A very, very bad idea

Sometimes the worst ideas are the ones that are so widely accepted as sensible -- or inevitable -- that almost nobody actually examines them. So it is among our country's political elites with the notion of invading Iraq and displacing Saddam Hussein as President of Iraq. The idea is so entrenched that when, earlier this week, Hussein gave the Americans exactly what they'd demanded -- unconditional access for U.N. weapons inspectors -- not only did George Bush, predictably, dismiss the offer out of hand as a "ploy" and a "lie," but so did Tom Daschle, Richard Gephardt, and the rest of the Congressional Democratic leadership.
None of them, so far, have been willing to even consider the possibility of taking yes for an answer, because they're all wedded to a paradigm that makes invading Iraq sound awfully sensible. It goes like this: The United States can do anything it wants militarily. Saddam is bad. Saddam's oil is good. So why not get rid of him and take the oil? An invasion has other, lesser advantages as well -- particularly the intimidating example it provides for other governments that might one day consider serving their own, rather than American, interests -- but that's what it boils down to.

The problem is that there's a long list of very real answers to the rhetorical question of "why not?" Happily, a few of them are beginning to be raised on the fringes of American policy-making -- in particular, former U.S. Marine and Iraq weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who considers Iraq "qualitatively disarmed" and bitterly opposes an invasion, has been popping up all over the networks lately. But that's not the same as influencing the people -- mostly in the White House and Pentagon, peripherally in Congress -- who will make a final determination. Or, potentially, unmake a determination that's already been made.