"A pair of top Republican foreign policy experts told a huge University of Virginia audience Tuesday that more serious debate and consideration of long-term consequences should help shape American policy toward Iraq.

Retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft and former secretary of state Lawrence S. Eagleburger told a crowd of about 900 people that a war to remove Saddam Hussein from power is much more likely to lead to unforeseen consequences than it is to result in Iraqi democracy.

"I have serious doubts that the United States at the point of a bayonet can force the Iraqi people to accept democracy, and these are the kind of questions we have to debate far more than we are," Eagleburger told the audience at Miller Center of Public Affairs-sponsored forum.

A public debate about the consequences of military actions against Iraq both in the Middle East and on American allies is needed, said Eagleburger, who served 27 years in the State Department before former President George H.W. Bush named him secretary of state in 1992.

Scowcroft said Saddam does not appear to have a nuclear bomb and appears much weaker than he was in 1990, but going after him now could undermine the war on terrorism around the world.

America's allies do not share what some consider this nation's obsession with Saddam and place a higher value on securing peace between Israel and the Palestinians, he said.

America cannot fight a global war on terrorists without the active assistance of other nations and must consider what the consequences of actions taken in Iraq might be for that international cooperation, Scowcroft said.

"Saddam is a terrible, evil man," he said, "but he is not a problem for us because of terrorism."

"If we antagonize the world" it could cripple world support for the war on terrorism, Scowcroft said. "We cannot win the war on terrorism without support."

Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser to Presidents Ford and the senior Bush, said America's history of forcing regime changes has led to nasty and unforeseen consequences in Vietnam, Iran and Nicaragua.

"I see no reason why it should be different in Iraq," he warned. "We ought to be very careful in trying to make the world in our image."

Holding up American democracy as an ideal and an example is one thing, "but that's different from imposing something," Scowcroft said to applause from the crowd that spilled out of the Darden Business School auditorium into several other rooms.

Just because the world's only superpower can replace Saddam does not mean that it should, necessarily, although under some circumstances such an action might be necessary, Eagleburger said.

"If it becomes clear that he either has a nuclear weapon or is about to get one," then action to remove Saddam becomes more necessary, Eagleburger said.

"Who is it who appointed the United States as the arbiter of what regime ought to be in Baghdad?" he asked. Back up a decade or so into the Cold War era and no one would have considered that a unilateral choice up to Washington, he said.

Scowcroft and Eagleburger, who have been friends since the Nixon administration and served together in the former Yugoslavia, gave the current President Bush good marks for his speech to the United Nations on Sept. 12 and noted that he appeared to downplay speculation that Saddam might have nuclear weapons.

There can be no question that Saddam has chemical weapons, and he has used them in the past, Scowcroft said.

After their 90-minute discussion of American foreign policy and Iraq, Eagleburger said American military action against Saddam appears 'very likely, very likely."

"Before the U.N. speech I would have said it was certain," Eagleburger said. "I'm a little less sure now, but I don't know how much."

Eagleburger added humorous asides, some at Scowcroft's expense and some at his own, throughout the otherwise serious discussion. The former secretary of state and Albemarle County resident took one look at the size of the crowd as people filed into the auditorium and remarked, "Oh, my God."

The forum was moderated by Kenneth W. Thompson, director of the Miller Center from 1978 to 1998, one day after President Carter helped dedicate a new pavilion named for Thompson at the center's Faulkner House quarters on Old Ivy Road. Even the enlarged and renovated center could not have handled half the crowd the pair attracted.

Philip D. Zelikow, the Miller Center's director, said the Darden Business School deserves credit for allowing as many as 900 Charlottesville area residents to attend the foreign policy forum.

"I don't know of a larger gathering for an event of this kind in this city in a long time," Zelikow said.

Margaret B. Edwards, director of communications for the center, said the forum was webcast live and will be available by tonight on the Miller Center's web page at http://millercenter.virginia.edu.

Edwards said the Charlottesville public access station on Adelphia Cable's Channel 13 will air the Eagleburger-Scowcroft forum in a week or two." (Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, September 25, 2002)

Addendum: Retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft spoke of two international trends - a porousness among nations (commerce, culture ideas and environmental problems, etc.) and a fragmentation of the world community into many nations - at a time when the United States is the only remaining superpower, something which has not occured since the Roman Empire.

He said that we should consider carefully the limitations of imposing our own economic and governmental systems on the rest of the world and suggested that what may be good for us may not readily seem so to others.

Lawrence S. Eagleburger worried about our contemporary hubris and our attempts to impose the 'proper' moral alternatives on countries (such as democracy) who do not support it. He wondered about the consequences of unilateral musclebuilding, what the effect would be on good will and whether we will be willing to pay the costs.

He said that just because we can act does not mean that we should act, noting that one of the most difficult actions for democracies to take is to take a step back and wait for matters to develop. With regard to nuclear weapons, he said that the United States must stand opposed to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, knowing that proliferation will happen anyway.