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Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and regular FOX News contributor, was on The Daily Show last night. (If you didn’t see it, by the way, make sure to watch the “Roker Wrangler” video on The Daily Show home page… the most absurd thing that I’ve ever seen the Today show do, which is a feet not easily accomplished.) Bill Kristol is an intelligent, well-spoken conservative, who really believes that removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right move, a position he has advocated for almost a decade. He admires Bush’s courage and tenacity in pushing for the Iraq war, although he has shown some regret over how the war has been managed. So, I thought it might be useful to take a critical look at some of his arguments about why invading Iraq was the right thing to do.

Saddam Hussein posed a threat to American interests. He had invaded his neighbors twice, attacking Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1989. He had used chemical and biological weapons in the Iran war, and had subsequently used them against his own people to quell rebellions. He was a known supporter of several terrorist groups, including a couple groups with ties to al Qaeda. The containment strategy was deteriorating, and was causing increasingly strained relations between America and its allies, and the oil-for-food program was corrupt and ineffective. There was mounting pressure to lift the sanctions on Iraq and we couldn’t just leave Saddam in full control. Furthermore, the weapons inspections were not consistent, they were constantly being denied necessary access and being circumvented, and were not reliable, to the point that most neutral observers, including several of our allies and even President Clinton, believed that Saddam still maintained stockpiles of WMDs.

Upon closer inspection, however, this argument falls apart. Saddam did invade his neighbors twice, both times when his neighbors were week and isolated, and both times after receiving some assurances that the United States would not ally with his opponent. When he invaded Iran, it was a pure land-grab to take advantage of the new theocratic government that had just been installed. The United States was not likely to involve itself on Iran’s side, and in fact we even sold weapons and gave some diplomatic support to Iraq during the course of that war. And it is true that Saddam used WMDs against Iran, but he only did so when the war started going badly and Iraq itself was threatened with invasion. Before it was invaded, Kuwait had successfully isolated itself from both its own neighbors and from the United States. The world community was more interested in the fall of communism, and Saddam had received some preliminary assurances that as long as Iraq did not threaten the oil pipelines, that the United States wouldn’t care about the fate of a random Persian Gulf monarchy that most Americans had never heard of. When Desert Storm did start, Saddam kept his best units, including all of those trained in the use of chemical and biological weapons, in Iraq, largely guarding Baghdad.

In other words, Saddam was a bully, but an opportunistic one who had no real desire to fight the United States or inflame the world too much. Kuwait was a miscalculation, and once he realized his error, he was not likely to try again. Furthermore, his uses of chemical and biological weapons were always against direct threats to his own power. As for his support of terrorism, the vast majority of it was aimed against Israel; it has never been demonstrated that any Iraqi money went to finance direct attacks aimed at the United States. Saddam was a secular leader interested in his own personal power, and was therefore a natural enemy of al Qaeda. Also, remember that ego-maniacal, power hungry leaders like Saddam Hussein don’t just give away their best weapons to anyone who asks, especially not to unpredictable organizations like terrorist groups. Furthermore, while the containment strategy was beginning to show its age, it was by no means obvious that Iraq could not have re-entered the world community as a reasonably peaceful member. For one thing, many of those people who did think that Saddam had WMDs didn’t want to invade Iraq; the one does not logically follow from the other. For another, it turns out that Saddam really didn’t have WMDs, indicating that perhaps the containment strategy was working quite a bit better than anyone, including its supporters, thought that it was working.

In short, Saddam Hussein was a bad guy, but not a direct or immediate threat to American interests. Certainly not enough to warrant the massive troop commitment, money, and international good-will that the invasion has cost.

The Middle East, and in fact the world, is better off with Saddam Hussein gone. Again, Saddam Hussein was a threat to his neighbors, and to Middle East stability in general. He was very anti-Israeli, and had no qualms about supporting anti-Israeli terrorist groups, or even attacking Israel directly if it served his purposes. Don’t forget that he launched missiles at Tel Aviv during the Persian Gulf War, even though Israel was not involved in Desert Storm. By removing Saddam, the United States lent credibility to its threats against other “rogue nations”, which has lead directly to improved behavior from Libya and to the reform movement now taking place in Lebanon. Furthermore, once Iraq is a stable democracy, it will serve as a useful ally in the Middle East, it can help export that democracy to other Middle Eastern countries, and will serve as a great example for the rest of the world.

Their are problems with this argument as well. As I have previously discussed, Saddam had been a threat to its neighbors, but only when the United States was uninterested or supportive. Simple American involvement in the Middle East, coupled with firm, vocal resolve to thwart any Iraqi aggression, could have easily put kept Iraq on its leash. As for Israel, well, history has shown as that Israel is perfectly capable of taking care of itself. Israel will continue to have poor relationships with its neighbors until the Palestinian issue is resolved, and until that time any Iraqi government will feel some pressure to act aggressively towards Israel. It is not clear exactly how removing Saddam from power makes Israel all that much more secure than it was before. As for threat credibility, it is true that the Iraq invasion seems to have scared Libya away from its quest for nuclear weapons, at least for awhile. Only time will tell, of course, if this change of heart is permanent or not. As for Lebanon, despite the assertions I have seen no solid connection between our invasion of Iraq and the assassination of the Lebanese Prime Minister or the ground-swell of Lebanese public opinion against Syrian involvement that assassination caused. And, by committing so many troops to Iraq for so long, and dealing with the incumbent drop in international support, we have actually lost ground in our negotiations with North Korea, by far our most dangerous international enemy. North Korea knows that we are weak and spread too thin, and it has no qualms about taking advantage of that weakness.

Furthermore, the picture of an allied, stable, democratic Iraq is incredibly unlikely. I can think of one country that has formed a stable Democracy on its first Constitution, without facing either civil war or some kind of autocratic reversion: Japan after World War II. And, to refresh your memories, Japan was an industrialized, homogeneous state, with a motivated, educated, and skilled workforce, strong ties cultural ties to the Imperial family (with whom the new constitution was to be affiliated, something that gave the new Constitution some continuity with the past), Japan was effectively governed by us for a decade, and still today has its international security provided by the United States. Iraq has none of those structural advantages, and I seriously doubt if the United States has the will-power to “stay the course” in Iraq through two more presidential elections. If you look at how the democratic experiments have gone in countries with a similar economic and ethnic make-up to Iraq, you will discover a litany of civil wars, military coups, oppression and regional instability that has comprised the history of such places as Nigeria, South Africa, Congo, Colombia, and Venezuela. Even President Bush has said, leaving Iraq in that state would have been worse than leaving Saddam Hussein in power, and yet this is the most likely scenario. Even should the impossible happen, and Iraq quickly discover a stable democracy, there is no guarantee that this new democracy will be friendly to either American or Israeli interests. Iraq is exactly the kind of state that is reasonably likely to elect a theocratic or Marxist government. Anti-American rhetoric, after all, is a crowd-pleaser in many poor countries who feel that they are being exploited by American companies only interested in their natural resources.

In short, there are many reasonable, intelligent people who think that kicking Saddam Hussein out of Iraq was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, a careful examination of the historical record just does not support their logic. The big democratic experiment that is the war in Iraq is almost guaranteed to fail.