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.