Peter J. Wallison, Wall Street Journal
Given the problems and U.S. casualties in Iraq, polls show a large majority of the American people believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Yet if we imagine what the world would look like today if Saddam Hussein had not been deposed, it seems clear that almost no outcome in Iraq would be as adverse to the interests of the United States as today's world with Saddam still in power.
It is important to recall that Saddam had thrown the U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq in 1998, and allowed them to return in 2002 only because of the credible threat of a U.S. attack. In addition, the sanctions regime was collapsing--Saddam had learned how to extract billions of dollars for weapons out of the humanitarian exceptions to those sanctions--and our European friends, and perhaps U.N. officials themselves, were complicit in this. Under these circumstances, Saddam could not have been "contained" or rendered harmless, and Iraq could not have been indefinitely subject to U.N. inspections. At some point, Saddam would have been able to throw out the inspectors again, with no further action by the U.N. It was clear that the U.N. itself would do nothing to enforce its own resolutions.
We also know from the reports of the weapons inspectors that Saddam and his scientists were working to develop nuclear weapons, work that certainly would have continued if Saddam had remained in place. Saddam had already demonstrated that he would use chemical weapons, and there is no reason in logic that he wouldn't also restore his chemical weapons stocks once the inspectors had left. He had the largest army in the region, and had shown a determination to use it for expanding his control beyond Iraq. It's not far-fetched, therefore, to consider what economists call a counterfactual--what things would look like today if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq. . . .
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