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October
10, 2002, 9:00 a.m.
Decision
Time
On
Iraq.
By NR
Editors, from the October 28, 2002, issue of National Review
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s Congress
prepared to vote on whether to authorize war with Iraq, President Bush
made the case one more time. Speaking in Cincinnati, Bush noted that the
Iraqi regime has chemical and biological weapons and seeks nuclear ones;
that it has not hesitated to use what weapons it has been able to use;
and that the regime sponsors terrorism and aggression. He explained that
attempts to deal with Iraq by methods short of war — including sanctions,
inspections, and limited military strikes — have all failed. The
regime continues to move ever closer toward having the weapons it wants.
And the longer we wait before acting, the closer it will get.
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The president made
a strong case. So strong, in fact, as to raise the question of why the
administration is going through the inspections charade once more. The
answer, of course, is that it considers it necessary to propose thorough
inspections in order to build support at the United Nations and at home.
Bush hopes to make these inspections tougher than in the past. This time,
he says, "inspectors must have access to any site, at any time, without
pre-clearance, without delay, without exceptions." It is unlikely
that Saddam Hussein would agree to this demand, and making it is a way
of asserting that his regime is dangerous. The risk inherent in this gambit
is that it may tie down the administration in procedural battles with
nominal allies and make the administration's policy a hostage to the U.N.
Bush will simply have to force the U.N. to live up to its responsibilities
— by continuing to insist that we are prepared to act without its
support if necessary. If the U.N. balks, so much the worse for the U.N.
It would merely prove itself irrelevant.
The only clear mistake
the Bush administration has made in recent days was to send out White
House spokesman Ari Fleischer to say that the Iraqi problem could be solved
at the price of "a single bullet." Fleischer later took back
the remark. But it nonetheless suggests an inclination within the administration
to promote a coup in Iraq. A coup would not be in America's interest,
however, unless it fundamentally weakened or altered the Iraqi regime.
It is a totalitarian state that needs to be dismantled, not merely given
a new leader. If we want to affect the course of events in Iraq after
Saddam, as we should, there is no alternative to our direct involvement.
Fleischer's remark
was troubling, but also an isolated gaffe. The conduct of the Democrats
has been dismaying. Some of them, to be sure, have been clear-eyed about
the need for regime change in Iraq: One thinks of Joe Lieberman, Evan
Bayh, and especially Dick Gephardt. And most congressional Democrats will
probably end up voting to allow the president to make war. But in general,
the Democrats' contributions to the debate have been more carping than
constructive. They first demanded that a war be debated, then protested
when it was. They still speak as though war were an issue less important
than a "patient's bill of rights." They said that there were
important questions to be addressed — and then failed to address
them. They said they wanted the U.N. to make the decision for them. They
wrung their hands; they stroked their chins.
Some of them did
worse. Al Gore gave a slippery speech in which he insinuated that the
president was promoting war for self-serving political reasons. Most notoriously,
congressmen Jim McDermott and David Bonior went to Baghdad to pronounce
themselves distrustful of Bush, willing to accept Saddam's promises "at
face value," and convinced that America had committed war crimes
in the first Gulf War (this last an Iraqi propaganda claim with no credibility).
Other Democrats said that they disagreed with McDermott, Bonior, and even
Gore. Few said that they were appalled at their disgraceful behavior.
The Democrats and
the U.N. have much in common. The Democrats claimed to want a debate that
they really feared; the U.N. claims to want a responsibility it has no
intention of actually exercising. Now President Bush is forcing both to
make a decision they would prefer to put off. It's up to them to demonstrate
that they are up to the challenges of our time.
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