February 13, 2003: Wilson: Imperial Vision of US Neoconservatives Driving War with Iraq

In early February, David Corn, an editor of the progressive magazine The Nation, asks former ambassador Joseph Wilson to write an editorial for the magazine. Corn believes that Wilson’s “establishment credentials” give credibility to the antiwar views that Wilson and the magazine share. Wilson publishes an op-ed in the magazine titled “Republic or Empire?” Wilson, who staunchly supported the 1991 Gulf War (see After February 28, 1991), argues that the US has already succeeded in large part in its efforts to contain and disarm Saddam Hussein. Also, the US’s new military basing agreements throughout the region give it what Wilson calls a “[h]egemony in the Arab nations of the Gulf… a dominant presence astride strategic oil reserves that would enable us to respond to crises in the region much more quickly and efficiently in the future than we had ever been able to in the past. Thus, the conquest of Iraq would not materially improve our influence from southern Asia to the Horn of Africa.” The war is not about Iraqi WMD, nor Iraq’s alleged ties to terrorism, or even about liberating an oppressed populace, Wilson writes. “The underlying objective of this war is the imposition of a Pax Americana on the region and installation of vassal regimes that will control restive populations.” The neoconservatives in the Bush administration, Wilson asserts, “want to go beyond expanding US global influence to force revolutionary change on the region. American pre-eminence in the Gulf is necessary but not sufficient for the hawks. Nothing short of conquest, occupation and imposition of handpicked leaders on a vanquished population will suffice. Iraq is the linchpin for this broader assault on the region. The new imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our worldview are implanted throughout the region, a breathtakingly ambitious undertaking, smacking of hubris in the extreme. Arabs who complain about American-supported antidemocratic regimes today will find us in even more direct control tomorrow. The leader of the future in the Arab world will look a lot more like Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf than Thomas Jefferson.” He concludes: “[W]ith the costs to our military, our treasury and our international standing, we will be forced to learn whether our republican roots and traditions can accommodate the administration’s imperial ambitions. It may be a bitter lesson.” [Nation, 3/3/2003; Wilson, 2004, pp. 318-319, 469-472]