The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq [Hardcover]

 

 

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Kenneth Pollack, writing six months before the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, sets out a case legitimizing such a course of action. He makes it clear from the outset that there was no link between Iraq and al-Qa'eda and therefore his case is built on entirely different grounds. The current policy toward Iraq was established by the United Nations after the first Gulf War. It was one of containment and had two essential parts: weapons inspections and sanctions. For these to be effective, the cooperation of the United Nations and especially of Iraq's neighbours was necessary. And in the early 1990's everybody was on board and it seemed to be working.

It is important to stress that the purpose of the inspections was not to find weapons of mass destruction. It was to verify that Saddam had destroyed these weapons as he had claimed. How do we know he possessed weapons of mass destruction? Because he used them on his own people, the Kurds, as well as against the Iranians during his war with Iran. Regarding the former, by the time his campaign against the Kurds was over in 1989, some two hundred thousand Kurds had been killed and "huge swaths of Kurdistan had been scorched by chemical warfare" (p. 20).

Beginning in late 1994, evidence began to emerge that the U.N. inspectors were being deceived. The head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, Wafiq al-Samarra'i, fled Iraq and during extensive debriefings, told UNSCOM that despite what it had been led to believe, Iraq had developed VX nerve agent and loaded it onto missiles during the Gulf War for use if the coalition had marched on Baghdad (p. 71). It was learned that Iraq had a far more advanced and extensive biological warfare program than the inspectors knew.

Probably the most frightening aspect of Saddam's program of WMD was his intent, and progress toward, the acquisition of nuclear weapons. In August 1990, he had ordered a crash program to build a single nuclear weapon that could be placed in a missile warhead and used against Tel Aviv if his regime was at risk. Though he was not successful, U.N. inspectors believe that Iraq could have achieved a fully workable nuclear weapon in another year had the war not set back the program.

A recent defector who worked as a design engineer stated that Saddam had ordered the entire nuclear program reconstituted in August 1998, when he announced that he had ceased all cooperation with the U.N. inspectors. The U.S. intelligence community estimated that it would take Iraq five to ten years from the start of a crash program to enrich enough uranium to make one or more weapons. The German intelligence service estimated it at only three to six years. Thus if left to its own devices it would be only a matter of time before Saddam's regime could acquire nuclear weapons (p. 174).

By the late 1990's flagrant disregard of sanctions toward Iraq by its Arab neighbours and even by countries like China showed that the climate had changed (p. 216). Iraq was bringing in around $3 billion in illegal trade, and the international community had lost interest in enforcing U.N. resolutions. Saddam, sensing this, was emboldened and kicked out the inspectors in 1998. The policy of containment, then, clearly had failed.

What were the options? Covert action by CIA operatives (or by any other nation's operatives) had not met with success and was unlikely to do so in the future as that effort played to Saddam's strengths: layer upon layer of armed protection and a police state so extensive that Iraqis could have no confidence that anything they said would not be heard by the wrong ears. The so-called "Afghan approach" whereby very limited American and international troops assist indigenous armed rebels would also be doomed to failure, as Saddam was able to crush an uprising when he was at his weakest, immediately after the first Gulf War. The opposition, whether they were Kurds in the north or Shi'ites in the south, were not nearly as strong as the Northern Alliance was in opposition to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

So we were left with deterrence or full-scale invasion. Deterrence meant allowing the elements of containment to lapse and instead relying on the threat of American military action to prevent Iraq from making mischief in the Persian Gulf region. The core assumption of deterrence was that Saddam would make the same calculation as the Soviets had - that the risk of nuclear annihilation by the United States would be too great to risk any aggressive military moves beyond his borders. But Saddam's behaviour in the past could give no confidence that he would in fact behave this way. According to Pollack, "Saddam's decision making has been characterized by miscalculation, extreme risk taking, a total disregard for human life, a willingness to suffer tremendous damage in pursuit of his goals, and a terrifying willingness to interpret reality in fantastic ways to suit the needs of the moment" (p. 416).

Furthermore, deterrence would be a policy with terrible costs. It would mean condemning the Iraqi people to decades more terror and torture under Saddam's totalitarianism. Unlike containment, deterrence also would mean giving up our ability to protect the Kurds. Human Rights Watch argued that Saddam's Anfal campaign (1987-89) constituted genocide against the Kurds, with some 200,000 dead. Pollack quotes a U.N. representative who reported that the brutality of the Iraqi regime was "of an exceptionally grave character - so grave that it has few parallels in the years that have passed since the Second World War" (p. 123). Saddam was able to "create a pervasive climate of terror throughout the country, which is the linchpin of Iraqi totalitarianism."

His was a state that "employed arbitrary execution, imprisonment, and torture on a comprehensive and routine basis." Pollack has a long list of indescribably monstrous practices of which I will reluctantly relate just two. "This is a regime that will crush all of the bones in the feet of a two year old girl to force her mother to divulge her father's whereabouts". It is one "that will slowly lower its victims into huge vats of acid, either to break their will or simply as a means of execution" (p. 123). John Sweeney of the BBC said of being in Baghdad, "the fear is so omnipresent you could almost eat it. No one talks" (p. 122). The scale of Saddam's repression is such that over the last twenty years more than 200,000 people have disappeared into his prison system, never to be heard from again (p. 124).

Finally, those who said that "Bush is a maniac, an out of control cowboy" need to realize that the plan to overthrow Saddam did not originate with him. He inherited this plan from President Clinton, who, on December 19, 1998 announced that the policy of the U.S. government was now to replace Saddam Hussein's regime (p. 94). And one of the most vocal "hawks" in the Clinton administration who favored military action against Iraq was Vice-President Al Gore. What this tells us is that this was not a partisan decision but was made by both Democrat and Republican administrations. It took the events of 9/11 to galvanize the American people sufficiently that such a course of action was politically feasible.

What about the need for U.N. approval for invasion? Former President Carter, among others, made it clear that the moral legitimacy of this course depended on U.N. support. But this is dangerous moral reasoning. When morality is determined by counting noses, by community consensus, it is reduced to mere power. This would mean that the international court of opinion can never be wrong. What the former President should have been arguing was the merits of the case before him, not whether a bunch of other nations agree.

As I am writing this, five and one half years after the invasion actually occurred, I am well aware of how poorly it has unfolded. Certainly the logistics and execution of the invasion should have been carried out differently. But it is important to remember that the justification for the invasion itself is a separate issue, and as such, Pollack's 2002 analysis still has merit.

I wonder how all these bobbing heads feel now that Pollack's vision has been debunked. There are no weapons of mass destruction. Saddam was never a threat to the United States. No nuclear sales or development took place. If any of this were true, the Bush administration would be crawling over themselves to justify themselves to a doubting public. This book should stay in print just to prove how swindled a "democratic" society can be by their leaders, who clearly have their own personal, financial agenda at stake.

Many Americans do not know that the US has been in Iraq for over ten years. It started when a US diplomat told Saddam, the US had no interest in his disputes with Kuwait. The rest is history but the world has forgotton it. This book outlines the case as to why the US military is in Iraq today. No conspiracy theories here, just the consequences of using half-way measures in dealing with a dicatator. The book is easy to read and avoids a lot of the technical words and jargon you would find in other books about the Middle East. Good for parents or college student or anyone who wants to know why the US is in Iraq today.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Indeed, war is sometimes necessary
Concise, scholarly, and dispassionate, Pollack presents the definitive justifications for war in Iraq. Read more

Published on Jun 8 2004 by Kurt Pritz

5.0 out of 5 stars Scholarly and informative, even if partially incorrect
Baghdad has fallen, and no chemical weapons have been found. Why, then, would Kenneth Pollack's "The Threatening Storm" still be relevant? Read more

Published on Mar 7 2004 by Mark

3.0 out of 5 stars Partly Cloudy
To put this review in context I did not support the war in Iraq nor am I very fond of the current administration. Read more

Published on Mar 6 2004 by John G. Hilliard

2.0 out of 5 stars Pollack wrong despite "expertise"
Pollack has recently (early 2004) apologized for his error in judgment.
Review of March 2003 still stands: "Expertise" is not the same as "wisdom"... Read more

Published on Feb 11 2004 by L. F Sherman

1.0 out of 5 stars What Threatening Storm ?
What a wonderful view into the pathetic rationalizations that helped trigger the deaths of thousands of innocent women and children. Read more

Published on Feb 9 2004 by Paco

1.0 out of 5 stars let it go, people
The last time a book with such short-sighted logic influenced so many people, it was written in german. Read more

Published on Feb 6 2004

1.0 out of 5 stars he should never be allowed to be an "expert" again
Mr. Pollack is actually a bit more sympthathetic than the typical pundit who gets it all wrong time after time and yet is never taken to task for this, or suffers any adverse... Read more

Published on Feb 4 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars More Important than Ever for Justifying War
Do the people who limit the justification for war to WMD stockpiles make you wonder if the war was justified? Read this book - it will reassure you Saddam had to go. Read more

Published on Feb 2 2004 by Robert Herring

1.0 out of 5 stars Loud and wrong
One of the CIA's (and the world's) "leading experts on IRAQ", got just about everything wrong in his book. Read more

Published on Jan 27 2004 by James P. Holm

1.0 out of 5 stars Pollack takes it all back!
This book should be read in conjunction with Pollack's article in the Jan/Feb 2004 issue of The Atlantic Magazine where he said:
"When the United States confronts... Read more

Published on Jan 24 2004

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