WMD Apathy
Anyone who was sentient in early February this year remembers Colin Powell’s address to the United Nations. He was there to convince the Security Council that force should be used to disarm Iraq. As he stated: “My second purpose today is to provide you with additional information, to share with you what the United States knows about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.” The presentation went on at length with a nice slideshow and cool charts. His fundamental point was this: the United States knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, and we (the United Nations) should use force to make sure they are gotten rid of.
It bothers me that few people seem to care that we haven’t found any such weapons in Iraq (except for maybe culturepimp, check out this post). The LA Times (registration required) has an article with a few Gallup numbers showing that people don’t mind that WMD haven’t been found. After all, Saddam was a bad guy. It’s good he’s gone — whatever the reason. Here’s some of the article:
The controversy has not inspired much public backlash against the war. In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released last week, 56% said they believed the war was justified even if conclusive evidence of weapons of mass destruction is not found. According to the survey, 23% said it would be justified only if such weapons were found and 18% said they did not believe the war was justified at all.
Several pollsters have cited two principal reasons that most Americans are showing little inclination to second-guess the war.
GOP pollster David Winston noted that many Americans supported the war not only because of the claims about weapons of mass destruction, but because they were convinced that Hussein loomed as a broader threat to U.S. security and stability in the Middle East.
Second, the coalition’s relatively easy victory has dampened the instinct to look back, the pollsters said.
But wait a minute! We should all take a look back. If you recall, the existence of WMD by itself wasn’t enough to justify an invasion of Iraq. The United States invented a new doctrine of “preemptive war” to bootstrap the existence of WMD into a reason to invade Iraq. Under this doctrine, the United States can preemptively attack another nation to defend itself from a future threat posed by that nation. We had a hard time satisfying that standard even if Iraq did have WMD (how could Iraq’s WMD harm any of the 50 United States?). Even with WMD there was a very shaky basis under International law for our actions. Without WMD George Bush could be a war criminal.
And by the way, are chemical or biological weapons really WMD?
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