However dubious George W. Bush’s decision to go to war, the swift military victory of the United States and Britain over Saddam Hussein’s forces in Iraq is a good thing. A short war has meant fewer military casualties on both sides as well as fewer civilian deaths. The defeat of Saddam and destruction of the Baath Party is certain to improve the lives of Iraqis, a people who have lived under a vicious police state for thirty years. Saddam’s removal also promises to bring a measure of greater stability to the immediate region. Saddam spent much of the last two decades waging war against his neighbors while trying to build an arsenal that would make him master of the entire Middle East. Few of Saddam’s fellow Arabs are sorry to see him go. At this point, how the Arab world reacts to U.S. intervention depends on the nature and length of the U.S. occupation and whether a stable Iraqi democracy emerges. As Jean Bethke Elshtain notes (page 11), just-war concerns must continue to guide U.S. actions.

Few critics of the Bush administration’s decision to wage war against Iraq defended the legitimacy of Hussein’s regime. Fewer still thought the war would last long or pose any insuperable problems to the U.S. military. What opponents of unilateral U.S. action worried about were the consequences of an American victory and subsequent occupation of an Arab country. Can the United States govern an Arab nation of 24 million people, one riven by fierce ethnic and religious antagonisms and having a long history of political violence, without being seen as an imperial oppressor? Widespread looting and reports of revenge killings give some idea of the forces the war has unleashed. Of equal concern to critics was how "preventive" war, conducted in the absence of any imminent threat, would undermine the international system and the prospects for world stability and order. Is the Bush administration, as some of its more ideological spokesmen suggest, rewriting the rules of international conduct so that U.S. interests will trump all others? Will the victory in Iraq encourage or deter those who want "to use U.S. military supremacy as the basis for creating a global Pax Americana"? (See Andrew Bacevich, page 10.) Answers to these questions will become clearer as the administration’s plans for a postwar Iraq become known.

It is in George W. Bush’s own interests, of course, that the reconstruction and democratization of Iraq go well and as swiftly as possible. In this regard, however, the administration’s postwar record in Afghanistan is not encouraging. The United States has dramatically reduced aid to Afghanistan while allowing most of the country to fall back into the hands of competing warlords. While the world has been distracted by the run-up to the war in Iraq, the U.S. posture toward Afghanistan goes largely unremarked.

The presence of two hundred fifty thousand American soldiers in Iraq, and the skeptical scrutiny of the rest of the world, should make it harder for Bush to avoid accountability there. At the moment, it appears that a U.S. military administration will soon be put in place. Such a step is obviously necessary if food, water, and medical care are to be provided to the Iraqi people. Bush has said that he wants U.S. troops out of Iraq as soon as democratic institutions can be established. At the urging of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, he has agreed to give the UN "a vital role" in providing at least humanitarian assistance. He has also agreed to consult with a representative of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan about the makeup of the "interim authority" that will replace U.S. rule and provide the transition to Iraqi democracy. Any larger role for the UN is being resisted by the administration. At what point the UN should begin to play an important role in Iraq’s reconstruction is a legitimate point of political dispute. The United States would be foolish if it failed to take advantage of the UN’s expertise or rejected the legitimacy UN participation will bring.

The task ahead in Iraq is enormous. So far, Bush has done little to inform or educate the American people about the costs and the complications of establishing a major U.S. presence in the Middle East. More worrisome, if the threat of terrorism was the reason the United States went to war with Iraq, then the logic of the administration’s doctrine of preemption can easily be extended to Syria, Iran, and elsewhere. Having insisted that U.S. security and interests were threatened by the mere fact of Saddam’s regime, will Bush soon be warning of the threat posed by the Baathists in Damascus or the radical Islamists in Tehran? Iran is, after all, part of the "axis of evil." And this is a president who boasts that Saddam’s defeat has shown that he means what he says.

April 15, 2003