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End Iraq
To conclude the Gulf War, ten years later.

By Richard Lowry, NR Editor.
From the October 15, 2001, issue of National Review

Early indications are that Iraq had a hand in the September 11 attacks. But firm evidence should be unnecessary for the U.S. to act. It doesn't take careful detective work to know that Saddam Hussein is a perpetual enemy of the United States. But it's more than a personal matter. Iraq's Baathist regime will be totalitarian and expansionist, Saddam or no. Accordingly, the solution to the Iraqi problem needs to go deeper than a random assassination: It must destroy the Baathist regime root and branch. At the very least, Iraq should be allowed to be dismembered by its perpetually warring factions, or, ideally, invaded and occupied by the American military and made into a protectorate.

If an ineffectual U.N. liberalism characterized Clinton policy toward Saddam — resolutions, inspections, etc. — it was a desiccated realism that left him in power in the first place. The first Bush's national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, and other Bushies made a fetish of borders. In this case, the casual handiwork of the British Foreign Office — which outlined modern Iraq with a pencil and ruler in 1918 — was elevated to high geopolitical art. The entity called "Iraq" had to be kept together at all costs. As Daniel Byman explained in a 1996 National Interest article, "Washington therefore wanted the Kurdish and Shi'a revolts to succeed to the extent that they would cause Saddam's downfall, but not to the extent that they would lead to national dismemberment." The result of this attempted fine-tuning was no success at all.

The caution displayed here was rank foolishness. Nothing is so dangerous as leaving an aggrieved enemy hanging on and able to strike back — he should either be befriended outright (the French approach) or destroyed. Hannibal allegedly was made to take an oath of eternal enmity toward the Romans by his father, who lost the First Punic war — thus laying the predicate for the Second. Saddam needn't yet pass on such a pledge to his psychopath son Uday or to the younger Qusay (one of whom will probably end up killing the other, if the rules of Arab politics hold). Saddam has, in effect, taken the oath himself.

The bare minimum of U.S. action should be an effort to kill Saddam — from precision cruise-missile strikes to bribes of his close associates — and to topple his regime by proxy. The U.S. should seriously arm and support Iraqi opposition groups. A bombing campaign on their behalf could, among other things, create a "no drive" zone for Iraqi vehicles in the north and south. No exaggerated claims should be made for the opposition — which contains, no doubt, its share of thieves and opportunists — but at least it could be trusted to plunge the country into chaos, and perhaps to dismantle it, since it is so ripe for falling apart. In a description still apt today, Iraq's King Faisal I said of his "country" in 1933, "There is still no Iraqi people, but unimaginable masses of human beings, devoid of any patriotic ideal . . . connected by no common tie, giving ear to evil, prone to anarchy, and perpetually ready to rise against any government whatsoever."

In the above-sketched scenario, the United States would be willing to let the fissiparous resentments of Iraq — the Kurdish north, the Sunni middle, the Shiite south — play themselves out on the theory that a hopeless muddle would be an improvement over a dangerous regime. Several strategic objections are often raised to breaking up Iraq. Turkey, an important U.S. ally with a restive Kurdish population of its own, wouldn't relish an independent Kurdish entity to its south. And the Gulf states wouldn't welcome the resulting uncertainty. But the grand Scowcroftian reason for preserving Iraq — that it can balance Iran in the Persian Gulf — is a nice-sounding theory utterly unhinged from reality. "It is senseless to think in these terms," as Daniel Byman points out, "in circumstances where Iraq is roughly as hostile to many of the potential targets of Iranian aggression as is Iran itself."

The greatest risk would be to U.S. moral sensitivities. To help push Iraq into chaos and then stand aside would require abiding uncertainty about the ultimate result in Iraq and a willingness to ignore heart-wrenching humanitarian disasters (refugees, ethnic massacres). It would be a mistake for the U.S. to embark on this course and then — as dismaying pictures started to come in via CNN — decide that it wanted to try to influence the final result after all. This would create a situation in which the U.S. would be merely responding to, rather than firmly shaping, events (as in Vietnam). If we prefer not to court the uncertainty, but to follow instead a path that would oust the Iraqi regime quickly and be much cleaner, the U.S. should jettison half-measures and invade and occupy Iraq.

The United States could pull off an invasion with the help of only Britain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. It would require a significant buildup, a long air campaign against all of Saddam's military assets, and finally a land invasion (which would be a strain, given the troop drawdown that brought the endlessly costly "peace dividend" of the 1990s). The main attack, as NR contributing editor John Hillen has argued, would be launched from Saudi Arabia toward Baghdad, with air support smashing Iraqi forces whenever they massed either to fight or to flee. Pre-invasion, the U.S. would work closely with some sort of Free Iraqi government, making it clear that the war was against the regime and not the Iraqi people. American forces would probably enjoy a reception from the locals much warmer than that accorded the ROTC on many college campuses.

An American occupation would not last years, on the model of a MacArthur regency in Japan. Instead, the U.S. would quickly — say, after less than a year — hand control of the country over to a U.N. protectorate, with some Arab input to soothe feelings and a non-American — some anodyne European, such as a Swede — running the show. He would in effect act as Iraqi dictator, but without the brace of pistols. After five years or so, as Iraq's public institutions were firmed up, the baton could be passed to an Iraqi government that one would hope would be thoroughly democratic — but that would at a minimum be pro-Western and capitalist. The entire effort would represent a return to an enlightened paternalism toward the Third World, premised on the idea that the Arabs have failed miserably at self-government and need to start anew.

We occupy the Balkans to very little strategic purpose, except perhaps to keep the Europeans from complaining too loudly. Why not undertake an occupation where it really matters? The ideal would be to duplicate the best of British colonialism in India, where the rule of law and other important institutions (e.g., the civil service) helped make India the functioning democracy it is today. But the model to avoid would be, as it happens, the British in Iraq. After installing a Sunni king in 1921, they had to bomb the Shiites in the south into submission. The U.S. would, undoubtedly, set for itself an extremely delicate political and diplomatic task. The goal, however, would not be perfection, but a pro-Western and reasonably successful regime, somewhere between the Shah of Iran and the current government of Turkey.

A functioning, mostly free, and relatively rich Iraq would have several advantages over Saddam's country, and over chaos: In moral terms, it would represent a great improvement in the lives of average Iraqis. It would bring strategic stability to the region, freeing the Gulf states from the constant fear of invasion. It would be an embarrassment — and perhaps a spur to change — to the rest of the corrupt regimes in the region, providing a model of free-market success. It would guarantee the West's access to oil, and perhaps help break up OPEC (the ill-gotten gains from which fund repressive dictatorships and, indirectly, terrorists). And it would be a nice economic benefit to the United States: If the Teamsters like drilling in ANWR, they should love occupying Iraq.

Most important, either of these options — breakup or occupation — would bring a rightful, if belated, end to the Gulf War by ending the Baathist regime. According to the U.N.'s Rolf Ekeus, he was once told by the head of Iraq's missile program, "Iraq needs its military equipment. The war is not over. It was only a ceasefire." Exactly.

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