10 Years Later, Was the Iraq War Worth It? >
Freeing Iraq From Saddam Hussein's Dictatorship Was Worth It
Allowing Saddam Hussein to remain would have had a greater cost than the Iraq War
March 20, 2013
In Iraq, the United States led an international coalition that removed a murderous tyrant from power, eliminated a threat to international security, countered a horrific insurgency, and gave the Iraqi people the opportunity to build their own future. Certainly, the U.S.-led coalition and the Iraqis paid a high price to liberate the country. But it is likely that the cost of allowing Saddam Hussein to remain in power would have been far greater over the long-term.
As Charles Duelfer, the head of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group, noted, Saddam sought to shake off the United Nations sanctions and inspections regimes, and rebuild his WMD capabilities once he was free from their yoke. With international sanctions on the verge of collapse due to corruption and faltering political support, Saddam likely would have reconstituted Iraq's weapons programs and re-emerged as a regional menace—just as the Iranians and North Koreans have in his wake. Indeed, the example of their nuclear programs reinforces the imperative of preventing rogue regimes from obtaining weapons of mass destruction.
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However, the Iraqi people would have borne the greatest cost for allowing Saddam to remain in power. He had already killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shia and Kurds during his barbaric reign, imprisoned many tens of thousands of political prisoners, and forced four million refugees to flee the country. Once rearmed, Saddam would have suppressed any Arab Spring-style protest against him with wanton slaughter, as he did before. As U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair said before the war began, "Ridding the world of Saddam would be an act of humanity. It is leaving him there that is in truth inhumane."
Despite the horrendous loss of life during the insurgency, post-Saddam Iraq, however imperfect it may be, is at least free from his barbaric rule. It is now up to the Iraqi people to ensure that the country truly emerges, in the words of former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, as a "multi-sectarian, multi-ethnic society in the Arab world that shows that democracy can work." While the public knows how many people have died, what mistakes were made, and the great struggles of Iraqi democracy over the past decade, it is time to balance this knowledge against the likely alternative: another decade of Saddam's ruthless repression, mass slaughter, and growing regional threats.
Freeing Iraq from Saddam's dictatorship came at a grave cost, but it was worth it.
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- Other Arguments
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#16241
No — Getting rid of Sadam Hussein doesn't justify the costs of the war
PETER JUUL, Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress
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#25846
No — Iraq was irrelevant to the decimation of al-Qaida
CHRISTOPHER PREBLE, Vice President for Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute
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#33841
No — The Iraq War set the stage for the emergence of al-Qaida
JESSICA STERN, Fellow at the FXB Center for Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health
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#42934
No — Iraq: A huge un-forced error
JACOB STOKES, Research Associate at the Center for a New American Security
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#63858
Yes — The U.S. had justification to start the Iraq War, but we squandered our gains
JAMES JAY CARAFANO, Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation
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#72045
No — Don't criticize Bush, criticize the war's poor military planning
MICHAEL O'HANLON, Senior Fellow and Director of Research for the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution
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