The Greens: an apology

My favourable remarks about the Green Party’s resort to red-baiting may have led some to conclude that I am resiling from my previous attributions of lunacy to that party’s ideas. To redress the balance, I am pleased to record the remarks of the Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas, at an anti-war rally a few weeks ago:

We were told this war was being fought to disarm Saddam of his Weapons on Mass Destruction and to enhance global security. We know now the WMDs never existed and, as last week's tragic bombs in Madrid show, the world is certainly no safer as a result of the war.

I’m accustomed to the morally corrosive process by which anti-war campaigners not only dispute the compelling strategic rationale for overthrowing Saddam Hussein but also (more slyly) downplay the horrors of his regime. (A typical example of the latter tendency is provided by – of course – John Pilger: “No one disputes the grim, totalitarian nature of the regime; but Saddam Hussein was careful to use the oil wealth to create a modern secular society and a large and prosperous middle class. Iraq was the only Arab country with a 90 per cent clean water supply and with free education. All this was smashed by the Anglo-American embargo.”) But it is surely a novel twist to such apologetics to claim that Saddam’s WMDs never – never – existed. That will come as news in Halabja, among other places, where in 1988 a chemical attack killed 5000 people within a matter of hours. (If you can face pictures of the scene, go to this page on the web site of the US State Department.)

Dr Lucas presumably intended her assertion as a rhetorical flourish rather than a empirical claim of literal exactness, but it does indicate a revealing uninterest in, even heedlessness of, the victims of an inhuman regime. We leftist warmongers have been pointing out for a long time that the anti-war campaigners operate in defiance of progressive and liberal principles, and it’s – well – altogether a bit rum that Dr Lucas should now demonstrate our point for us.

Let’s go through this again. Our side was right to invade Iraq, and to do so on the issue of WMDs. We know now that Saddam did not possess stockpiles of WMDs, but we also know that he was attempting to procure a WMD capability from outside the country, and that he had documented links with international terrorism. Moreover, in refusing to adhere to successive UN Security Council Resolutions as he was required to do under the terms of the 1991 cease-fire agreement that concluded the first Gulf War, Saddam was nonetheless using the threat of WMDs as a diplomatic tool against his enemies both within Iraq and among its neighbours. As William Shawcross pointed out in The Observer in February in February last year:

Saddam's obsession with his WMD has deep roots at home as well as abroad. First, he sees the threat of such weapons as a means of internal control over the 60 per cent of Iraqis who are Shia. The use of chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1988 taught the Shia the dangers of revolt. In 1999 a Shia revolt in the town of Najaf was crushed by Saddam's security forces accompanied by troops in white uniforms wearing gas masks. People were terrified that Saddam was about to gas them - with the weapons that Saddam denies having and for which the UN is still vainly searching. The Shia have been mostly cowed since.

It is important, and immeasurably beneficial, to our security that Saddam is unable now to use that uncertainty as a means of coercion. It is important too that we have indicated to other belligerent and malign states that the western democracies will not grant them the benefit of the doubt. We are, in short – exactly contrary to Caroline Lucas’s claims – a great deal safer in the West as a result of having overthrown Baathist totalitarianism.

Indeed, it’s unfortunate from the point of view of Dr Lucas’s claim that her speech preceded by only a few days an interesting news story that received inadequate attention. The BBC reported:

US government figures suggest that terrorist attacks have fallen to the lowest level for more than 30 years. The annual report records a slight fall in the number of international attacks last year and a dramatic decrease in the number of victims. The report says that less than half the number of people lost their lives in such attacks last year compared with the year before.

These figures exclude most of the deaths in Iraq, which do not fit the report’s definition of terrorism, but they provide nonetheless a useful criterion for assessing the outcome of Green Party deliberations. Messily, with setbacks and moral compromises and the enduring risk that if our enemies find the opportunity they will do something truly terrible to our citizens, we are defending ourselves. The strategy adopted by the US and British governments is right and far-sighted in countering threats posed by forces as nihilistic and destructive as any faced by western civilisation in the past century. War against Saddam Hussein has been an essential part of that campaign. Its successful prosecution has deprived terrorist fractions of patronage and materiel, and it has warned Arab leaders to crack down on terrorism rather than indulge it. On the question of whether we continue to pursue this policy lies the future of western civilisation.

UPDATE: The apology, unfortunately, should be from me. My inferences from the BBC report were unjustified, as it is now (10 June) clear that the report relied on flawed data that undercounted the number of terrorist incidents and fatalities. I was certainly remiss in not exercising greater scepticism of its findings and in erecting my case upon it.

Comments

[David Duff]

Three points, if I may.

First, apropos Pilger's eulogy on Saddam's 'progressive' social policy, yes, yes, but did he make the trains run on time?

Second, I mailed you privately some time ago to suggest that you might have some thoughts on the subject of interrogation/torture policy in the age of the terrorist. You work so hard on this blog that I hate to prevail on you, but given recent headlines, now might be a good time to start a debate.

Third, I love this blog, not least because it provides me with an education - I had never heard of the verb 'resile' until today. Thanks.

[Matthew]

"US government figures suggest that terrorist attacks have fallen to the lowest level for more than 30 years."

Indeed on this measure the rate peaked in the mid 1980s and is now only a third of the annual rate it was then. Even in 2001 it was lower than the previous year.

[Oliver Kamm]

I ought to have given a link: the State Department survey is here.

As Matthew says, the number of attacks in 2001 fell compared with the previous year, though of course the number of victims was substantially higher than in 2000. The particular statistic I was thinking of in the post is the number of US citizen casualties of terrorism. These amounted to 2689 deaths and 90 wounded in 2001, 27 deaths and 35 wounded in 2002, and 35 deaths and 17 wounded in 2003. The salient point is something that no politician can say, owing to the inevitable charge of complacency that would follow, and the risk that something dreadful might in principle happen unexpectedly as it did in 2001. But while al-Qaeda and its offshoots have committed brutal murders against 'soft' targets - the Bali nightclub; the Madrid commuter trains; the monstrous and sickening decapitation of an American civilian in Iraq - they have not succeeded in mounting any further spectacular assault against the US.

[Daniel in Medford]

Given an opportunity, I'd like to offer a somewhat different response to Dr. Lucas (and those who believe her):

Yes, this war WAS fought, as you say, to disarm Saddam of WMD. More precisely, the intent was to make sure he would never be able to threaten WMD attack again, nor assist others in doing so.

This we have done. Saddam will likely never threaten anyone again... and we have attained one of our primary goals: no WMD in Iraq. (Did Saddam help us in that goal, by not having any WMD to begin with? That's still highly debatable... but if he did, all the better.) Further, the war has resulted in Libya destroying its WMD as well.

Bottom line: before the war, we knew nothing about the state of WMD in either Iraq or Libya, and had reason to fear both. Now we know that neither will threaten anyone with WMD ever again. That certainly seems like progress to me.

respectfully,
Daniel in Medford

[Chris Lightfoot]

It's entertaining that the "Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism" doesn't define any of the violence in Iraq as terrorism, given that we are frequently told that US and British troops are fighting "terrorism" in Iraq and that those who attack them are "terrorists".

"These figures [provide] a useful criterion for assessing the outcome of Green Party deliberations. Messily, with setbacks and moral compromises and the enduring risk that if our enemies find the opportunity they will do something truly terrible to our citizens, we are defending ourselves."

I'm not really sure what you claim is here. Is it that the fall in the number of US casualties of terrorism is the consequence of the invasion of Iraq? If so, can you demonstrate this by comparison between the changes in the figures for US casualties and those for the casualties of other nations?

[Oliver Kamm]

Well, the distinction is between violence against civilians and violence against military targets. You can hold that that's a useful distinction to draw, even while regarding, e.g., the attack on the USS Cole as terrorism.

I'm making no claim about a causal relation between our liberation of Iraq and a decline in US civilian casualties of terrorism; I'm pointing out that Dr Lucas's conclusion that we are 'certainly' no safer as a result of our defence policies is not generated by the data.

I believe we are safer in the long run, for reasons I've argued, and I applaud the decision to invade Iraq on grounds of national security, but there is no certainty to be had on such matters. All that's open to us is the certainty that we shall be targeted whether or not we fight back.

[Chris Lightfoot]

The distinction is OK; it's a fairly common one not unreasonable (I'm not sure where I'd stand on the question of attacks on off-duty military personnel, which are terrorism in the report's definition; and attacks on on-duty personnel, which aren't, but that's very much a side issue). What surprised me was that it is commonplace for those who are attacking coalition forces in Iraq to be referred to as "terrorists", for instance in this Goerge Bush press release, and that the "Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism" isn't following the script.

The data from the report aren't very useful for looking at the question of whether we're safer or not now. The terrorist threat against western populations has been concentrated in a few, large attacks in New York, Bali, Riyadh, Casablanca, Istanbul and Madrid. (Judging by the level of organisation involved, rather than a threshold of casualties.) Looking at aggregate information about smaller attacks is not likely to help in considering the question of whether these big atrocities are becoming more or less common.

[Johnny]

I don't think ignoring UN resolutions should be brought up as justification for invading Iraq. Otherwise you would also have to regard favorably measures taken against Israel, which is probably the nation flouting the most UN resolutions.

The UN is a morally bankrupt body whose sole function seems to be giving murderous Third World dictatorships a podium from which to voice their hypocritical diatribes.

[dsquared]

Oliver, there seem to be a few big problems of clear expression here. Dr Lucas makes a mistake in referring to "the WMDs" rather than "the WMDs which we believed existed as part of our rationale for war".

But you're not exactly free of fault here yourself. This passage:

We know now that Saddam did not possess stockpiles of WMDs, but we also know that he was attempting to procure a WMD capability from outside the country, and that he had documented links with international terrorism

Would be better redrafted as:

We know now that Saddam did not possess stockpiles of WMDs, but we also know that he was at a very early stage in attempting to procure a WMD capability from outside the country(avoids implication that this was a material or immediate threat), and that he had documented links with international terrorism in Palestine (avoids potential implication that links were with al-Qaeda).

Happy to help. I also agree with Johnny above that if we started taking UN resolutions seriously we would end up doing all sorts of bizarre things.

[Chris Lightfoot]

I should put in another plea here for avoidance of the use of the term "weapons of mass destruction". If you mean "chemical weapons", say that. If you mean "biological weapons", say that. If you mean "nuclear weapons", say that. If you don't know which of those you mean, you're not in a position to be talking about them anyway.

(There's also a problem with the etymology and ideology behind the term, but this is probably not the place to develop that.)

[Oliver Kamm]

Dan - Thanks for your help, but unfortunately your redraft has introduced a material inaccuracy where none previously existed. The Kurdistan Workers' Party and Mujahedin-e Khalq are not Palestinian groups.

I'm glad to accept your other drafting suggestion - my preferred formulation when writing about the war, which is William Shawcross's, was that the threat from Saddam was not imminent but was inevitable. For reasons I've argued previously, it strengthened the case for war that his threat was not imminent.

Clearly Dr Lucas was not literally claiming that Saddam never possessed the weapons that he launched on Halabja. She just didn't think of them when she made her statement. That's my point about the anti-war campaigners: they do not show a moral consistency in their proclaimed pacific principles.

Chris - I don't follow your point here. Why should one not talk about a weapons capability that is opaque? The allies believed before the war that Saddam had chemical and biological capabilities, and that he was at an early stage of resuming his search for a nuclear capability (for which he lacked fissile material). Our side lacked certainty on these points because Saddam didn't provide the accounting that he was required to do by UNSC resolution. We now are certain on these points, and it appears that our intelligence on points 1 and 2 was erroneous. It is my case that it's an overwhelmingly good thing that we have that certainty, as we would not if we had left him in power to use his threat of WMD - or, if you prefer, chemical and biological weapons - to exercise coercive diplomacy and internal repression.

[Chris Lightfoot]

It's perfectly reasonable to talk in terms of a "capability that is opaque", i.e. "weapons we aren't know about". But using the term "weapons of mass destruction" implies that weapons "of mass destruction" form a meaningful category of weapons, all of which share some or other common feature. (Elsewhere you speak of "weapons of genocide", by which I think you mean the same thing; though perhaps you mean "weapons which can/have been used for genocide", so that you are including machetes, firearms, conventional bombs, etc. etc., in which case the category includes virtually all weapons and therefore isn't much use.) The problem is that chemical, biological and nuclear weapons don't really share any very useful common features. Their destructiveness is not really comparable -- in particular between chemical and biological, and nuclear weapons; nor is their ease of deployment, difficulty of manufacture, cost, legal status, military effectiveness, tactical usefulness, symbolic value, or almost any other interesting attribute. (This is, by the way, obvious from the fact that almost all of the nuclear powers have abandoned their germ weapons and poison gases. They're just not very useful when you have the bomb.)

Happily there is an easy way out of this quandary. Just name the weapons themselves. We knew that in the 1980s Iraq used chemical weapons, developed -- but was not able to deploy -- biological weapons, and took steps towards developing nuclear weapons. We alleged -- if you read closely enough -- that in 2002 Iraq had developed new chemical weapons, and might be taking steps towards the development of biological and nuclear weapons. Lumping this all under "weapons of mass destruction" hides all the details, which are important; and it makes Iraq sound much more threatening than it actually was.

This is the point of the term. It was used by the Pentagon in the early 1990s to justify a change in US nuclear policy. Up to that point, US policy had been never to strike first with nuclear weapons. But planners believed -- correctly, presumably -- that a régime with chemical weapons might be deterred from using them by the threat of a nuclear attack. So they stuck chemical and biological weapons -- not really comparable -- with nukes into a category of "weapons of mass destruction" and said that the US would never "strike first with weapons of mass destruction". But the category is completely artificial. They could (for instance) have added long-range missiles, had they been as concerned about those as the later 1990s would suggest was prudent, or indeed anything else which they thought was a security threat. But membership of the category doesn't convey any non-trivial new information about the weapons.

Avoiding using the term doesn't mean avoidingg the use of arguments about Iraqi weapons development and the threat it did or didn't pose, simply that such arguments be made with greater precision. In many cases this would be a welcome improvement.

(It's worth saying that the same kinds of arguments can be made about much of the anti-war language too, but I'm sure we can all find our own examples.)

[GK]

It is a simple statement of fact: Iraq has never - never - had the capability to produce the WMD which were given as the reason for going to war. He did have some WMD, but not the type claimed by Britain and America (specifically, he's never had any WMDs that could threaten our national interests). The notion that he was attempting to procure WMD from external sources is similarly ridiculous - he wanted to procure such weapons

There were compelling reasons for liberating Iraq. The myth of WMD was not amongst them. Iraq had no capability to either develop or import WMD. Over 90% of its original stockpiles had been destroyed in the frankly very effective series of inspections up to 1998 - his stockpiles would have degraded beyond usability by 2001 anyway. Anybody who cared to acquaint themselves with the facts before the war could have told you the WMD argument was sheer invention. A number of them did try.

Our side was right to invade Iraq, but not on the issue of WMD. The only reasons for invading Iraq were humanitarianism and geopolitical brinksmanship. The WMD issue was pure spin.