The conflict in Iraq: True definition of victory
Dr. Giacomo Gambino
Issue date: 3/27/03 Section: Op/Ed
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As I write, American armored columns are rolling through the Iraqi desert towards Baghdad. No one doubts that our military machine will triumph over the ill-equipped Iraqi army. Let us ask what such a victory will mean.
It will not mean a victory in the war on terrorism. Despite the Bush Administration's efforts to cast the invasion as a war of liberation, when Saddam Hussein's regime falls, U.S. troops will assume the role of an occupying army and as such will generate resentment, especially among those inclined toward extremism. Far from enhancing our security, a military victory may make us even more vulnerable to terrorism. Nor will it mean the affirmation of justice and the rule of law in the international order. President Bush's eagerness to "go it alone" against a country whose threat was neither immediate nor self-evident, has strained our capacity to build the kind of international institutions needed to contain terrorists and WMD.
What will a military victory mean? It will mean the triumph of a new and dangerous foreign policy. As stated in the National Security Doctrine published last September, the U.S. is moving away from a paradigm of international cooperation to one which aims to preserve U.S. military hegemony in the world haunted by the shadowy network of global terrorism. From now on the U.S. reserves itself the right to attack those countries deemed to be developing WMD or harboring terrorists. It reserves the right to determine whose sovereignty is to be respected and whose is not. And it reserves the right to divide the world into "good" and "evil." A military victory in Iraq will only confirm the President's messianic ambitions "to rid the world of evil" in order to "keep the world safe from terror."
A victory in Iraq will be a harbinger of neither justice nor peace, but rather of the continuation of an ill-defined, potentially interminable war on terrorism. Last week's opening salvos on Baghdad have now revealed the twin specters of our new age -- terrorism and the crusade to eradicate it at any cost.
It will not mean a victory in the war on terrorism. Despite the Bush Administration's efforts to cast the invasion as a war of liberation, when Saddam Hussein's regime falls, U.S. troops will assume the role of an occupying army and as such will generate resentment, especially among those inclined toward extremism. Far from enhancing our security, a military victory may make us even more vulnerable to terrorism. Nor will it mean the affirmation of justice and the rule of law in the international order. President Bush's eagerness to "go it alone" against a country whose threat was neither immediate nor self-evident, has strained our capacity to build the kind of international institutions needed to contain terrorists and WMD.
What will a military victory mean? It will mean the triumph of a new and dangerous foreign policy. As stated in the National Security Doctrine published last September, the U.S. is moving away from a paradigm of international cooperation to one which aims to preserve U.S. military hegemony in the world haunted by the shadowy network of global terrorism. From now on the U.S. reserves itself the right to attack those countries deemed to be developing WMD or harboring terrorists. It reserves the right to determine whose sovereignty is to be respected and whose is not. And it reserves the right to divide the world into "good" and "evil." A military victory in Iraq will only confirm the President's messianic ambitions "to rid the world of evil" in order to "keep the world safe from terror."
A victory in Iraq will be a harbinger of neither justice nor peace, but rather of the continuation of an ill-defined, potentially interminable war on terrorism. Last week's opening salvos on Baghdad have now revealed the twin specters of our new age -- terrorism and the crusade to eradicate it at any cost.