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This is the piece that Brad
just referred to. Excerpt: When Frontier Justice Becomes
Foreign Policy
By Thomas Powers, NYT Week in
Review, Sunday July 13, 2003 @ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/weekinreview/13POWE.html?hp American
intelligence organizations and military forces, once forbidden from attempts to
assassinate foreign leaders by the executive orders of two recent presidents,
have now embarked on an open, all-out effort to find and kill Saddam Hussein in
a campaign with no precedents in American history. Despite three strikes aimed at Mr. Hussein since the opening
night of the American war on Iraq, intelligence officials have conceded that a
recent broadcast of Mr. Hussein's voice is probably genuine. A concession that
the Iraqi leader remains alive is also implicit in Washington's offer of a $25
million reward for his capture or proof of his death. Since President Bush announced the end of major military
operations on May 1, it has become increasingly clear that the Iraq war is not
over, that there is a concerted campaign of resistance and that Mr. Hussein
remains a formidable foe. Over the last 10 days the chief American official in
Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, has frequently stressed the importance of capturing
or killing Mr. Hussein. The campaign to kill him, frankly admitted and discussed by
high officials in the White House, Defense Department and Central Intelligence
Agency, has committed the United States for the first time to public,
personalized, open-ended warfare in the classic mode of Middle Eastern violence — an eye for an eye,
a life for a life.
American officials in the White House and Iraq have argued
that Mr. Hussein's survival encourages resistance, and killing him is therefore
a legitimate act of war. But the United States has never before openly marked
foreign leaders for killing. Treating
it as routine could level the moral playing field and invite retaliation in
kind, and makes every
American official both here and in the Middle East a target of opportunity. Realists
may scoff that war is
war and that things have always been this way, but in fact personalized killing
has a way of deepening the bitterness of war without bringing conflict closer
to resolution. In
April 1986 President Reagan authorized an air raid on the home of Col. Muammar
el-Qaddafi of Libya that spared him but killed his daughter. The Reagan
administration never acknowledged that Colonel Qaddafi, personally, was the
target, nor did it publicly speculate two years later that Libya's bombing of
an American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people, was Colonel
Qaddafi's revenge for the death of his daughter. But the administration got the
message: after Lockerbie, Washington relied on legal action to settle the
score. … But
the final argument against assassination, often noted by American intelligence
officers, was the most practical — you might get rid of public enemy No. 1, but
who would take his place? Mr. Bremer has cited the survival of Mr. Hussein as a
kind of psychological barrier, scaring off some Iraqis who might be willing to
work with the Americans, and inspiring others to go on fighting. But how can Washington be sure that
killing Mr. Hussein will be a change for the better? Success might only clear
the path for another Iraqi leader, just as intransigent but free of Mr.
Hussein's terrible burden of decades of crime against his own people. Like
most questions in wartime, this one is impossible to answer in advance. The administration clearly thinks there
is more to be gained than lost, and the public, so far, appears content to wait
and see. Thomas Powers writes frequently about intelligence issues.
His most recent book is "Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From
Hitler to Al Qaeda." |
POWERS When Frontier Justice Becomes Foreign Policy.doc
Description: MS-Word document
