George Packer
Stop telling me you told me so, you fucking anti-war assholes!
No, Tristero, how dare you! Packer’s too brilliant and thoughtful an intellectual to be that crude, isn’t he? I mean, like he writes for The New Yorker and everything.
Ok, ok, I’m sorry, really, I am. But… well, just for the heck of it, let’s “engage” our eloquent, weighty Mr. P., since he deems such engagement the sign of a first-rate mind and yeah, I really, really care what his opinion of my mental ability is. Packer types:
Before the invasion, there was the possibility of a world without Saddam Hussein and of an Iraq that no longer threatened endless violence in its volatile region — which was attractive. There was also the certainty of death and destruction in a new war, and the many reasons to doubt that this administration was up to the job — which was frightening. [Italics added]
In fact, Packer is right, but he doesn’t know it. There was indeed the possibility he mentions, by following the revised sanctions regime that Lopez and Cortright discussed in an all-but-totally-ignored article in Foreign Affairs in July/August, 2004.(The link is to a “liberated” copy.):
The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has prompted much handwringing over the problems with prewar intelligence. Too little attention has been paid, however, to the flip slide of the picture: that the much-maligned UN-enforced sanctions regime actually worked. Contrary to what critics have said, we now know that containment helped destroy Saddam Hussein’s war machine and his capacity to produce weapons.
[snip]
The United Nations sanctions that began in August 1990 were the longest running, most comprehensive, and most controversial in the history of the world body. Most analysts argued prior to the Iraq war — and, in many cases, continue to argue — that sanctions were a failure. In reality, however, the system of containment that sanctions cemented did much to erode Iraqi military capabilities. Sanctions compelled Iraq to accept inspections and monitoring and won concessions from Baghdad on political issues such as the border dispute with Kuwait. They also drastically reduced the revenue available to Saddam, prevented the rebuilding of Iraqi defenses after the Persian Gulf War, and blocked the import of vital materials and technologies for producing WMD.
The unique synergy of sanctions and inspections thus eroded Iraq’s weapons programs and constrained its military capabilities. The renewed UN resolve demonstrated by the Security Council’s approval of a “smart” sanctions package in May 2002 showed that the system could continue to contain and deter Saddam.
That’s right, boys and girls, just around the time the fixing of the intelligence was ramping up – spring of 2002 – the UN had refined the sanctions regime.
Dismissed by hawks as weak and ineffective and reviled by the left for its humanitarian costs, the sanctions regime has had few defenders. The evidence now shows, however, that sanctions forced Baghdad to comply with the inspections and disarmament process and prevented Iraqi rearmament by blocking critical imports. And although many critics of sanctions have asserted that the system was beginning to break down, the “smart” sanctions reform of 2001 and 2002 in fact laid the foundation for a technically feasible and politically sustainable long-term embargo that furthered U.S. strategic and political goals.
The story of the nearly thirteen years of UN sanctions on Iraq is long and tortuous.
[I’ve snipped a long and torturous history of those sanctions. Actually, it’s interesting, but here’s the conclusion:]
Of course, no sanctions regime can be 100 percent effective; smuggling and black marketeering inevitably develop. Baghdad labored mightily to evade sanctions, mounting elaborate oil-smuggling and kickback schemes to siphon hard currency out of the oil-for-food program. Investigations by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) and The Wall Street Journal put Iraq’s illicit earnings at $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion a year. An updated GAO report estimated that illegal Iraqi revenues from 1997 through 2002 amounted to $10.1 billion, about 15 percent of total oil-for-food revenues during that period.
Still, the sanctions worked remarkably well in Iraq — far better than any past sanctions effort — and only a fraction of total oil revenue ever reached the Iraqi government.
[Snip]
In the run-up to war [in 2003], some in Washington acknowledged the impact of inspections and sanctions but believed that sanctions would soon collapse. Kenneth Pollack reiterated this argument in a January 2004 article in The Atlantic Monthly, insisting that war was necessary because “containment would not have lasted much longer” and Saddam “would eventually have reconstituted his WMD programs.” Support for sanctions did indeed begin to unravel in the late 1990s. But beginning in 2001, the Bush administration launched a major diplomatic initiative that succeeded in reforming sanctions and restoring international resolve behind a more focused embargo on weapons and weapons-related imports.
One major reason for this renewed consensus was the creation of a new “smart” sanctions regime. The goal of “smart” sanctions was to focus the system more narrowly, blocking weapons and military supplies without preventing civilian trade. This would enable the rehabilitation of Iraq’s economy without allowing rearmament or a military build-up by Saddam. Secretary of State Colin Powell launched a concerted diplomatic effort to build support for reformulating sanctions, and, in the negotiations over the proposed plan, agreed to release holds that the United States had placed on oil-for-food contracts, enabling civilian trade contracts to flow to Russia, China, and France. Restrictions on civilian imports were lifted while a strict arms embargo remained in place, and a new system was created for monitoring potential dual-use items. As the purpose of sanctions narrowed to preventing weapons imports without blocking civilian trade, international support for them increased considerably: “smart” sanctions removed the controversial humanitarian issue from the debate, focusing coercive pressure in a way that everyone could agree on. The divisions within the Security Council that had surfaced in the late 1990s gave way to a new consensus in 2002. The pieces were in place for a long-term military containment system. The new sanctions resolution restored political consensus in the Security Council and created an arms-denial system that could have been sustained indefinitely.
In the months prior to the invasion, as Bush administration officials threatened military action and dismissed sanctions as useless, additional suggestions were offered to strengthen the sanctions system. Morton Halperin, former director of policy planning at the State Department, recommended a “containment plus” policy during July 2002 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The goal of such a system, Halperin said, “would be to tighten the economic embargo of material that would assist Iraq in its weapons of mass destruction and other military programs as well as reducing Iraq’s receipt of hard currency outside the un sanctions regime.”
Additional measures could have further refined and strengthened the sanctions regime. These could have included provisions to establish sanctions assistance missions and install detection devices on Iraq’s borders to monitor the flow of goods across major commercial crossings; to eliminate kickbacks by preventing unscrupulous firms from marketing Iraqi oil and mandating public audits of all Iraqi oil purchases; and to control or shut down the reopened Syria-Iraq pipeline. This last option, especially, was an obvious, feasible step that would have immediately reduced the flow of hard currency to Baghdad. The other measures would have taken more time and diplomatic capital, but the United States had enormous leverage, precisely because it threatened military attack, and it could have used its clout to tighten the noose. Syria and other neighboring states, for example, could have been persuaded to cooperate in containing Iraq in exchange for improved diplomatic relations with Washington. This would have solidified long-term containment and laid the foundation for improved political relations in the region. As with other nonmilitary options for achieving U.S. aims, however, such proposals to enhance containment were cast aside and ignored.
The adoption of “smart” sanctions in Iraq was a diplomatic triumph for the Bush administration. It was followed a few months later by Iraq’s acceptance of renewed inspections and Security Council approval of a tougher monitoring regime in Resolution 1441. Indeed, the Bush administration spent its first two years methodically and effectively rebuilding an international consensus behind containment. By the fall of 2002, it had constructed the core elements of an effective long-term containment system — only to discard this achievement in favor of war. [Emphasis added]
In short, if Lopez and Cortright are correct, there was a very good chance everything Packer hoped to achieve could have been achieved without war. I have yet to see a detailed refutation of Lopez and Cortright’s assertions or facts.* Packer doesn’t even bother to mention the sanctions in his op-ed.
That’s right, despite all his hoohah about keeping an open mind (see below), Packer doesn’t even consider the sanctions worthy of mention. Packer writes:
In the winter of 2003, what you thought about the war mattered less to me than how you thought about it. The ability to function meant honest engagement with the full range of opposing ideas; it meant facing rather than avoiding the other position’s best arguments. In those tense months, the mark of second-rate minds was absolute certainty one way or the other.
Among those who were absolutely certain the war was doomed to failure were Ted Sorenson, Arthur Schlesinger, Richard Clarke, John Le Carre, Harold Pinter, the CEIP, Sy Hersh, and many, many others. Second-rate losers, the lot of ’em.
“The war is not an argument to be won or lost; it’s a tragedy,” Packer types as the final zinger to his op-ed. It sure sounds beautiful and thoughtful, it makes me want to weep. Oh, the humanity! But as far as I can tell, it doesn’t really mean a goddamm thing. Well, actually it does. In fact, the meaning’s crystal clear:
Stop telling me you told me so, you fucking anti-war assholes!
*[UPDATE: Reader JS sent a link that strongly criticized the “smart sanctions” discussed above, as a cynical hoax. It was written by Joy Gordon, who has written extensively on the sanctions (a book is to be published), and the Oil for Food program. JS also referenced another Gordon article about the numerous problems with sanctions. Both were published before the Lopez and Cortright article. JS concludes her letter:
“In short, Lopez and Cortright are not right about smart sanctions.
‘What we should be saying is that the Inspection regime worked. The UN administration (monitoring on the ground in Iraq) worked. But the behavior of the US and the UK at the New York end was inexcusable and unnecessary. And deadly.”]