Read this, then look at the title
again. No need to say anything
else. Let’s try to avoid using
the phrase Countdown, although it is screaming
everywhere.
The NYT Magazine feature story this weekend
is also by Keller, a senior writer at NYT, titled “Reagan’s Son”. Take a look at it online at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/26/magazine/26BUSH.html?8hpist.
and if you are interested in a Word version, contact me. Karen Watters
Cole
Why Bush Won't
Wait
By Bill Keller, NYT, 01.25.03 @
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/25/opinion/25KELL.html
President
Bush says he has not yet decided whether to go to war with Iraq, but this week
the signs were that he had all but given up on peace. Administration hawks, who had been
worrying that American resolve would dissipate during a prolonged game of
inspection cat-and-mouse, are suddenly being sent forth to proclaim the
weapons hunt a farce. State
Department officials, who thought they had maneuvered us off the short road to
war, seem resigned to the fact that they have probably
failed.
Maybe
this is just another mood swing, or an effort to ratchet up the pressure again
in hopes Iraqis will disarm themselves.
But I suspect that the new official refrain — "Time
is running out"
— means the chief inspector, Hans Blix, should not count on the several more
months he wants to do his job.
The internal debate now is not war versus peace, or this year versus
next year, but February versus March.
So
what's the hurry? I can't claim
to know what Mr. Bush thinks, but I have an idea what he is hearing. It goes something like
this:
The
detour through the United Nations looks more than ever like a dead end. Saddam's shuck and jive shows he will
never come clean. The antiwar
tantrums of France and Germany just encourage his intransigence.
The
only way to force the issue is to set war in motion — but once you do, it
can't be a false start. Saddam's nervous neighbors have
watched America do that before, talk tough and back down, leaving them in the
lurch.
Perhaps
if we give Mr. Blix a few more months to chase wild geese around Iraq, the
U.N. will reward us by endorsing war, but we can already count on a
substantial coalition: The gulf
Arabs are on board (if they are sure we will see it through to the end),
probably Turkey (which wants leverage over the future of its neighbor), the
Brits, the Aussies, Italians, Spanish and all those dependable
ex-Communists. The Russians and
French might even jump on the train once it's moving, to protect their
investments. Where's the
unilateral in that?
The
polls that show support for war steadily dwindling are not likely to get
better. And while Americans may
not
be eager
to go to war, at least they expect
to go to war. Plus, once we are
no longer worried about the Iraqis playing hide-and-seek with the inspectors,
we are freer to lay out our evidence of Iraqi concealment — though, frankly,
Mr. President, that's something of a problem, since we can't agree among
ourselves how conclusive
the evidence is.
Delay
means
more time for other things to go wrong in the world — more North Koreas. Delay,
Mr. President, means the North Koreans wonder what you're really made of. Delay
means that all this uncertainty continues to be a drag on the global
economy. Delay
means more time for Saddam to prepare nasty surprises for an invading force
(or to help terrorists go for our back).
By
mid-February, 150,000
American troops
and at
least four aircraft carrier battle groups
will be deployed in the region around Iraq. You cannot park the Fourth Infantry
Division in the desert for very long before the waiting erodes battle
readiness and angers our hosts.
And in summer the heat saps a fighting force.
The
fact that we are ready for a war is not, by itself, reason to fight one —
unless
you
are convinced that the non-war option has been closed off, that Iraq will
never otherwise be rendered harmless.
Which you
are, aren't you,
Mr. President?
This
makes a tempting rationale, particularly to a president who
worships
decisiveness. But you do not have to be a peacenik
to fear the cost of rushing in.
So
far in its showdown with Iraq,
the Bush administration has mostly
done the right things,
though often with a disheartening lack of finesse. Mr. Bush was right to identify Saddam
Hussein as a menace, right to mobilize
our might to prove we mean business,
right to seek the blessing of Congress and the Security Council. A
credible demonstration of will has produced tangible
results. The inspectors are at work. Arab neighbors are looking for ways
the Iraqis can solve their Saddam problem short of an invasion. (The prospect
of a coup or an asylum deal for Saddam may be remote, but give them credit for
creative
thinking.) Saudi Arabia was moved, first, to
propose a peace plan for Israel and Palestine, and second, to suggest a
charter for political and economic reform in the Arab
world.
There
are compelling
reasons
for war with Iraq. Mr. Bush has
been wise to emphasize the danger Saddam poses because of his unrelenting
campaign to acquire weapons of horrible power. His mere possession of such weapons
would give him daunting power in a vital region.
Many
Americans and some of our allies have mistaken
inspection for an answer
to this problem. In fact,
inspections have always been a way to buy some time, during which the regime
might crumble, or Iraq might shock us all by really surrendering its weapons,
or Iraqi non-compliance would exhaust the patience of even the French. Eventually, though, the inspectors go
away, and if Saddam is still in place his quest for the nuclear grail resumes,
presumably with fiercer motivation than before.
This
is to my mind the administration's best argument for going to
war,
but it is not
a terribly persuasive argument for going right now. On the contrary, at this moment, a
mere nine weeks into inspections, Saddam seems to most people a less immediate
threat than he was when inspections began. The presence of 200 inspectors and
American technical surveillance is not exactly a lockdown, but it limits what
he can get away with. Moreover,
we have not yet given the inspectors time
to check out our shared intelligence,
or to push the demand that Iraqi scientists be interviewed in private. Pulling
the plug at this point tells the world that Mr. Bush was never very serious
about the U.N. route in the first place.
The
second justification for
war is that this is a beastly regime, chronically brutal and episodically
genocidal. This is true and not
irrelevant. Saddam's reign of
terror weakens his claim to sovereignty, and suggests that many Iraqis will
welcome us as liberators. But
this was a stronger argument for ousting Saddam 15 years ago, when he was
actively engaged in mass murder.
A
third argument for
war is that replacing Saddam offers the hope of a (somewhat) more democratic
Iraq. This could begin a
political and cultural reformation of a region that has been an incubator of
anti-American pestilence. I'm
somewhat less optimistic than the romantic
interventionists about America's ability to do for Iraq what we did for Japan
and Germany after World War II.
Re-engineering
that misbegotten region is a noble undertaking, but will
the impatient Mr. Bush
and
his successors
have the attention span for a decade of nation-building? In any case, this is
another
argument without a deadline. On the contrary, delay might allow us
to invest more of our authority in resolving
the neglected, bloody impasse between
Israel and Palestine, which is a sinkhole
for American credibility.
The
fourth
reason for
wresting Iraq from the hands of Saddam is oil. I don't share the cynical view of many
war opponents that this whole adventure is nothing more than a giant oil
grab. Big oil companies (my
father ran one until 1989) have always been much more in sync with the
order-loving sheiks than with the boat-rockers touting upheaval and
democratization. But oil is a big
prize, and in the hands of a new Iraqi government it could be either a force
for stability or a lever for rattling OPEC and undermining other Arab
tyrannies, depending on your preference.
It
will be no less a prize if we hold off.
All
of these are reasons to want Saddam gone. None are reasons not to wait —
especially if haste further alienates the nations whose partnership we need to
rebuild Iraq, to fight the terrorism that will surely escalate in response to
our war and, incidentally, to sort out other messes that arise on our new
imperial watch.
What
Mr. Bush has failed to do over these months of agitation is to
explain
his urgency
to the American public or our allies.
In the year since the "axis of evil" speech, popular support for war
has declined by at least 10 points.
It's not that people doubt Saddam is a danger. They just think Mr. Bush is in too
much of a rush. They want to see
the evidence the president claims to have. They would like to know what costs and
dangers we're in for.
Most
of all,
they want the world, as much as possible, with us.
Presidents
should not make decisions of war and peace based on polls. (Mr. Bush's father
launched the last war against Iraq with less support than the current
president has.) Nor should our
national interests be decided by the faintest hearts among our allies. But the dwindling of support here and
resentment abroad represent a
failure to persuade,
and persuading is worth taking some time.
Outgoing mail scanned by NAV
2002
