Super Baby:
"Hussein did invade a neighbor, and so we waged war with him, and then allowed him to stay in power, but required him to cooperate with us on many things with which he hasn't cooperated for twelve years. Is that behaving? If Hussein not cooperating with what allowed him to remain in power, shooting at planes, believing he had WMDs (which shows an intent in developing WMDs) isn't a threat, etc. then what is? It's not as if we attacked him willy nilly.Besides, Europe already betrayed the system when it went in to stop Milosevic not from invading others, but from ridding his own country of people he didn't want."
I agree that the United States should have given far more consideration to getting rid of Hussein the first time. That being said...
I don't believe for a moment that Saddam Hussein thought he still had weapons of mass destruction. My father is a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation journalist and was on the ground with UN inspectors in Iraq. He said that it was obvious that there was no on going production of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons as such production requires large facilities. UN inspectors said as much, but couldn't absolutely rule out the mobile-bioweapons-lab story.
Furthermore, if there was no production capacity, that left only the possibility of leftover, degraded stocks and equipment. Not exactly the kind of thing that could be used to kill lots of Americans. Of course, Saddam Hussein could have sent some schulb over to blow himself up in a shopping mall, but he didn't, so that's hardly reason enough for war.
There was no real threat. The rest of the world knew this. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, here in Canada, actually came out and said that the Bush administration had shown him "no proof" of Iraqi WMD -- prompting his famous "a proof is a proof" line. Did you hear about that in the States? How much coverage did it get? The head of government of a significant ally, with access to your intelligence, said the U.S. had no proof. Barely a ripple.
(Recently Canadian intel experts have come forward saying that they repeatedly asked the U.S. for intelligence, but American agencies never produced anything they considered credible.)
Attacking another country absent any substantive threat defeats the whole point of the incentive system. By defining "behaving yourself" as not waging war against others (which could be interpreted to include genocide against a definable group) the West gains leverage it couldn't otherwise have. If the West threatens war for lesser offenses, more countries than we are able handle will keep committing such offenses and the system will break down.
The threat of force must be predictable for force to be an effective deterrent. If countries think they'll be invade even if they don't pose a real, significant threat then we'll have chaos.
"If they depend on the U.S., how will withholding aid help them? If anything, it'll compel more people to hate the U.S. and commit more acts of terrorism."
It's a delicate balance, but I say strave the regime, help the people. This could be done by threatening the removal of aid to governments unless they begin to reform, or by cutting aid to governments and stipulating that if they want our money they'll have to let us deliver it directly to the people to improve our standing with common Arab men and women.
There will be some level of concessions Arab states are not willing to make even if we make it clear that we're serious. But once some reforms are in place there will be no going back, because the Arab people wouldn't allow their governments to take away their new rights. At that point we can begin demanding more reforms, and so on and so on.
Another interesting idea is the Responsibility to Protect project being spearheaded by the Canadian government. It seeks to establish a new international consensus on the minimum standard for "good behavior". It works much like the framework I've discussed above, but would layout specific, predictable criteria for international military intervention; new criteria, in addition to one country launching an unprovoked war against another, such as human rights violations and massacre.
Had the Bush administration sought to do this and then apply such criteria to Iraq, I'd have been supportive. But many in the administration have publicly rejected the need for any international consensus and insisted that the United States should proactively dismiss the value of multilateralism in favour of a new world order under which the U.S. -- joined by those who agree with it -- is able to dictate terms to the rest of world. Scary.
