A Dove in Hawk’s Clothing

Bunker-buster bombs have been falling over Iraq for almost two weeks. U.S. troops are a few dozen miles outside of Baghdad. Even a majority of British citizens now support ousting Saddam. Yet peace protesters around the world continue to whine about the lack of a U.N. mandate. No matter what France says, the United States did not need U.N. approval to attack Iraq, and it should not have tried to get it in the first place.

From the position of a wealthy superpower, going to the U.N generally seems like a charitable thing to do, emblematic of a country with a progressive outlook on world cooperation. Ironically, asking for the U.N.’s approval initially regarding the situation of Iraq has proven the Paul Wolfowitzes of the world correct: Better to ignore or preemptively bribe international power players instead of engage in a sham debate in front of a global hodgepodge.

Remember the President George W. Bush of August or September, when the Iraq debacle was gearing up? He had a tough decision to make: Side with Colin Powell, advocate for the U.N., or go with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. On Sept. 12, to many hawks’ dismay, he chose the path too often taken; he gave a speech to the U.N., benevolently bestowing the world body power and legitimacy that it did not have in the first place. Instead of simply seeking to expedite the stated U.S. policy of ousting Saddam, a dovish Bush acquiesced to the Security Council, and so the inspection game began.

So too did Bush turn a sniveling France into a legitimate world political power with a good deal of authority. Jacques Chirac’s haughty disdain for the conflict, amplified by Bush’s failure to gain Security Council approval, has only fanned the flames of world-wide peacenik disapproval.

Now compare what Bush did to what Bush could have done. If back in August he had begun garnering a few big allies clandestinely—a job easily achieved by giving the French oil rights in post-war Iraq and by paying off Russia the amount of money owed by Saddam—he could have prevented the U.N. coup. With no major world leaders challenging Bush, we would hear much less chatter from the protest types, mirroring the silence surrounding America’s interventions in Bosnia and Afghanistan.

But because Bush chose to win Security Council approval instead of working diplomatic backchannels, the U.N. has been rendered useless once again. It failed to find much of Saddam’s chemical arsenal, and, as the war draws on, it continues to fail to enforce its own resolutions. Bush should not have given the Security Council the chance to render itself so useless. When political advisers tell future presidents about the lessons of the run-up to the second war with Iraq, it will be that Bush was too much of a loud dove, and not enough of a secretive Machiavelli.

—Travis R. Kavulla ’06 is an editorial editor.