A Threat to World Peace

Posted on February 14, 2003    Posted by John Scalzi      1 Comment

The European edition of Time magazine put up a poll on its Web site asking its readers which country in the world was the greatest danger to world peace: North Korea, Iraq or the United States. As of this second (8:53 am ET), 423,618 votes are in, and 85.6% of them say that it’s the US that’s the greatest danger — Iraq trails slightly at 7.8%, while North Korea gets 6.6% of the vote. It should be noted that this is one of those unscientific polls, which means that only people who choose to respond participate, so it’s not a random and statistically valid sample. But as this article from Time Europe goes on to show, even if you did run a statistically valid poll, you’d mostly likely get the same answer.

Well, and it’s true: Strictly speaking, America is the greatest threat to world peace right now. Neither the government of Iraq nor of North Korea has any desire to start a war, after all; both governments would vastly prefer to be left alone in peace to build massive palaces and fire up nuclear reactors and treat their people like bugs. Only the United States, of the three, is actively planning to attack anyone; barring a massive stroke on Saddam’s part, there seems to be very little that will keep the US military from tromping through the deserts of western Iraq whenever Bush gives the word. America’s government intends to wage war imminently; when one is at war, one is not at peace; therefore, the most imminent threat to world peace is the United States. This shouldn’t be in dispute.

What is in dispute is whether peace is genuinely the optimal state at this point in time. As I’ve mentioned before, and leaving aside the issue of North Korea, I’m pretty much of the opinion that Dubya’s fundamental reasons for wanting a war in Iraq right now are pretty bad. I believe he’s wanting a war for one part personal reasons (Saddam tried to have his daddy killed), another part personal reasons (to distract from the fact that his domestic programs frighten everyone who cannot buy their way out of trouble and/or believes that Jesus doesn’t want you to have any privacy from an authoritarian government), and yet a third part personal reasons (to hide the fact that his economic plan could have been no less coherently written by goats with crayons tied to their hooves).

But on the other hand Saddam’s ouster is more than a decade overdue, dating back to the first Gulf War, and while the interim peace in Iraq has served Saddam well, it has been of no real utility to anyone else. The people of Iraq have not been well served by peace; they’ve been stuck with a ruler whose squabbles with the UN over the years have kept them sick and starving, and whose own authoritarian rule has kept them afraid and in danger in their own country. The UN certainly hasn’t been well-served by the peace; the fact that Saddam jerked it around for years on inspections (which only resumed when the US rattled its sabers) dramatically undercut the body’s effectiveness and credibility.

The United States hasn’t been at all well-served by the peace, since its hard line on sanctions made it look like a big meanie (the whole “US starves children” thing) and because Saddam’s continued presence has given our current President a useful tool to keep attention away from his administration’s attempts to gouge large, meaty chunks out of the US Constitution and to provide the rich with a sort of economic land grab not seen since the 19th Century.

I’m not especially for a war; I’m not keen on getting our troops in harm’s direct path. But I’m also not at all for this peace either. I don’t see any reason to suffer Saddam in power any longer, as the costs of his personal peace are ruinous to everyone but him. “Peace” is not an absolute good, especially when all that can be said about it is that it is an absence of war. And this particular peace, in this particular place, needs to go.

It may be that the most effective way of doing that is a war, and that the result could be a better peace, one in which the Iraqi people don’t fear their government and have a better chance for prosperity, and the people of the United States can refocus on the damage that’s being done while their attention is being pulled somewhere else. That’s an omelet for which it’s worth breaking some eggs — hopefully more of Saddam’s eggs than our own.

If that’s what we have a chance to gain, I don’t mind if our country is a threat to world peace.