And now on to Baghdad
As the war in Afghanistan winds down,
the argument over Iraq is heating up.
The Bush administration has dropped some heavy hints about the need to rid
the world of the Saddam Hussein regime. In response, some are denouncing
this prospect. Their dissenting views, which fall under six main rubrics,
need to be taken very seriously.
* Catastrophe. A "great catastrophe" will follow if an Arab country
is hit, predicts King Abdullah II of Jordan, echoed by Syrian Foreign Minister
Farouk Shara's warning of "endless problems" if any Arab country
is struck.
Sounds ominous - but these two leaders forget to explain just why ousting
Saddam would be so terrible. Or why it would be worse than leaving him in
power. Khidhir Hamza, former head of Iraq's nuclear program, estimates that
his old boss will have "three to five nuclear weapons by 2005."
Given Saddam's well-established viciousness and aggression, this would be
the true catastrophe, not his losing power.
* Coalition busting. "Striking against any Arab country will be the
end of harmony within the international alliance against terrorism,"
says Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League. Gernot Erler of Germany's
Social Democrat party is more specific: an attack on Iraq "would certainly
mean the end of the broad political alliance against terrorism." To
which the sensible reply is - so what? The attacks on September 11 were
against the United States, not Egypt or Germany. The US priority is to win
the war against terrorism, not to make new friends.
Further, the coalition is window dressing. Only one country is actually
needed to launch an attack on the Iraqi regime, says James Woolsey, former
director of central intelligence. "Operating from Turkey and from aircraft
carriers in the Persian Gulf," he notes, should generate more sorties
than was possible against landlocked Afghanistan. And Turkey appears to
be on board: Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu recently noted that
his government might reconsider the "Iraqi question," indicating
Turkey's possible willingness to help the United States.
* Destabilized Arab regimes. "Arab regimes will be considerably weakened
if they are incapable of preventing operations against Iraq," finds
French analyst Gilles Kepel. "This would be highly destabilizing."
Really? More likely, ridding the world of Saddam will stabilize every Arabic-speaking
country, as they no longer need to worry about his depredations and can
loosen up. Better yet, the Iraqi National Congress (waiting in the wings)
gives signs of setting up a democratic government and the Kurdish government
in the north of Iraq (in power) has already done so.
* Collateral damage. An attack on Iraq would cause civilian casualties,
Britain's Foreign Ministry and Saudi Arabia's Prince Turki bin Faisal both
tell us.
True, but collateral damage pales in comparison to the damage Saddam inflicts
on his own people, whether gassing five thousand of them on one day in 1988
or assaulting the Shi'ites in Iraq's south for more than a decade. As in
Afghanistan, an attack on Iraq would be a humanitarian operation that the
local population will celebrate.
* Strengthens Saddam. Attacks on Iraq may only "bolster Saddam's position
in Iraq and make the people more supportive of him," warns Prince Turki.
That's ridiculous. Saddam will not be stronger after the United States gets
through with him for the simple reason that he won't be around at all. One
president George Bush left Saddam in power after defeating him in war. The
second will not.
* Saddam innocent of September 11. Lord Robertson, NATO's secretary-general,
last month told US senators there is "not a scintilla," of evidence
linking Iraq with the attacks on September 11. Columnist Robert Novak concurs
that there is "no Iraqi connection." Not so. Mohammed Atta, one
of the hijackers, met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague. Two of
his co-conspirators met with Iraqi intelligence officers in the United Arab
Emirates. Bin Laden aides met with officials in Baghdad. Further, Saddam
may be behind the recent military-grade anthrax attacks, suggested by the
presence of bentonite, a substance only Iraq uses for this purpose.
Thus does every argument against targeting Iraq collapse. Saddam represents
the single greatest danger to the United States, not to speak of the rest
of the world. Today, with Americans mobilized, is exactly the right moment
to dispatch him. On to Baghdad.
(The writers are respectively director and research associate at the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum.)