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war that George W. Bush launched against terrorism in the immediate
aftermath of September 11 has thus far gone exceedingly well. Those
of us who fretted that in turning first to Afghanistan we risked
playing into the hands of our adversaries were proven quite fortunately
wrong. We underestimated the scope of the military revolution that
first became evident with our use of smart munitions in the Gulf
War. We failed to understand just what havoc can be wreaked with
such munitions in a terrain offering little in the way of natural
cover. We misjudged Afghan animus against the Taliban and against
Osama bin Laden's foreign legion. Our forces may not have captured
or killed the elusive mass murderer and his chief henchmen, but
it is clear that, in time, they will. The leading figures within
al Qaeda can run, but they cannot hide.
Some months
from now, when we have replenished our stocks of smart munitions,
we will have to think seriously about where to turn next. Our president
has wisely kept his options open, and has repeatedly indicated that
Afghanistan is just the beginning. We can only hope he is as resolute
as he appears to be. The timid and pusillanimous — in the capitals
of Europe, on the faculties of our universities, in the editorial
offices of our leading newspapers, in Congress, in our Department
of State, and even within our armed forces — will counsel caution.
They will urge us to opt for stability. It made sense, they will
now say, to eliminate al Qaeda's redoubt in the Hindu Kush:
In this one case, they will now acknowledge, we had little
choice. But we should go no further. We should not target Hezbollah,
Hamas, and Saddam Hussein; that might give rise to instability.
Instead, we should, with renewed vigor, pursue the "peace process"
in the Middle East. The defeat of al Qaeda has strengthened our
hand, they will say. Now is the time to strike for peace. Now is
the time to give peace a chance.
It seems highly
unlikely that President Bush will fall for such nonsense. Even if
anyone of intelligence had any serious doubts before the second
intifada, it should by now be perfectly clear that no agreement
made with the likes of Yasser Arafat will ever hold up. It is time
that we acknowledge that the Middle East strategy we have followed
over the last 30 years is bankrupt; that the so-called peace process
is, in fact, an instrument of continuing conflict; that it has produced,
and can produce, only war. The PLO is committed to the destruction
of Israel, not to a lasting and mutually beneficial peace. One can,
perhaps, sometimes reach a temporary accommodation with terrorists
like Arafat; one cannot negotiate a lasting cessation of war.
The first rule
of strategic thinking is this: that one should never wring one's
hands over the disasters that happen, but should instead look upon
each as an opportunity. The elder Bush had such an opportunity.
Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait made it possible for us to reconfigure
the entire Middle East. We could have executed Saddam; we could
have eliminated his tyrannical Baathist regime. We could have done
in Iraq something like what we did in Germany and Japan after the
Second World War: We could have transformed the country, liberating
its people and channeling their energies in the direction of commerce.
Instead, we opted for stability. Our Turkish allies warned us that
Iraq might fall apart; they feared that the Kurds in that country's
North would opt for independence, and provide support for the Kurdish
rebellion in Turkey itself. Our allies in Saudi Arabia feared that
the establishment of a genuine democracy in Iraq would render untenable
the continued rule of the House of Saud. We worried that the Shiites
in the Iraqi South would look to Iran for guidance.
We were not
stupid in thinking we might be better off with the devil we knew.
We were not foolish in opting for stability. But we were wrong.
Not for the first time, we underestimated our foe. Saddam Hussein
not only survived his defeat, he prospered. He breathed defiance,
and persuaded the gullible that our failure to dislodge him was
a sign of cowardice and weakness on our part. He made a mockery
of our attempts to deprive him of weapons of mass destruction; he
did everything in his power to stir up the Muslim world against
us. He brazenly mounted an attempt to assassinate the elder Bush
— and he did so with impunity. He appears as well to have provided
al Qaeda with crucial support. Mohamed Atta didn't go to Prague
to sample the cuisine.
The failure
of our strategy in the Middle East is a misfortune, but it can also
provide us with an extraordinary opportunity — if we have the
courage to seize it. Instead of opting for stability, we could try
the opposite. We could give revolution a chance. We could give our
full backing to the brave men and women who established the Iraqi
National Congress; we could train and arm their soldiers, giving
them the species of support we afforded the anti-Taliban forces
in Afghanistan. Anticipating the possibility that they might fail
on the field, we could systematically build up our ground forces
in Kuwait and elsewhere in the vicinity of Iraq, and we could then
do whatever it might take to remove Saddam Hussein from power, to
topple the Baathist kleptocracy, and to drag Iraq (and, with it,
the entire Arab world) into the 21st century. This would be expensive.
It would require that we be prepared to commit our infantry and
tanks to the struggle in Mesopotamia. Such an endeavor would no
doubt upset our fair-weather friends in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and
elsewhere in the Gulf. But there is no question that we have the
wherewithal to oust Saddam Hussein — and there is no question
that the bulk of the Iraqi population would welcome us with open
arms. The Kurds in the North, the Shiites in the South, and many
of the Sunnis in between have suffered grievously at the hands of
the butcher of Baghdad.
His overthrow
would not, however, be enough. To make such an intervention worth
the trouble, we would have to act in such a manner as to ensure
that postwar Iraq remained intact, and emerged as a liberal democracy
responsive to the genuine needs of its various populations. If we
made a serious stab at nation-building in Afghanistan, we would
almost certainly fail — much as we have repeatedly failed in
Haiti. But Iraq is not Afghanistan. It is not poor; it is not backward;
it is not populated by fierce tribes who revel in war. It is, in
fact, a relatively secular, tolerably cosmopolitan place —
and it is rich. Its agriculture has enormous potential, and it has
very large reserves of oil. The population is largely literate.
There is much that can be done.
If Iraq did
emerge as a secular, pluralist democracy, modeled on Turkey and
closely allied with the United States, its reappearance in this
guise would, over time, up-end the entire Middle East. The theocracy
in Iran (which has been at least as deeply involved in fostering
terrorism as Baathist Syria and Iraq) is profoundly unpopular, and
could long not survive the presence of a prosperous, commercial
democracy in a nearby Arab country. The Baathist tyranny in Syria
is hated by the bulk of the population and, with a bit of pressure
from us, would quite soon collapse. All of this would encourage
the democratic propensities long evident in Jordan and Egypt; in
Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco; and even in the territories governed
by the Palestinian Authority. Who knows? The Iraqi example might
even bring some sense to the Gulf. Once it's clear which way history
is moving, very few human beings want to be left behind.
Or perhaps
this is overly optimistic. Perhaps the obstacles to a genuine transformation
of the Middle East really are as insuperable as they seem to be
in Haiti, in Afghanistan, and in sub-Saharan Africa. But before
dismissing the revolutionary option, we should consider the alternative
— which we have already, and repeatedly, tried: accommodation
of and collusion with Muslim despotism in its various Middle Eastern
forms, all for the sake of a "stability" we never seem
to achieve. This bankrupt policy brought us September 11. If we
opt for it again, we can be confident that we will be attacked again
— and with even greater force — for our vulnerability
to terrorist assault has now been exposed to the larger world. If
we really want security, we will have to finish the job we began
in 1991, with the Gulf War. Our parents and grandparents learned
something about the disastrous consequences of leaving such jobs
unfinished in December, 1941, when Hitler's Germany followed up
on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor by declaring war on the United
States. The question we face now is whether we learned all that
we needed to learn in September, 2001. Many in the United States
and Europe evidently did not — but George W. Bush has been
splendid so far, and my guess is that this president is disinclined
to repeat his father's mistakes.
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