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COMMENTARY
February 13, 2002
Saddamnation
"The United States will attack Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein and his government at a time of its choosing before the end of the year. There is no timetable that can't be adjusted; no window or deadline before or after which the U.S. won't strike. It is likely to be sooner than later however and very likely that a new president of Iraq will be among the guests hailed at the next State of the Union in January 2003." This was not said by President Bush on Jan. 29. It was instead offered to me as a translation into even plainer English of one of the policy formulations in his "axis of evil" speech by a senior adviser to the Bush administration. My sense from speaking to people in Pentagon White House and State Department in Washington is that this is an accurate translation. The speech itself -- the significance of which continues to sink in around the world -- showed a real genius for ruffling both foreign feathers and the American flag. The phrase on which the whole thing turned has already embedded itself with the force of President Reagan's "evil empire". That rubbed the same sort of people the same sort of way and to the same end. It wasn't meant to sound gentle or accommodating. It isn't: the Americans are eagerly horsetrading with the Turks whose prime minister Bulent Ecevit has been usefully explaining to visitors that there is no way the Saddam regime can be "reformed". Israel Turkey and the U.S. are proceeding with massive joint air exercises. U.S. operatives are now regularly dropping in on Kurdish and Shia oppositionists within Iraq. And the U.S. government has restored funding and more to Ahmed Chalabi (odds-on favourite to be the next Hamid Karzai) and his Iraq National Congress. Charles Krauthammer one of the several Canadians who secretly run the United States (as a Pentagon official joked to me) spelled it out analytically in his weekly column. Iran is a kind of Soviet Union in its pre-Gorbachov phase; we are merely waiting for the ayatollahs to fall while shaking their tree. As for North Korea Mentioning it is the equivalent of strip-searching an 80-year-old Irish nun at airport security: It is our defence against ethnic profiling. Whereas Iraq is -- next. But beyond this I think the Bush administration is vividly aware that there really is an "axis of evil"; that the several diverse mortal enemies of the U.S. are increasingly co-operating if only in alarmed self-defence since they have no other friends to turn to. Yet from this point of view also Iraq is the next significant target. You have to start somewhere. Does Saddam have any friends at all? He has found himself in a corner where Iran is now his closest thing to an ally -- the same regime on which he once waged war. Until Jan. 29 Saddam could still count on Russia and China to at least verbally sum his count, and make his old excuse while endrunning the sanctions. On the eve of President Bush's state of the union address Saddam's deputy Tariq Aziz flew to Moscow and met with the Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov. The latter then announced that Moscow opposed U.S. military action and called for sanctions against Iraq to be lifted. On Jan. 30 the day after the speech Mr. Aziz flew back to Moscow. But neither Mr. Ivanov nor any other ranking Russian official would now agree to see him. Mr. Aziz then flew to Beijing; and while the Chinese prime minister Zhu Rongji was polite enough to say hello he quickly foisted the poor wayfarer on his deputy who gave Mr. Aziz a little lecture about the need for complete Iraqi compliance with U.N. resolutions. I would not have wanted to be him when he got home to Baghdad. Meanwhile the Iraqi regime's Arab outreach programme is proving less successful than the last one in 1990-91. Before the Gulf War Saddam had the late King Hussein of Jordan and the stateless Palestinian community technically on his side -- plus the "Arab street" which then as now was uncannily silent. This time King Hussein's son and successor King Abdullah can't seem to make enough distance; and not even Yasser Arafat has a good word for his old comrade from his bunker in Ramallah. Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has slightly expanded diplomatic relations with Baghdad but this would appear to be the prince's way of "getting at" President Bush. He's really mad (has been described by palace sources as having "gone bananas" on several recent occasions) -- but he has no options. In Cairo the Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has been playing his hand with characteristic circumspection. He still allows the Egyptian media to sound off against Bush and the U.S. -- but has quietly asked for a little moderation. He himself seldom strays from "motherhood" issues. He is attempting to manoeuvre Egypt into a position where it can maximize benefits from Iraq's fall. He is enjoying much increased co-operation from U.S. and European security agencies including the handover to Egypt without trials or even hearings of a growing number of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood who were enjoying their lives as "dissidents" in European exile. As host of an Arab League conference that began yesterday President Mubarak is keeping the hotheads in line. The theme of the conference is a draft protocol to free the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction. Israel which has nuclear weapons is dismissed with the faintest tut-tut; instead Mr. Mubarak turns up the flame under Baghdad. Off-mike what all the moderate Arab leaders are saying (and all are presenting themselves now as moderate) is that the U.S. "may" enter Iraq on two conditions: 1. the Kurdish Sunni and Shia parts of Iraq aren't allowed to split apart after the invasion and 2. this time don't leave Saddam alive. Since these are at the top of the U.S. list of objectives there is a kind of understanding. This leaves Iraq with nothing more than to attempt a last-ditch "public relations" offensive. If I worked in P.R. I would rather have the Philip Morris account. Tariq Aziz is left to grovel before anyone who will let his plane land and now sets his ambitions on Switzerland and Spain. Even France knows better than to have anything to do with him -- especially with Jacques Chirac seeking re-election. Europe or more precisely its progressive elites are indeed stepping up the anti-American posturing but it is absolutely empty. As another Washington insider said to me What are the French, the Germans, the Belgians going to do about it, if we go into Iraq? We know they won't be ecstatically happy, but are they going to bomb us? Cut off trade? Stop eating at McDonald's? I don't think so. They'll be really unpleasant; but what's new about that? David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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