Habitablezone minions and malcontents:

Pasted below is a fantastic ad hoc piece by a faculty member of my old department. Since I have a huge amount of respect for his works in many different fields, I was quite gratified to see him arguing many of the same points that I have been pushing here on the 'zone. I am witholding the citation because this was written in an informal setting and I should check with him before I set it out with his name on it...

I would not paint such a dire economic view of matters myself, at least not quite yet. We are more likely to 'raid the oil' of Iraq before we let ourselves go down in economic flames. And my favorite 'counter boogeymen' are Libya, Syria and Egypt- not N. Korea and Sudan. But he uses them well to make his point.

Ironically, he was responding to someone that was lobbing one-liners and snippy o'reilly-approved comebacks. Not, of course, that that would be tolerated around here, nor employed in the stead of a researched argument....

Begin piece:
Glib snippets aside, lets argue it through a little. The reasonableness of any
policy action, including war, depends
on the alternatives that are foregone, on what economists call the opportunity
costs. Hans Blik's testimony devastated
most of Colin Powell's and the President's claims about what weapons Hussein
has, in particular there is no evidence
of a continuing nuclear arms program in Iraq, and that's virtually impossible to
hide. But let's grant Blik's worst case: Hussein is hiding thousands of liters
of
anthrax (although given that anthrax is very easy to grow, there would be little
point in hiding so much; a liter would do),
and quantities of VX gas. Supposing that, what is the argument for invading
Iraq? It cannot be that Iraq is a military threat
to the United States because of the VX gas: the stuff is not easily transported,
and Hussein has no military delivery system that
would do more than plop it into Israel. If he does, that's Israel's problem, not
ours. You could argue that he could send anthrax to the U.S., and he could, but
so could scores of sources from many countries throughout the middle east,
africa and asia. Nothing special about Iraq in that regard.

In contrast, North Korea has an active fission bomb program which by many
reports is only months away from producing a pipeline of bombs. The country
has a continuous history of small scale invasions of South Korea, kidnappings in
Japan, and generally vicious behavior. Most importantly, it has tried to
sell every missile it has built, generally to middle eastern buyers. Since Iran
and China financed North Korea's atom bomb technology, Iran and the middle
east are likely buyers. North Korea may already have sold Iran the know-how for
practical bomb making when plutonium becomes available to Iran. By any
reasonable
measure North Korea is a far more immediate threat to the US and to Europe than
Hussein is or is likely to become anytime soon. And yet the
Bush administration is adamant in its refusal either to talk with North Korea or
to take military action, and has left almost 40,000 US troops as virtual
hostages
along the DMZ. Really bad, amazingly irrational priorities for any government
whose foremost obligation is to protect the US population and its treaty allies,
impeachably bad priorities in my book.

So the military threat argument doesn't wash. Well, what about the argument,
which Powell and Bush also give, that Hussein is an intolerably cruel dictator
and should be removed on those grounds? Doesn't wash either. North Korea, by any
measure of humane treatment, human rights, or plain cruelty, is substantially
worse. Sudan is arguably as bad. I would argue that Saudi Arabian and Iranian
treatment of half their populations--the female half--is worse. But even if you
held that Hussein's Iraq is bad enough that the differences don't amount to
much, you have to consider the expected costs and opportunity costs--would a war
improve the lives of Iraqis substantially, and would it improve their lives as
much as doing something else with the money that war costs would improve the
lives of others? Estimates of costs of the war and of reconstruction of Iraq run
to about 200 billion dollars. Depending on what is meant by "reconstruction" I
think that is wildly low, that 500 billion is to little too carry out the war
and put the median income of Iraq back to what it was before the Gulf war, or
say, comparably to Turkey's today (roughly 6,000 U.S per capita). What else
could you do for the world for 200 to 500 billion dollars? Complete the
modernization of the only Muslim democracy in the world, Turkey? Dramatically
reduce infant mortality and rates of childbirth throughout Africa? Mount a
worldwide campaign for western values delivered through health clinics and
schools? Any of these is likely to be more effective tin promoting human
welfare, both political and economic, than is invading and trying to rule Iraq.

So the moral imperative of getting rid of this particular dictator doesn't wash.
What else? Now the administration argues that if we don't invade Iraq, North
Korea and Iran will be encouraged in their evil and dangerous ways. But spot
bombing of nuclear facilities is cheap and effective. The Israelis did it to
Iraq, and if we cared to we could do it most any day to North Korea and to Iran,
more easily than we drove the Serbs out of Kosovo by bombing. You could argue
that North Korea would respond with attacks on South Korea and Japan, even at
the risk of nuclear response from the U.S--but if you think that North Korea is
that reckless, you have to be dreaming to think that our invasion of Iraq will
deter them from making and selling A bombs.

So that argument doesn't wash. Bush and Powell have argued that the UN is
obligated to invoke war against Iraq because Iraq has systematically ignored UN
resolutions. But that is a terrible argument for killing a lot of people, or for
squandering hundreds of billions of dollars that otherwise spent could save
lives and promote human liberty. The dignity of the UN isn't worth a single
human life in my book (do I sound too conservative--a middle of the road
fascist?) But if systematic violation of UN resolutions is grounds for
invasion, then the UN should clearly also authorize the invasion of Israel,
which has certainly violated a long standing UN resolution (252 I believe, but
I'm famously bad with numbers) requiring withdrawal to 1967 borders, and which
everyone believes has violated a UN resolution against the introduction of
nuclear weapons in the middle east.

So that argument doesn't wash. Finally there is the Bush administration argument
that overthrowing Iraq and establishing a democracy there will create a chain
reaction towards democracy in the middle east. But its not an argument, merely a
preposterous claim: no evidence is provided, no plausible mechanism given. Every
middle eastern expert I know of believes that actual democracy in the Arabian
penninsula, North Africa and the middle east would bring militant Islamicist
regimes to power, as it did in Algeria (until the military canceled the
elections), in Pakistan (same kind of stopper), in Northern Nigeria, and in
several local elections since 2001. The only exception is Iran, and a democratic
Iraq is not going to spontaneously produce a democratic Iran. I suppose there is
the further argument that the US has so committed itself to war that its
prestige would be terribly damaged by foregoing war. But that is hopelessly
lame--our international prestige is at the lowest point in my lifetime. I just
returned from three weeks in Europe, and I met one--one--person who was not
aghast at the recklessness of the United States. A bit of rationality and a few
apolgies for bullying and buying votes--American democracy, Bush style, in
action--would do a lot more for our international prestige.

Indeed, if we are going to war, we have done it in the worst possible way. It
would have been far better simply to ignore the UN as Clinton did in Kosovo,
than to have
produced tirades against our allies and to have engaged in blatantly corrupt
vote bullying and buying. We did so because Colin Powell is a serious dope. He
was a dope at the end of the Gulf War, refusing to finish Hussein off when we
had separated him from his entire army, and he was a dope in insisting on going
to the UN if he was bound on war in any case, and he was a dope if he was not
bound on war in any case when he went to the UN but became bound on war in the
course of losing the argument there.

Finally, there is the cost to us. By his procedure, Bush has made it a fact that
an invasion of Iraq is the first shot in a war with Islam, not just the nut case
Bin Laden islam, but all of islam, from Turkey to Indonesia. Now I am in favor
of undermining all of the non-western impulses in Islam, everything that hints
of Sharia, that denies western ideals (never mind actualities) of equality of
persons, humane treatment, secular government, western human rights. But that is
a conflict that will be won if at all by a war of ideas, delivered in concert
with good actions, with food and health care and schools and media. Not a chance
in the world it will be won with bombs and tanks. What will be won with bombs
and tanks is perpetual low level war, here and in Europe, and the decline of the
West's economic dominance. Measured by debt as a percentage of GNP, the United
States economic situation closing in on Brazil's. It is as if the Republicans
looked around the world and decided they wanted a United States that looks
economically and socially a lot more like Latin America. War with Iraq will
hasten the realization of that vision.

But these are just arguments for and against a possible policy. The predictions
are more important. We will in fact invade Iraq--that was settled long ago--and
drive out Hussein, and be beset with a host of internal problems in that
country, most of which we will ignore assuming the American media won't report
much on the miserable semi-equilibrium that results, just as it has largely
given up reporting on conditions of life in Afghanistan and Bosnia. The American
economy will suffer a shock from oil prices, and a bigger shock from huge
deficits. 35% of our debt is owned by foreigners, and they are pulling out fast,
and will continue to (compare foreign funds in US stock markets today as against
two years ago). Expect a life in which the poverty rate in the US goes up, the
US suffers effective inflation from a dollar worth a lot less--already nearly
15% less against European currency than shortly after the Euro was introduced, a
life in which social security vanishes, medicare vanishes, medicaid vanishes,
and there is a lot more misery on the streets. That is actually the announced
plan of some Republican congressional representatives, and they will get it. Not
just because of the war on Iraq of course, but because that war is part of a
piece to do away with the America that developed since World War II, the America
that was, by and large, some ugly stuff aside, a terrific country. Looks to me
as if we are about to lose it.