Editor’s note: Now that war has begun, The Daily Standard will be deviating from its normal schedule. For the next several days we’ll have morning and afternoon editions posted regularly and other reports posted throughout the day, so you’ll want to check back with us often.
With Matt Labash and Stephen F. Hayes on the ground in the Middle East, Christopher Caldwell in Europe, and Fred Barnes, William Kristol, David Brooks, and the rest of the team in Washington, The Daily Standard will have some of the best reporting and analysis around. Stay tuned.
–JVL
WHEN ASKED by a reporter what he feared most in politics, British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan famously replied, “Events, dear boy, events.” It is, after all, events which define times and settle arguments. This morning, events are upon us.
Debate about Iraq is now pointless. Those who have advocated war believed Saddam to be a paramount, unavoidable, and potentially deadly international threat. Those who opposed war believed that Saddam was either not dangerous, or was containable, or was less dangerous than the United States. One of these camps is right and one of them is wrong.
In many ways, the tenor and makeup of the Iraq debate resembled the fights during the Cold War. With the Cold War, it took 50 years before events revealed who was right and who was wrong. With Saddam, history has blazed along at a jaunty pace and we should find out the answers to nearly all our questions in the next several weeks.
The United Nations. What is the future of multilateralism? Well, it depends on whether the U.N. was right about not removing Saddam. If the war is fairly quick, with relatively few civilian casualties, it will be a blow to the United Nations–and particularly to France, Germany, and Russia. And if the war drags out and the death toll mounts, the countries that sought to avoid it will look prescient.
But even more important for the future of the U.N. is the immediate aftermath of the war. If the United States finds caches of chemical and biological weapons or if the Iraqi people are dancing in the streets or if mass graves of Saddam’s victims are discovered, the very future of the United Nations will be in doubt. To be wrong on strategic matters is one thing; to be wrong on the morality of the situation is another. If evidence demonstrates that Saddam is as bad as the allies believe him to be, and that the unilateral action of 35 nations saved the people of Iraq, then the U.N. may never again be consulted on issues of substance.
Conversely, if we learn that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction and that the people of Iraq preferred his rule to self-government, then future American presidents will find it difficult to buck the Security Council.
Democracy in the Middle East. This question will take a little longer to answer–perhaps another year or two. But one way or another, we will find out whether or not democracy can work in the presence of radical Islam. Thus far, it hasn’t worked in Kuwait. But in fairness to the Kuwaitis, they’ve had only democratic half-measures, not full-blown democracy. The Bush administration says it is committed to real democracy and guaranteed civil rights in Iraq and, by essentially starting from scratch, there could be no set of starting conditions more favorable to democracy in this part of the world.
If it works, if Iraq becomes a beacon of democracy, it will spell the eventual end of the Arabian monarchies. If it doesn’t, Francis Fukuyama will need to rethink his theory about the end of history and the West will need to reassess nearly all of its assumptions about the nature of man and liberty.
American empire. Antiwar protestors have chanted about this being a war for oil, about George W. Bush being akin to Hitler, about the United State’s oppression of Iraqis, and about the number of innocent civilians who will be killed by war.
If the U.S. appropriates Iraqi oil fields and kills millions of Iraqi civilians, the protestors will be proven correct and the world will have reason to worry about the United States. But if the opposite is true, if Iraqi oil profits are used to rebuild Iraq and few civilians are killed, the antiwar left will have two choices: either recant or admit to being literally anti-American.
That’s the one nice thing about events. They cut through the posturing and clarify the world.
Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.
