddam had ordered the attacks of Sept. 11.

The patent falsity of the "Saddam-ordered-9/11" rationale for conquest, however, was apparent to a modest majority of Americans, and another explanation was plainly needed. So Bush and his staff came up with another rationale:

2) Saddam Hussein had developed some weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and was working on others. This justified conquering them.

The administration argued that Saddam was flouting an agreement to forswear development of "weapons of mass destruction," i.e., the sort of sophisticated weapons that the United States possesses. He already has chemical and biological weapons, Bush said, and if we don't stop him quickly, he'll develop means of delivering them. And he's also working on nuclear weapons. Once he develops such weapons and the means to deliver them, we will be vulnerable to his aggressive ambitions, and can never be safe. If we don't attack him now, he will inevitably attack us, with damage even worse that what happened in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

This rationale also was offered to the United Nations in hopes that it would convince the world's secondary powers to support American conquest. The theory here was that Saddam's development of chemical and biological weapons violates his ceasefire agreement with the U.N. and therefore justifies collective international action (i.e., U.S.-led invasion) against Iraq. When it became evident that most U.N. members and members of the Security Council would reject the U.S. proposal, it was withdrawn.

It failed to convince many people outside the U.S., but homo americanus bought the theory lock, stock, and missile. Stop this madman before it's too late, they cried, else we will never be secure in our homes again.

And so the process of conquest was begun. But as the invasion proceeded, it became doubtful that Saddam possessed any usable chemical or biological weapons. Even when facing annihilation, Saddam's forces never deployed the chemical or biological weapons that Bush had said they possessed and would use upon the slightest provocation.

Some Americans began vaguely to suspect that perhaps Saddam had never possessed any effective WMD in the first place. This impression has been reinforced by the failure of the conquering forces to discover any. Indeed, the only evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that the administration offered was that its armed forces found gas masks and poison antidotes in some Iraqi hospitals they had seized. These proved the Iraqis had chemical weapons because, well, why else would they have means of defending themselves against chemical weapons? So far as I can tell, no one seems to have noticed that this logic would suggest that every American family who built a fallout shelter during the Cold War must have possessed nuclear weapons.

President Bush possesses the finest, best financed, and most pervasive intelligence network in the world. It surely provided him accurate information on Saddam's arsenal, including whether it possessed any effective chemical or biological weapons. And it is evident that Saddam did not, else he would have deployed them against the invaders who in a few weeks destroyed his entire government, promised to kill him, and plainly possessed both the means and the will to do so. To believe that Bush actually believed the story his representatives told the United Nations is to believe that American intelligence is grossly incompetent.

There is another problem with this rationale. Chemical and biological weapons are not particularly effective weapons. They are notoriously difficult to control, nearly as likely to kill your own forces as the enemy's. And they are much less destructive than the sophisticated weapons that the U.S. has developed. They would not be much of a threat to America or to Americans. Furthermore, even if Saddam possessed such weapons, he had no way to inflict them on us. (It is worth noting that the anthrax outbreak in the U.S. had its origin, not in Iraq or in any other foreign power, but in the anthrax program of the United States government.)

Indeed, the notion that chemical and biological weapons constitute some sort of uniquely destructive class of weaponry is merely a public relations ruse. In the entire history of warfare, chemical and biological weapons have killed about 100,000 people — approximately the same number of people killed by the conventional bombs U.S. airplanes dropped on Tokyo in a single day in 1945. And the U.S. development of the most destructive conventional bomb in history — a 21,000 ton monster the Bush administration dubbed the "Mother of All Bombs" — and the threat to use it against Iraq for its "psychological" impact suggests that the charge of "terrorism" is as applicable to Bush II's U.S. as it is to Saddam's Iraq.

Of course, the obvious falseness of the "weapons-of-mass-destruction" rationale was evident even before the invasion began. Despite its apparent failure to succeed in efforts to develop deployable WMD, Iraq was certainly not unique in trying to do so. Many other countries are doing the same. If the U.S. is to conquer them all, it has a very big job on its hands — a job too extensive and expensive for even America to undertake.

And what about North Korea? It has not merely sought WMD: it has actually obtained them. It has nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. Yet the U.S. has made no move to conquer North Korea. The reason? No one in the Bush administration has given a credible answer to that question. But it seems safe to surmise that the reason for attacking a country that seeks but does not possess WMD while not attacking a country armed with nuclear weapons is that Bush does not want to run the risk of Americans suffering the sort of death and destruction that Iraqis have suffered in the U.S. invasion. This provides a powerful incentive for other countries to accelerate their own development of WMD, as the one sure way to avoid U.S. attack. So the effect of an invasion to prevent the spread of WMD would be to provide powerful incentives for WMD to be developed by every country that cherishes its independence.

No, the threat of chemical and biological weapons was not a worry to the president. It was a propaganda tool that he hoped would help build support for the conquest of Iraq. It was credible to American boobs for a few weeks, but once the invasion began, it lost its credibility.

The Bush administration had foreseen this. It had another rationale for the invasion ready to go, one that it had already hinted at when it dubbed its invasion "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

3) Saddam is a brutal dictator who oppresses his people, and we should liberate people from brutal dictators.

As soon as American television networks began sending back pictures of some Iraqis welcoming American invaders (and asking them for food, water, and medical care, whose supply the invasion had interrupted), Bush and his minions proposed a new explanation to replace the newly discredited weapons-of-mass-destruction rationale: the U.S. was invading Iraq to liberate its people from their cruel dictator. This rationale had one virtue that the others lacked: it contains an element of truth: it is undeniable that Saddam was a brutal dictator who oppressed his people.

But this rationale also fails to make sense. If being a brutal, oppressive dictator is enough to bring on the wrath of the American military establishment, then the U.S. has a lot more countries to invade. According to Freedom House, a non-partisan group that evaluates political freedom and civil liberties of all 192 independent countries in the world, there are 42 countries other than Iraq that are "not free." If the U.S. is going to invade them all, it has a big job ahead: the 42 "not free" countries contain more than a third of the world's population and include three countries who possess nuclear weapons. Even if the U.S. were to leave those dictatorships alone, it would have to mount 39 other invasions.

While the United States certainly has the military might to conquer two relatively small countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, it should be remembered that doing so required a year and a half's time and more than $100 billion. Mounting another 39 invasions would take much longer and cost much, much more. And if the U.S. also attacked unfree countries that possess nuclear weapons, the costs would escalate enormously.

If Americans were to take a look at America's allies in its invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, they would notice that a good many are also dictatorships. Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan all are identified by Freedom House as "not-free." Presumably, if the purpose of American invasions had actually been a desire to liberate oppressed people, the dictatorial governments of these countries would not have supported them.

Bush had never shown any particular affection for Iraqis, and there are dozens of other countries suffering under dictators comparable to Saddam. Surely, if Bush wanted to free the world's people from the thralldom of lunatic dictators, he would have started someplace else, someplace where he and the United States had a stronger interest, such as Cuba.

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Political decisions in America almost always have both a rationale and a reason. The rationale is the explanation that is palatable to the public but cannot stand logical scrutiny; the reason is the actual explanation. Bush II's decision to restrict steel imports was offered to the public as an effort to protect the jobs of American steelworkers. This protectionist measure will protect the jobs of steelworkers, all right, but at a huge cost exacted from every other American in the form of higher taxes and higher steel prices. It would be cheaper simply to give every displaced steelworker a cash payment from the U.S. treasury and to import the cheaper steel. But the president didn't make this proposal; voters simply wouldn't want to pay the direct cash subsidy to highly paid steelworkers. So the president offered the job-saving rationale to the public and bought the votes of steelworkers at an even higher cost. His rationale was protecting jobs; his reason was to get the political support of steelworkers and steel producers.

Of course, very few Americans have thought through any of this. Simply, most accepted one or another or even all of the president's rationales for conquering Iraq, despite the fact that they make no more sense than subsidizing steelworkers via import restrictions. Americans are far too busy wrapping themselves in the flag and celebrating victory over a tinpot dictator to give careful consideration to how it happened.

A few people — mostly those with a strong dislike for the president — have gone to the trivial effort needed to see past his flimflammery. Alas, almost without exception, they have settled on a theory of his "real" motivation that makes no more sense than the absurd explanations offered by the president himself.

I refer, of course, to the notion that the president and his administration are motivated by greed for oil.^* These facts are offered in support of this theory: Iraq has a lot of oil. The U.S. imports a lot of oil. Bush was once in the oil business. So was his vice president. Bush's father attacked Iraq a decade ago and cited the security of oil supplies as one of his reasons for doing so.

That's all true. But it doesn't provide anything resembling a sensible reason for invasion or conquest. Americans import a lot of oil and the lower the price of oil, the less the imports cost. This provides a rationale for the U.S. to try to keep the price of oil as low as possible. But will conquering Iraq lower the price of oil?

Certainly not. It will have the exact opposite effect. It will raise the price. For one thing, invasions run on gasoline and jet fuel, and increased demand means . . . well, unless the law of supply and demand was repealed when I wasn't looking, increased demand means higher prices. Furthermore, damage to Iraqi oil fields destroys oil and impedes the process of bringing it to market. For these reasons, the price of oil will increase, at least in the short term — as indeed, it has.

In the long term, the supply of oil depends on how strongly holders of oil properties are motivated to sell. And Saddam Hussein was just about the most strongly motivated seller of oil around. His dictatorship was cruel and not very popular, which meant two things:

1. He was strongly motivated to keep taxes low, in order to minimize domestic opposition. The Wall Street Journal reported that his government imposed only two taxes, one on inheritance and another on real estate. Iraqis suffered no income tax, no sales tax. The sale of oil paid for almost all government expenses.
2. He was strongly motivated to maximize his support by subsidizing all kinds of domestic efforts and providing a broad array of government benefits. This cost a lot of money — obtainable by selling oil.

Saddam was much more motivated to sell oil at low prices than was Kuwait's royal family. Saddam had more than 24 million mouths to feed, while the royal family of Kuwait had only about 860,000. The two countries have about the same amount of oil. Which had the incentive to sell it more quickly? It is in no way surprising that before the first Gulf War, Kuwait produced fewer than 2 billion barrels of oil per day, while Iraq produced an estimated 3.5 billion barrels per day. ("CIA World Factbook," iraqresearch.com)

As difficult to understand as this sort of analysis may be to conspiracy theorists, it is pretty obvious to businessmen and economists — to the kind of men, that is, who made up the two Bush administrations. So why did Bush I float the idea that Kuwait had to be wrested back from Iraq to ensure our supply of low-priced oil?

Almost certainly, Bush I's minions floated the idea in 1991 for the same reason that Bush II and his minions provided its equally spurious rationales for conquering Iraq in 2003: it was a public relations ploy to build support for a war. When it turned out that most Americans were aghast at the notion of going to war for cheaper oil, the Bush I administration dropped the rationale and took up others. Today this rationale survives mostly in the minds of conspiracy thinkers and nitwit leftists, who remember how little public support it gained for Bush I.

So why did Bush II decide to conquer Iraq? I won't try here to provide a definitive answer to that question, but I will offer a few suggestions.

Bush's personality and public record suggest two hypotheses. He is a politician who values his popularity and is determined to remain very popular. He is well aware that presidents who start and win wars generally gain considerable popularity. In addition, he is a moralist of the sort who hasn't inhabited the White House since Woodrow Wilson. He has described his anti-Muslim activities as a "crusade," and his behavior is entirely consistent with that of the moral crusader bent on destruction of his enemy. And he is the devoted son of a man who had invaded and defeated Saddam, but had withheld the coup de gr‰ce, thereby disgracing himself and becoming only the second incumbent president in the 20th century to fail to be re-elected. I suspect his motivation can be found in some combination of these reasons.

Public choice theory is a method of analyzing political decisions as if political leaders were ordinary human beings, subject to the same incentives and motives as are other people. As Nobel laureate James Buchanan has observed, it is politics without the romance.

Unfortunately, public choice theory is all too often limited to analyzing policy decisions about government regulation of the economy, taxes and the like. But political scientists will find that it is also an important way of seeing through the preposterous rationales offered for foreign policy and other non-economic political decisions. Americans who seek to understand the world they live in, and rise above the gullibility and mass hysteria that characterizes so many of their fellow citizens, must examine political decisions without romance. They must attend, not to the motives that they wish to find, but to motives, conscious or unconscious, that have some plausible connection with the benefits that the decision-makers seek.

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*	This theory has gained currency among some libertarians; see Stefan Herpel, "The Logic of War," Liberty, May 2003.

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