In depth post on American politics from me

[sabotabby]

The combination of this headline: "Obama may peg Clinton for top post" and this photo:



have put images in my mind. Bad images. Because I am 10.

P.S. If you don't know what that hand gesture is and/or what "pegging" is, please ask a grown-up.

Comments

Re: As an unapologetic remaining fan of the Clinton years

[sabotabby]

I disagree, but then, I think that the threat Saddam posed, even locally, has been vastly overrated and besides, hypotheticals are not enough to justify such a thing.

But then, I have the unpopular opinion that the U.S. is on extremely shaky ground demanding inspections from anyone, even bloodthirsty tin-pot dictators.

Re: As an unapologetic remaining fan of the Clinton years

[dubaiwalla.livejournal.com]

the threat Saddam posed, even locally, has been vastly overrated
The conventional threat he posed to his neighbors? Sure. But this was a man who attacked four different countries and used chemical weapons in war and against his own people. Keeping WMDs out of his hands was worth paying a high price for, because there was every chance he would want to use them.

I believe the real question is whether the price was too high, given that it involved so many deaths. The answer depends on your view of various hypothetical situations. I don't have a firm view myself, but I can at least make a convincing case it was the least-bad alternative. As a consequence, I can't use the term 'war criminal' to describe Clinton when speaking about his actions here.

Also, for the record, the inspections were conducted by the IAEA which had every right to be there under international law owing to Iraq's treaty obligations, including the peace deal it signed after Kuwait was liberated.

[one-serious-cat.livejournal.com]

I don't have a firm view myself, but I can at least make a convincing case it was the least-bad alternative.

By all means, do so. Because I haven't read one yet.

[dubaiwalla.livejournal.com]

There were two major alternatives to sanctions by the time Clinton took office.

One was to march to Baghdad and replace the government. Clinton may or may not have had worse results than Bush II, but the experience of 2003 until present suggests we would still have had large-scale death and destruction, in large part directly attributable to American forces. I'm going to guess this was not what you had in mind.

The other would be to drop the sanctions. Now, while I believe Iraq was too weak to threaten its neighbors using conventional weapons in 2003, the major reason for this was the sanctions. Saddam Hussein hadn't mellowed out, but he didn't have the air force or missiles to do serious damage. Had he been allowed to import anything he wanted, you can be damn sure he would have tried to sneak in weaponry. He spent the 80s importing dual-use equipment and using it in weapons programs. A more threatening Iraq could have almost halted the recovery of places like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from the Gulf War, and greatly slowed economic development elsewhere in the region.

As mentioned above, I think dropping the sanctions would have tempted other countries to cheat on WMD proliferation regimes. The worst-case scenario here would be eventual nuclear armageddon (not necessarily triggered by Iraq). Saddam might not have had any real links to Al Qaeda, but let us not lose sight of the fact that he did support terrorists (e.g. Abu Nidal), and may conceivably have tried to give them biological or chemical weapons if he thought he could do so without having an attack traced back to him.

Iraq would probably have tried to assert sovereignty in the Kurdish north of the country, leading to a loss of (relative) liberty for millions of people there who had carved out what was, in practice, a nearly independent state. (It became clear even before Clinton took office that Iraqis were in no position to spontaneously rise up against Saddam, and so the sanctions very clearly failed to cause a revolution, as policymakers hoped. But Baathist Iraq was extremely oppressive before and after 1990-1, and so for people living outside the Kurdish areas, levels of political freedom were probably not all that much different, even though economic conditions deteriorated sharply. Keep in mind also that some of their suffering was artificially induced by Saddam not distributing food and medicine equitably, or refusing to cooperate with inspectors.)

So instead the United States and the rest of the West chose sanctions, arguing that if Saddam really cared about his people, he would fulfill his treaty obligations in order to help them. He cared more about personal power, and a great many Iraqis paid the price. Was the United States complicit in this? Sure. But was there a silver bullet policy that could have prevented suffering without risking major long-term problems in the region and elsewhere? I don't see it.