Thinking about Iraq

Why so little debate about Iraq? Given how close we are to war, one might expect to see more of a conversation — especially on a college campus.

Some issues are easy to agree on. We can all be glad the inspectors are back. Even if they fail to find weapons or to prove that the stockpiles have been destroyed, Hans Blix and his team are making Iraqi scientists spend time explaining, moving mobile labs and preparing thousands of pages of documentation about their program. Blix says, believably, that the Iraqis aren't making a good faith effort to cooperate — but their continued back-and-forth with the inspectors is a massive, demanding effort. Iraq's weaponeers, as long as they're busy dealing with inspectors, are diverted from trying to develop more weapons. That's good — for now.

The hard question is, what should we do in the future?

Should we let the dance between inspectors and Iraqi scientists continue, as a nonviolent way of impeding Saddam's military plans? Is it worth attacking to remove him from power? If so, how can we build a truly global coalition? If not, how can we keep the pressure on without going to war?

Deciding what to do next requires some facts that none of us have. We don't know what weapons are in Saddam's arsenal. We don't know whether or not he would invite conflict by using them against the United States or other Western powers. We don't know whether or not he's willing to give them to anti-American terrorists, given that he's an obvious blame-magnet for anti-American terrorism of unknown origin.

We could be arguing about how to proceed, if we knew what we were up against. But without these facts, we don't, and that makes it hard to have a meaningful debate.

We're facing a lack of information, not a surfeit of apathy. We care — we just don't know.