Is US Intervention In Irq A Certainty?

13 Pages 3348 Words

ush administration officials are already making the case that the next phase in the war on terrorism should be an effort to overthrow the Iraqi regime—if necessary, with U.S. military force. On November 26, President Bush himself appeared to raise the ante on the Iraq debate, stating that Saddam would "find out" what was in store for him if he failed to heed international demands to allow inspectors into Iraq to look for weapons of mass destruction programs. While Bush's statement may have been nothing more than a reiteration of existing U.S. policy, it was interpreted by many as a conscious effort to remind the world of the dangers posed by Saddam and to begin to create a legal and political predicate to justify an eventual American attack against him. Many overthrow advocates argue that the United States should remove Saddam regardless of whether Iraq was involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks or not.
Absent compelling evidence of significant Iraqi involvement with the al Qaeda network or the events of September 11, the likely costs and risks of a commitment of American military forces to a regime-change campaign in Iraq would outweigh the benefits. A U.S. overthrow campaign would entail a large-scale military operation that the United States would probably have to undertake essentially alone; the increased risk of triggering terrorist attacks against American or allied targets; significant American casualties given the potential for intense urban combat and Iraqi use of chemical and biological agents; and the likely need for a long-term American military presence in Iraq to avoid regional destabilization. While these costs and risks are not so high as to rule out a possible overthrow policy under certain circumstances, they should be sobering to any advocate of sending U.S. troops to war to change the Iraqi regime. The central assumption behind this argument is that Saddam—unlike the religiously motivated Taliban/al Qaed...