Preemptive strike benefits greater good

One nation’s leader, looking at intelligence reports
indicating that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is developing nuclear
weapons, ponders his nation’s predicament.

Iraq has been hostile toward his people in the past, but years
have passed in an uneasy armistice since the last conflict. To
strike against Hussein in order to prevent him from deploying
nuclear weapons would require a preemptive strike with no immediate
provocation, an action that is sure to draw international
condemnation. Moreover, an election is three weeks away, and the
leader fears that his domestic opponents will accuse him of trying
to manipulate the results through national military action.

On the other hand, he knows his own nuclear arsenal is of
limited deterrence value due to the political realities facing his
nation. Because Hussein cannot defeat his forces in a conventional
war, nuclear weaponry is Hussein’s best, if not only,
option.

This is quite similar to the situation facing President Bush
today, but he is not the national leader of this tale. Rather, it
is the tale of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who on June
7, 1981 ordered an air strike against Hussein’s Osirik
Nuclear Reactor on the outskirts of Baghdad. This successful strike
crippled Hussein’s capability to produce weapons-grade
fissile material, which today, over 20 years later, remains his
primary obstacle in his quest to develop nuclear weaponry. Every
nation harshly condemned the raid, but countless lives were
undoubtedly saved.

The doctrine of preemption, practiced by Begin in the Osirik
strike, states that because a shorter, less deadly war is
preferable to a longer and more lethal one, nations, in the
interests of individual security and the greater good, must have
the right to strike against an enemy preparing for a large
offensive action.

For international law to be either constructed or construed in
such a manner as to prevent preemptive strikes is dangerous and
irresponsible. Without preemption, all wars will be waged in the
time, place and manner most advantageous to rogue states that flout
international law, because only rogue states, by definition, can
initiate hostilities.

Some fear that preemptive strikes set bad precedents and erode
international cooperation. Preemptive strikes potentially threaten
the power of international institutions, and they directly
contradict the ideologies of those who pursue peace through
diplomacy at any cost. Thus, many people naively put their faith
and loyalty in the United Nations, international treaties, and the
reasonability, rationality and essential goodness of humanity,
fearing that preemptive strikes will erode our faith in all the
ideals they hold dear.

However, those who act to protect against this erosion only set
the world up to see these ideals shattered. If these ideals are
shattered by an Iraqi nuclear detonation, either directly or
through a terrorist organization such as al-Qaeda, Hamas or
Hezbollah, it will not be the first time.

After the carnage of World War I, Europe entered a period of
wishful and naive diplomacy, typified by the ridiculous
Kellogg-Briand Pact that renounced war as a method of security
policy and by Neville Chamberlain’s assertion that selling
out Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler would produce “peace in
our time.”

This idealistic paralysis prevented Europe from responding
militarily to the German menace until it was already too late.

From a humanitarian perspective, a preemptive strike could
easily have replaced the most destructive man-made event in history
with a shorter and smaller conflict that would have saved many
millions of lives. From the French perspective, it would have
averted their defeat and the deterioration of their status from a
centuries-old world power into an international irrelevancy that
followed.

History has shown that pacifism, conciliation and trust in the
fundamental goodness of humanity have their place. Such philosophy
is certainly an important factor in preventing democratic states
from going to war with each other.

But when a dictator arises with the skill and the will to
manipulate this system for expansionistic and aggressive ends, the
system falls apart. Policies based on the fundamental goodness,
reasonability and peacefulness of humanity have no place in
relations with fundamentally evil and violent men such as Hitler
and Hussein.

War is hell. No one disputes that. When war must come, however,
the free people of the world are duty-bound to stand tall and crush
the rampaging tyrants, or else choose between selling their souls
and honor and dying as defenseless victims.