January
27, 2003, 9:00 a.m. Our
War
The Sam Spade
State of the Union.
By Hadley Arkes
olin Powell had put himself through one of the priciest ventures in adult
education as he was sandbagged last week by the French, and discovered
that his scheme of working through the United Nations was not only a path
leading nowhere, but a path leading off course. By working through the
U.N., the administration made the media and the public suggestible to
the notion that the problem hinged on the elusive matter of "inspections"
and disarmament. But the problem is the regime itself in Iraq and its
deep involvement in the network of terror aimed at the United States.
And by seeking a coalition, a multilateral project, Powell helped to build
the sentiment, now ascending in the polls, that we may not defend our
own country without the endorsement of the U.N., with its collection of
exotic despotisms, and so-called "allies" who have nursed an
hostility to us.
It is about time
then to deliver the Sam Spade version of the State of the Union Address
as it bears on Iraq. Or at least a variant on the version done by Humphrey
Bogart in The Maltese Falcon. It was not a gesture merely of machismo
when Bogart said to Mary Astor (in a paraphrase) that when your partner
is killed, you're expected to do something about. It doesn't matter, he
went on, whether you particularly like him or not; you're expected to
do something about it.
The variant for the
president would probably run in this way:
Have our friends
in Europe and the U.N. forgotten? It was our people who were assaulted
and killed on September 11. Our country, our people, remain distinctly
the target of terror, not only on our own soil, but wherever Americans
find themselves, in Kuwait, Yemen, or other points abroad. And when our
people are assaulted, we are the ones who are expected to do something
about it. The support of our friends would be much appreciated, but
the withdrawal of their support cannot diminish our responsibility
to act. We have given the United Nations the chance to respect its own
mandates, but the fact that certain states in Europe are backing away
— that they are reluctant to face up to the mandates they themselves
voted — cannot bar this country from what we ourselves need to do
to protect ourselves. And it cannot displace the authority of those officers
who bear a direct, elective responsibility to the people whose lives have
been endangered.
The American people
brought to the world something new under the sun in that Novus Ordo Seclorum
— that new order for the ages: What was altogether new in the world
was the claimed right of human beings to govern themselves, under a government
drawing its powers from "the consent of the governed." In that
vein, one of the most summoning lines in the American Revolution was that
our lives and freedoms simply could not be secure if the protection of
our people was placed in the hands of people who bore no elective responsibility
to the American people. Their interests would not always be ours. We could
not expect the British ruling class to sacrifice their own economic interests,
or even the lives of people closer to them, for the sake of defending
our interests and our lives. Have we forgotten — or even worse, overthrown
— the first principle that came out the American Revolution and the
grounds of our own freedom? But we are asked precisely now to forget when
we are asked to place the security of the country, not in the hands of
officers who are directly accountable to the American people, but in the
hands of governments that bear no responsibility for our safety or well-being.
The question can be submitted to a candid world: Can we count on the French
and the Germans to have our interests always at heart; to forego their
own business with Iraq or their connections in the Middle East, for the
sake of protecting the lives and interests of our people? What binds them
to our people in the way they are bound to the interests of their own?
And that speaks for the parliamentary republics in the United Nations.
It makes even less sense that officers elected in America should seek
permission to defend the American people from governments that do not
depend in the least, for their power, on the consent of their own people.
Voices have sprung up insisting that we go to war only with the consent
of the United Nations. And we may rightly ask, If there is a case for
defending the American people, why should that case be any less compelling
if it doesn't gain the assent of despotisms in Asia and the Middle East?
The case for bringing
down the regime in Iraq depends most critically on the linkage to September
11, and not merely on the adventures of Hans Blix and his crew, affecting
to do "inspections." As Professor Angelo Codevilla has noted,
the world knew that, in response to September 11, the American president
could launch a few missiles, in the way that President Clinton responded
to earlier attacks by launching missiles. The question though was whether
anything would change in the landscape of the Middle East; whether there
would be a serious price paid by any of the regimes that supplied and
harbored the terrorists, providing them with passports and legal cover.
After September 11, the world must know that it cannot be business as
usual. Someone will have to pay, or the lives of Americans would be treated
cheaply — treated as so many theatrical props — if the American
government did not convey this grave lesson: The people who conspired
and encouraged the targeting of Americans are in danger now of losing
their regimes and their lives.
And of those regimes,
none stands out, as a graver danger than the regime in Iraq. With a cadre
of engineers, that regime has undertaken work on nuclear weapons. It has
accumulated a vast store of biological weapons, which runs beyond any
plausible use confined to the battlefield. Such weapons are not accumulated
without purpose, and the purpose of these weapons is to intimidate. It
is to blackmail or threaten, especially with toxins deployed in the United
States, by willing agents, readily available. The same weapons, in another
state, may suggest an entirely different purpose, but with the regime
under Saddam Hussein, we simply cannot count on there being any moral
inhibitions, or legal restraints, on their use. If we are to counter that
"axis of evil," a strike at Iraq would be a strike at a regime
with a sophisticated economy and substantial resources. We would have
the chance then to remove the most formidable threat, but with the vastest
possibilities for redemption: A change in the regime in Iraq could set
off a chain of moves elsewhere in the region, unsettling the old order,
and bringing the current of democracy to the Islamic world. But at the
same time, it will deliver the most sobering lesson: that it is fatally
dangerous, for tyrants and regimes, to make a target of the American people.
So much might be
said, perhaps in words slightly more tempered. As for Colin Powell and
the U.N., the secretary might rework a line from Sidney Greenstreet in
the same movie: "By Gad, sir, I do like to talk to [men who like]
to talk. In order to be judicious one needs practice at it." Long
may he practice.
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olin Powell had put himself through one of the priciest ventures in adult
education as he was sandbagged last week by the French, and discovered
that his scheme of working through the United Nations was not only a path
leading nowhere, but a path leading off course. By working through the
U.N., the administration made the media and the public suggestible to
the notion that the problem hinged on the elusive matter of "inspections"
and disarmament. But the problem is the regime itself in Iraq and its
deep involvement in the network of terror aimed at the United States.
And by seeking a coalition, a multilateral project, Powell helped to build
the sentiment, now ascending in the polls, that we may not defend our
own country without the endorsement of the U.N., with its collection of
exotic despotisms, and so-called "allies" who have nursed an
hostility to us.
