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COMMENTARY
July 8, 2002
Sooner or later
As the conventional wisdom now has it the time to attack Iraq and replace the regime of Saddam Hussein was in 1991 after the liberation of Kuwait. There were however good reasons for holding off then; the chief being that the United States was fighting with a cumbersomely large coalition which would have disintegrated had the U.S. Army struck for Baghdad. President Bush (the elder) had given undertakings to most of these allies not to invade Iraq except tactically; he was as good as his word. He nevertheless called on the Iraqi people and military to overthrow their psychopathic dictator. The real opportunity was lost shortly thereafter. Responding at least partly to the U.S. President's call uprisings began in the Kurdish north and Shia south. Saddam crushed these using helicopters and other devices he was banned from using in the "no-fly" zones. There was enough left of his Presidential Guard and regular army to carry out huge massacres to consolidate his rule. The U.S. had made grave commitments to intervene in just such events but decided when they happened that discretion was the better part of valour. The Americans feared chaos and a break-up of the country. Under President Clinton it became clear that the Kurds in particular would be left to their fate which wasn't a pretty one. Mr. Clinton established the policy of launching fairly aimless cruise missile and other air strikes in response to one casus belli after another -- including an Iraqi-organized attempt on former-president Bush's life in Kuwait and clear evidence of Iraqi involvement in the attempt to destroy the World Trade Centre in 1993. Mr. Clinton's foreign policy experts acting upon the U.S. Congress were later able to withdraw remaining support for the Iraqi National Congress and various smaller opposition forces committed to democracy within Iraq. Finally he allowed United Nations weapons inspectors to be removed without any serious consequences. Saddam was left with a decade to rebuild. This is the situation today inherited by President George W. Bush. We have an Iraqi dictator who is once again persuaded notwithstanding the Gulf War of 1991 and the Afghan War that the U.S. is essentially bluffing. Last week Saddam's foreign minister told the U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan that Iraq would not consider letting any weapons inspectors back in even with a large majority of U.N. members demanding it do so. Saddam's strategy has been to cultivate new friendships with such old enemies as Iran Syria and Saudi Arabia in the hope of steadily raising the cost and potential fallout should any U.S. action begin. In this he has the diplomatic cover of most of the nations in Europe. It is hardly being reported but there are currently daily skirmishes over the "exclusion zones" in northern and southern Iraq. Planes from the U.S. and Britain have stepped up missions considerably and their purpose seems to be to gain intelligence on Saddam Hussein's military dispositions. In addition the U.S. has established a substantial special forces presence in eastern Jordan near the border with Iraq -- close to the principal concentration of Iraqi Scud missiles (aimed probably at Israel). This U.S. deployment has been fairly obvious; it is designed to force Saddam to show his hand by moving his own western defences in response to the threat. U.S. forces continue to build with little publicity in Turkey Kuwait Bahrain Qatar Oman and elsewhere in the region. There has been a major step-up in U.S. production of precision ordnance. There can be little question that the U.S. will act in the time horizon of the next nine months. On Friday the New York Times gave extensive coverage to documents they had obtained from within the Bush administration outlining the "concept" for the impending attack on Iraq. The publication was fairly blatantly treasonable; their material was real if several months old. No responsible nor loyal American journalist could publicize specific attack plans that would jeopardize U.S. and allied lives and create diplomatic complications with countries in which U.S. bases are located. It is a sign of the times that there was no hesitation to print this material. I happen to know that the Times' "scoop" was quite seriously dated -- more a Pentagon "position paper" than an "action plan" -- but will not myself go into details except in the broadest terms. I believe there is no serious opposition remaining within the Bush administration to the principle of an attack on Iraq. The question has rather been what form it should take and in the end it came down to two alternatives. One was associated with Gen. Tommy Franks and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and tacitly supported by the State Department. This calls as the Times reported for the use of a very large U.S. force now estimated in excess of a quarter million soldiers and an overpowering conventional invasion preceded by massive bombing and special forces strikes against certain high-risk ground targets. It is the standard bureaucratic Joint Chiefs thinking with every 'I' crossed and every 'T' dotted in the words of one source. It probably can't be mounted until next spring by which time it may have been leaked in its entirety. And by telegraphing U.S. intentions over such a considerable period of time it will give Saddam his intelligence services and Presidential Guard every possible opportunity to spring some surprises. The alternative plan or rather patchwork of specific proposals has I fear been successfully discredited by the "experts" in Pentagon and State Department alike. It was championed by a variety of administration "hawks" I shall not name except for retired Army Gen. Wayne Downing a deputy to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice who resigned suddenly late last month. This or these called for a much quicker attack with smaller forces making daring use of potential local allies and taking creative advantage of new airborne technology on something like the model of the invasion of Afghanistan; relying more on speed and surprise than on the build-up of overwhelming force. It was attractive to people like Gen. Downing with actual war experience (he was a decorated commander of special forces during the Gulf War with two impressive tours of duty in Vietnam and a major role in Panama). It was extremely unattractive to the present Pentagon brass whose background is chiefly peacetime bureaucratic advancement and for whom the cautious protection of an exposed posterior is the highest aspiration of a military career. My impression is that President Bush already obliged to stand on a limb diplomatically with few foreign allies for an Iraq incursion and none publicly declared -- with no Churchillian military experience of his own to draw upon -- has felt obliged to follow the cautious conventional wisdom in mounting his war plans at home. He will strike Iraq because he knows he must; he is assiduously clearing the way for such a strike; but it will not be daring. The danger is that he is cornering a rat slowly but surely. And Saddam has in the past proved to be quite a rat when cornered. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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