Are We Safer Yet?

Politicians and pundits can and do argue over the proper role of government, but virtually everyone?from conservative to liberal?will agree that public safety is a core state function. Our leaders are supposed to make policies that are most likely to keep Americans safe at home and abroad. So an important question to ask in the wake of the war against Iraq is: are we safer than we were before?

Politicians and pundits can and do argue over the proper role of government, but virtually everyone—from conservative to liberal—will agree that public safety is a core state function. Our leaders are supposed to make policies that are most likely to keep Americans safe at home and abroad. So an important question to ask in the wake of the war against Iraq is: are we safer than we were before?

Clearly we are not.

The justification for this war was simple: Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and was in the process of acquiring technology that would allow their delivery. The debate between those who felt we should wait until inspections had run their course and those who advocated “preventive” attack was a debate about the immediacy of the threat. Now it is reasonable to question the existence of the threat. If Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, why wouldn’t it have used them against an invading army? If our evidence was reliable, wouldn’t we have found the weapons by now?

Whatever we find, it is clear that this war did not avert an imminent foreign threat. Instead, it has created a world in which Americans are less safe.

  • Media reports indicate that “enlistments” in Al Queda have soared in the wake of our invasion—an entirely predictable result.
  • We have put the leadership of countries in the Middle East that have previously been helpful—Jordan, Egypt—in a real bind, as popular opinion in those countries has swung against the U.S. The ability of those leaders to cooperate in the War on Terrorism has been significantly compromised.
  • The ability of international institutions to mediate potentially dangerous conflicts (never as robust as we might wish) has been badly damaged. NATO and the UN are weaker, and the risk that local conflicts will escalate to the detriment of U.S. business interests and travelers has grown.
  • The Bush Administration’s new doctrine of “preventive” attacks can be used to justify virtually any invasion, further destabilizing the globe. 
At home, the costs of the war are partly to blame for the single largest one-year deficit in the history of our country. That deficit also makes us less safe. As Senator Lugar has recently pointed out, it means we have less money to spend on police, on “homeland security,” on finding Osama Bin Laden, on stabilizing Afghanistan (remember Afghanistan?) and on public health precautions.

Sadaam Hussain was an evil man. Many Iraqis are safer now that he is gone. But the world is full of tyrants and human rights abuses. (Ironically, Amnesty International reports that some of the worst are members of the “Coalition of the Willing.”) If the government had asked us if we were willing to make the world substantially more dangerous for Americans in order to make it safer for the Iraqi people, would a majority have supported this war? Let’s hope so, because that is the bargain we have made and must live with.