# Posted 9:17 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

ARM YOURSELF WITH FACTS: If you are against invading Iraq, you should memorize today's WaPo article on US-Iraq relations in the 1980s. If you are for invading Iraq, you should memorize it as well. We did very bad things in the 1980s and, for that matter, throughout the Cold War.

There isn't all that much new in the article, though it does report on the contents of recently declassified documents from the Reagan administration. While there is no mention of who filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the documents' release, I'd have to imagine it was the National Security Archive, which is the national leader in FOIA requests related to foreign policy. I spent six weeks there doing research on Reagan's El Salvador policy for my master's thesis.

FYI, the Bush administration has been doing all that it can to delay the release of documents whose publication would have no adverse effect on national security, but might prove to be quite embarrassing to both members of the current administration as well as the President's father.

Anyway, the real issue here is how supporters of American foreign policy can address the perennial argument that America's record of immoral actions in the Cold War invalidates any aggressive initiatives the United States plans today. The argument becomes especially complicated when one considers that current members of the cabinet were responsible for those actions. The WaPo, for instance, reports on Rumsfeld's intimate relations with Saddam at a time when the State Department knew that Saddam was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis.

I think the proper response is to admit what the US did wrong and shift the discussion to the merits of its current policy. As Ken Pollack tells the WaPo, what we did in the 1980s "was a horrible mistake then, but we have got it right now." The worst thing to do is come up with defensive justifications of immoral acts. For example, David Newsom, a former ambassador to Baghdad, told the WaPo that

"Fundamentally, [our] policy was justified...we were concerned that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that would have threatened Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Our long-term hope was that Hussein's government would become less repressive and more responsible."

Talk about low standards. All Iraq had to do to become less repressive was massacre thousands of innocent men and women instead of tens of thousands.

The reason such arguments backfire is that they imply a continuity between the moral standards of the past and of the present. But the fact is, the US has learned from its mistakes. For all Bush Sr. and Clinton did wrong when it came to foreign affairs, they did uphold a moral standard higher than any of their predecessors since Harry Truman. (Yes, including Jimmy Carter.)

That is no small accomplishment considering that Bush and Clinton were the first presidents of the first lone superpower since Roman times. Lord Acton observed that "Power corrupts...and absolute power corrupts absolutely." That may have been true once. But the United States took advantage of its unprecedented power to raise its moral standards and those of other nations as well. That is what makes America exceptional. (1) opinions -- Add your opinion