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from: Judith Shulevitz

To Bomb Or Not To Bomb?

Posted Tuesday, Nov. 17, 1998, at 2:05 PM ET

Dear Chris,

The lead story of the New York Times has the administration admitting that we'll probably have to bomb Iraq sooner or later, since Saddam Hussein is unlikely to comply with UNSCOM's demands for data on biological and chemical weapons. So what was the point of waiting? Did Clinton just give Hussein more time to make and stash weapons in his various palaces, or was calling off the bombing justified from a diplomatic point of view? Is today's claim--next time we're really going to bomb --no more than an effort to make this latest round of chest-thumping look like something other than the endless neurotic repetitions of a dysfunctional diplomacy?

From Robert Kagan's editorial in the Weekly Standard this week, my best guess is that you'd say we should have bombed--and not just bombed, but invaded and ousted Hussein. I agree, sort of--military intervention ought to result in more than just maintaining an untenable status quo, and I don't understand what the bombing was supposed to accomplish other than 1) get UNSCOM's Richard Butler back into Iraq. But then Hussein could just stonewall him some more. And 2) destroy the weapons Butler couldn't. But I thought bombing had turned out to be a fairly ineffective way to destroy weapons, particularly chemical and biological ones.

I'm glad we didn't bomb, though, not just because the act seemed shot through with unclear intentions or because I've been persuaded it would have been a bad idea for strategic reasons. (The mad but often canny Edward Luttwak makes the point in the Times Op-Ed page that once we'd received Hussein's letters backing down, bombing would have destroyed the tenuous international consensus that keeps sanctions in place--and sanctions, he says, are the only thing that keep Hussein from building up his arsenal.) The real reason I'm glad is moral. The Jewish New Year having recently come and gone, observant Jews have been rereading Genesis. A few weeks ago they reached the passage in which Abraham boldly bargains with God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. If there are 100 righteous men, will you save the city? Abraham asks. Yes, God says reluctantly. And if there are only 80 ? And on it goes, Abraham browbeating the Supreme Deity and the besieged Ruler of the Universe irritably agreeing to save the city even if there's only one righteous man.

The point here is that you're obliged to go to extremes to save innocent lives. If Saddam Hussein claims he will do what we want him to do, then we have to take him at his word, even if we think he's probably he's lying--because otherwise we'd be killing several thousand people, including civilians, and there's a chance it's for naught. If we were utterly certain he was lying, then we could say, well, we know he's building weapons that could kill many more people than we will, so we have to bomb . But we can't be utterly certain about any of that, so we have to try everything else we can first.

As long as we're talking divine revelation--what about that nasty little tic of Slate's of giving away the endings to books? Ah, here I must insert yet another teaser and promise it on the next entry, because I have to file this and rush off to the dentist, where once again I will ponder the relationship between the necessary evil (in my case dental, rather than military, intervention) and the urge to spare my poor innocent nerve endings.

Best,
Judith

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112131415
from: Judith Shulevitz

To Bomb Or Not To Bomb?

Posted Tuesday, Nov. 17, 1998, at 2:05 PM ET
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Christopher Caldwell is a senior writer at the Weekly Standard. Judith Shulevitz is the New York editor of Slate.
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