According to world public opinion and the American government, the most powerful military force in history had at least 13 completely different and compelling reasons to attack Iraq. Saddam was one unlucky despot. And STILL he didn’t see it coming. Here’s a sampling of President’s Bush’s many reasons, according to his and the world’s collective wisdom:
1. Saddam tried to kill my daddy.
2. Saddam probably has weapons of mass destruction.
3. If Saddam doesn’t have WMD now, he might try to get some later.
4. Saddam might try to help terrorists. He’s like that.
5. Maybe Saddam already did help terrorists. He’s like that.
6. America wants Iraqi oil.
7. America needs to keep the dollar strong versus the euro.
8. War against Iraq is profitable for President Bush’s corporate buddies.
9. America can’t find Al Qaeda so it had to attack someone to appear strong.
10. America wants to liberate the Iraqi people.
11. The long term solution to terrorism is to spread democracy.
12. If America kicks some ass, other countries will become more flexible.
13. God told President Bush to attack. It’s all part of End Time prophesy.
As regular readers of my blog already know, I don’t believe in free will. People do things for emotional reasons and later rationalize them. One sure sign that rational decision-making is not at work is when you have 13 possible explanations for something after the fact. Another sure sign is that the people involved in the decision see what they expect to see, such as WMD where there are none.
With that framework in mind, here are my best guesses as to the emotional reasons, i.e. the real reasons, that America attacked Iraq.
1. President Bush wanted revenge because Saddam tried to kill his dad. On a conscious level, I doubt it was a factor. It probably never came up during a meeting. But on an emotional level it’s hard to ignore. I give it a 10% weight.
2. America, and especially its government, had a collective form of abused child syndrome after 9/11. We couldn’t hit the ones who hit us, but we had to hit SOMEONE just to feel better emotionally. I give it a 30% weight. And by the way, it worked on that level.
3. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The government didn’t have the tools to wipe out Al Qaeda any time soon, but it did have the tools to topple Saddam. I think many in the government (e.g. Powell) believed Iraq had WMD, and that became a convenient rationalization. I give it a 30% weight.
4. Our Vietnam-avoiding president needed to prove he wasn’t frickin’ wuss. That’s good for the ego and the legacy. I give it a 20% weight.
5. The President needed to do whatever was the opposite of just sitting there while the World Trade Centers were being attacked. I give it a 10% weight.
I discount the various oil/profit motives because Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld made the Iraq decisions and they don’t need a few extra million at the expense of their legacies. They wouldn’t screw themselves to help their corporate buddies climb from a net worth of 100 million to 200 million.
To put that in capitalist overlord economic terms, the fourth yacht-hooker of the day doesn’t make you that much happier than the first three.