epublicans and Democrats now share a common anxiety about Iraq: Has America
won the war but lost the peace?
Despite the death of Saddam Hussein's two sons and the elimination or
capture of a good two or three bridge-hands' worth of bad guys, the situation
on the ground in Iraq, for many Americans, appears hopeless and unwinnable.
I propose a simple
and elegant solution: Bring back Saddam Hussein.
Sound crazy? Reinstalling Mr. Hussein will solve Iraq's internal problems,
get our troops out of harm's way, save us $14 billion a month, and unite
the rest of the world, West and East, left and right. Even the French will
be frolicking over their fromage. The argument:
First, the U.S. military, the Bush administration and patriotic Americans
everywhere can continue to celebrate America's handsome battlefield victory.
We remain 2-0 in Iraq. Returning Iraq to Saddam is a purely political move,
and the blame can be placed on State Department quislings, the yellow-bellied
liberal media, and the anti-American technocrats at the U.N.
Second, the American people will understand. We're deep into the summer
of stinky sequels — The Matrix, Charlie's Angels, Terminator,
and Legally Blonde. So Saddam II will be a comfortable piece of programming.
Americans understand the logic of sequels as much as the logic of cutting
and running. And who doesn't love a second-chance story? Also, the original
and the sequel play in the same summer — Now, that's synergy.
Third, we escape our current lose-lose situation. Any disastrous outcome
— civil war, a Vietnam-style quagmire, oil disruptions, hot war with
Iran and Syria, revolutions in Pakistan or Indonesia — will be our
fault. Once we turn Iraq back over to Saddam, it's on his shoulders and
on his buddies in Damascus, Riyadh, and Paris. We're only the relief pitcher.
The closer takes the loss.
America's nitpicking naysayers finally will be silenced. All those elitist,
hypocritical, and self-hating critics will see their charges of U.S. military
and cultural imperialism evaporate. I suggest we send a Lincoln Brigade
of 250,000 Columbia University grad students, alt-newspaper editors, and
grassroots peace activists to Iraq to help coordinate the transition back
to the Baathist lifestyle whose sovereignty they so passionately defended.
What about finding Saddam? Well, trying to rehire Hussein for his old job
should prove easier than dropping a tactical conventional weapon on his
head. We can also convert the U.S. military's $25 million dead-or-alive
bounty into a "finder's fee." Jumpstarting Iraq's career-networking
sector will be an economic-stimulus freebie.
Won't Saddam return to his old tricks — murder, repression, terrorism,
bilking Iraq's economy? Doubtful. Saddam knows we're not kidding around
anymore. Just because he's not dead under 50,000 pounds of high explosives
doesn't mean we didn't come this close to killing him. (We did.) When the
most awesome superpower in world history wants you dead, you're dead, buddy,
and if, for some reason, you are not, well, that's really just a statistical
anomaly.
What message will Saddam's return send to Iran, Syria, North Korea, and
the other axles of evil? This is the brilliant part. Returning Saddam to
power is such an unpredictable, confusing, and outside-the-box piece of
political strategy that our enemies will spend years trying to divine our
motives. No country could draw any rational foreign policy conclusion. Arab
nations may question if Saddam is working for the CIA or if he is, in fact,
a body double. Our closest allies will be at a loss to understand our motivations
as well. Imagine the river of Xanax and Paxil that will be flowing into
the U.N. as the befuddled delegates try to move their diplomatic chess pieces
around a board we have not only wiped clean but packed away and stuffed
into the attic.
As such, our political and military power will increase tenfold overnight.
Just as in high school, nobody wants to fight the craziest guy on the block,
especially when he is also the biggest, smartest, strongest, and most-heavily
armed.
Lastly, the return of Saddam will ensure that President Bush receives proper
historical credit for launching the Iraq war in the first place. With the
Iraqi dictator back in power, President Bush will finally have incontrovertible
evidence of the Iraqi regime's possession of weapons of mass destruction
— Saddam Hussein himself.
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epublicans and Democrats now share a common anxiety about Iraq: Has America
won the war but lost the peace?
