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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,595567,00.html
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Saddam will be the next US target, one way or another
The argument is now about how to take on Iraq
Martin Woollacott in America
Friday November 16, 2001
The Guardian
Victory in war breeds new ambitions. In spite of the political
disarray to which the military breakthrough has led in Afghanistan,
the downcast mood of only 10 days ago in Washington has been
replaced by a feeling of confidence. There is an expectation that
the accelerating retreat of the Taliban will lead to their complete
collapse, a hope that it will be followed by the capture or killing of
Osama bin Laden and the rounding up of many of his followers, and
a determination to begin at once the work of reconstructing
Afghanistan. Such successes are hardly taken for granted, but
they are sufficiently on the cards for the decision makers to raise
their eyes beyond the Hindu Kush. And on that horizon looms Iraq.
European and Muslim anxieties about an American military
descent on Iraq never really centred on the possibility of an
immediate attack. The argument in Washington, as the Middle
Eastern expert Judith Kipper puts it, was
between those who wanted a binding commitment to an "Iraq next" strategy and those who
thought such a commitment foolish. It could not have been kept secret, and would have
undermined the task of building a coalition for
Afghanistan. And it might have provoked moves by Saddam Hussein to which it would have
been difficult to react effectively.
The officials who advised against an Iraq commitment include men and women who find it
hard to conceive of any situation, short of incontrovertible evidence linking Saddam
Hussein to the September 11 attacks, in which a m
ilitary campaign against him would be a wise or necessary course. But they also
include some whose objections were only tactical and short term. The Iraq argument is
already reviving and, if Afghanistan continues to go we
ll, it may soon be back at the centre of things.
Richard Perle, the most visible and forceful advocate of action against Iraq outside
of government, believes that success in Afghanistan means that the US can move "from
one liberation to another". The condemnation of the
Afghan campaign as an assault on Islam and as a bombing of innocents will falter as
the relief and gratitude of Afghans becomes evident. Iraq will then be seen in a new
light, even by Arabs. By means not specified in det
ail but including arming and supporting opponents of the Iraqi regime, using US air
power and with some limited commitment of Americans on the ground, he says, Saddam's
fall could be encompassed.
Perle's reasons for urging this are that Saddam already has some capacity to wage
chemical and biological war and "he is relentlessly pursuing nuclear weapons ... Once
he gets them it's another ball game". In Perle's unde
rstanding Saddam is a man bent not only on survival but on revenge on America. Left
alone, he will plot some calamity for America and its allies, as well as continuing to
inflict suffering on his own people. Since the tim
e for dealing with him relatively easily is already running out, Perle argues, the
moment must be seized.
The group represented by Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, the US deputy defence secretary who
is the most prominent hawk within the administration, are not alone in their
preoccupation with Iraq. There is widespread agreement, a
mong officials and among the public policy intellectuals in Washington think tanks
that, after September 11, it is no longer possible to live with the "contained" Iraq
of the past. Saddam either has to be removed or, at l
east, forced to genuinely comply with arms inspections again. As Ivo Daalder of the
Brookings Institution says: "Iraq is next. The question is how."
That, of course, is an old question to which there has been no answer for a decade.
But a school more optimistic and numerous than the Wolfowitz-Perle group believes that
the September 11 attacks make it possible to isola
te the Iraqi regime in a way which has not been possible for years. Russia, France and
China who have in different ways offered a degree of support to Iraq, have changed
their positions and could change them further. "We
need to tell them that they have a choice over Iraq. Join us or stand aside," says
Daalder. For some, the restoration of even a relatively weak arms inspection regime
might be sufficient achievement for the time being.
Others hope that a reunited front against Iraq could conceivably bring about
fundamental change without any necessity to use force from the outside. Professor
Henri Barkey, a political scientist who follows America's Iraq
policy, suggests that: "If you got all the big powers and all the regional countries
together sending the message to Iraq that the top 100 people in the regime must go,
you might be able to induce a change." In applying
such pressure, he suggests, full use could be made of the fact that, with both
America's allies and Iraq itself, people like Wolfowitz and Perle are waiting in the
wings.
Barkey argues that change in Iraq is the key to a new relationship between the US and
the Arab world above all because it would enable America to cease directly basing
forces in Saudi Arabia, thus removing one of the prin
cipal grievances which help create the atmosphere in which violent Islamist movements
grow.
It is a common view in Washington that joint action on Iraq should have been higher on
the agenda for the Bush-Putin summit in Crawford, Texas, which ends today. "Iraq is
much more important than NMD," said a former senio
r member of the National Security Council, "There is a tremendous opportunity to put
this back in Putin's lap and say that Iraq is an equally grave threat to both of us."
This argument takes ammunition from the final phas
e of the Kosovo war when the withdrawal of Russian support was a critical factor in
the decision of the Milosevic regime to accept defeat.
The strong likelihood is that the diplomatic route to a new isolation of Iraq is the
one that will be taken, rather than the military solution advocated by Perle and
Wolfowitz. But neither precludes the other. The lobby f
or military action recognises the necessity for a period of
diplomatic preparation, while some of those in the diplomacy
school, more reluctantly, agree that there has to be a military last
resort. The difficulty, however, is that the arguments for both
courses are less than convincing.
A war against Iraq would be a hugely risky undertaking and one
which, liberated Afghanistan or not, would set off a storm of protest
in the Arab world. A proxy war that went wrong would either be
another victory for Saddam or would have to be followed by a real
invasion by American troops. On the other hand, although the safer
diplomatic course might change Iraq's internal political dynamics, it
might very well fail to do so. What then? Iraq, for all the changes
brought by September 11, remains a problem where the desirable
end is clear but the reliable means are lacking.
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