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COMMENTARY
August 17, 2002
Patience
The remarkable interview Condoleezza Rice the U.S. national security adviser gave to the BBC Thursday in which she spelled out the case for the removal of Saddam Hussein in more forensic detail than ever before may be the first in a series. The Bush administration may finally have started to prepare the public for visible action in Iraq. The Rice interview will air in its entirety on Sept. 6 as part of BBC programming leading up to the anniversary of 9/11. I would expect the White House has calculated that this anniversary will provide the ideal setting for an orchestrated drum-beating campaign. The president's own speech on the anniversary may give the main signal. Till now the administration has been remarkably shy about revealing its best reasons for removing Saddam -- for removing him presently as opposed to waiting until the man has had a chance to e.g. annihilate Israel or train and equip (more?) terrorists with biological chemical or even low-grade nuclear weaponry. To many in the West today decency requires that we should at least wait until he is in a position to kill millions and can level the playing field by holding us to ransom. But while the case for not waiting is so much stronger the approach of President George W. Bush has been to get his guns loaded first. He has meanwhile gone the distance in the necessary policy formulation sketching out fully the new U.S. military doctrine of pre-emption that follows from the experience of 9/11. The U.S. government no longer believes it is obliged to wait for something terrible to happen before taking preventive action. It has in effect admitted to itself that if the invasion of Afghanistan had happened in 1996 instead of 2001 thousands of dead would still be alive and the situation in the Middle East would be a lot easier to manage. It is vividly aware (as much of the rest of the world alas is not) that the stakes in the future are not thousands of dead but millions. Yet it follows from this policy that the argument for removing Saddam Hussein cannot be given with full candour until the attack is well begun. We are meanwhile obliged to trust there is much more in the file than the little that has been shown. For instance I believe the Bush administration's most senior figures know a lot more than they have said about Saddam's links with Al Qaeda and the rest of the "Islamist international". (Not that there hasn't been enough in the file for free public perusal and for the last decade to justify an attack.) Those who argue that President Bush either should or shouldn't invade Iraq are anyway missing part of the plot. It is not only going to happen it has already started. There are many indications that U.S. special forces have been crawling around Iraq from bases mostly in the northern Kurdish but also in the southern Shia region both of which are already under U.S. and British air protection within the old U.N. "no fly" zones. And I believe that the necessary conventional air sea and ground forces for a sudden and effective "regime-changer" are now fully deployed in Iraq's vicinity at bases dispersed through the region and in three aircraft carrier groups. Mr. Bush is after months of unpublicized preparations in a position to spring. He could give an order now and there would be U.S. commandos dropping into Baghdad before breakfast tomorrow. He has decided to go ahead but not quite yet. Given the opportunity his enemies -- both foreign and domestic -- have to organize against him while he waits the real question must be why hasn't he gone in already? I believe there are seven good reasons for the wait (as well as any number of bad ones): 1. So much is being accomplished by repeatedly threatening to attack Iraq on a massive scale without yet actually doing it. Mr. Bush has discovered that the natural instinct to appease in the European and "moderate" Arab regimes works both ways. Make the bigger threat and they begin to appease you rather than your enemy. All kinds of little concessions are being offered and gratefully received especially of further help in the international effort to track down Al Qaeda and other terrorist cells and cut off their lines of supply finance and recruitment in the thought that this may somehow sate the Americans' appetite. Why not continue milking this for a little longer? 2. While in theory Saddam could be using the time to prepare a more devastating reprisal when he is finally attacked in practice his disadvantages accumulate. The U.S. is scouring Iraq from ground sea air and space. Each day presents new opportunities for locking on to freshly discovered targets including Saddam's carefully hidden missile and suicide-pilot aircraft launching facilities; therefore more chance of making the clean sweep quickly when full-scale war begins. This is critical because a successful Iraqi hit on an Israeli population centre with a biological or chemical device would not only cause huge casualties in itself but quite possibly elicit an Israeli nuclear retaliation and all that would follow from that. Verily it is better to be safe than sorry. 3. Likewise the chances increase of catching sight of Saddam himself or of finding a means to anticipate his location and scoring checkmate with a minimum of fuss. 4. There are parallel opportunities to gather more thorough information about dispositions of forces in Iran Syria/Lebanon and elsewhere including no-longer-trusted Saudi Arabia. The possibility of sudden action from any of these countries in concert with or support of Saddam whether against the U.S. or against Israel can never be discounted. Possible emergency targets in each of these countries are still being marked off and provided for. 5. There is a nightmare reconciling conflicting interests of allied parties and this is taking more time to sort out than anyone expected. In particular the Turks and Kurds have diametrically opposing interests in deposing Saddam. Within Iraq itself a major headache is the mutual antipathy of Kurdish and Turkmen ethnic groups (the latter being closely related ethnically and linguistically to Turkey's Turks and thus a special Turkish political interest). The major northern oil centre of Kirkuk is claimed by the Kurds as their future regional or provincial capital -- the oil stakes alone make it worth having. But the town is a traditional Turkmen centre and the Kurdish desire will be resisted. This internal conflict is magnified because the Turkmen have been offering the U.S. all kinds of useful help where they need it most penetrating into Sunni Arab environments around Baghdad where Turkmens are common but Kurds are rare. The Americans thus owe the Turkmens big but the Turkmens have tended to be left out of domestic anti-Saddam coalitions. And there are many other such local impediments to smooth traffic operations -- local ethnic rivalries most of which have been aggravated over the years by Saddam's own vicious divide-and-conquer tactics. 6. Likewise the advantages of having the ducks in order for the overall post-Saddam government of Iraq are now much clearer. President Bush himself has become more and more convinced that the successful installation of a democratic regime in Baghdad will make a huge difference to the future of the Arab world not only as a visible model of what is possible if you work with rather than against the Americans but as a means for the U.S. to discard the older special relationship with Saudi Arabia (Iraq can counterbalance Saudi oil production too) and make more distance from the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Furious efforts are therefore now being invested in the organization of the Iraqi opposition for power and in distinguishing more carefully in advance between the "good guys" and "bad guys" within the opposition to Saddam. Every day helps. 7. Last but not least it now seems on balance politically advisable for the Bush administration to do the right thing constitutionally and seek formal Congressional support before launching the big strike. (The argument could be made that Congressional approval given at the time of the Gulf War in 1991 never lapsed or that the failure of Saddam to obey U.N. resolutions has kept the 1991 U.N. permission for "all ways and means" to enforce them alive; but these arguments sound specious and are.) For domestic political reasons it would be extremely wise for the Bush administration to have the Democrats and anxious Republicans commit themselves before the sparks really fly. For the moment Congress and White House are still feeling their way to such a formal accommodation; but I should think that when needed a resolution could be put before both Senate and House of Representatives in hours not days. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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