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 addam Hussein
is worried.
He certainly should be. He is beginning to understand that this
time the United States means business. It isn't like 1993 when he
plotted to assassinate former president Bush and had to absorb a
few cruise missile strikes. Nor is it like 1998 when he threw the
U.N. weapons inspectors out and had to put up with a few days of
bombing. No, this time the strategic correlation of forces is moving
against him, slowly but with increasing momentum. The United States
and its allies are flush with certain victory in Afghanistan. Saddam
had no doubt counted on the same things al Qaeda had hoped for,
a bloody ground struggle in which the United States would be humbled,
Muslim solidarity against Crusaders and Jews, and anti-Western riots
in major Middle Eastern cities. But not only did the Taliban turn
out to be a paper tiger, Afghanistan has been a proving ground for
a new American operational approach towards inconvenient regimes
— isolate the target state diplomatically, build up the internal
opposition, insert special forces, bring on the air power, dislodge
the enemy's conventional forces, get them on the run, pummel them,
send in the Marines, and let the opposition do the rest.
Operation Enduring Freedom has been a useful test of the "capabilities-based"
(as opposed to "threat-based") force concept at the center
of Secretary Rumsfeld's plan for "transformational forces."
The question is, can it work again? National-security experts in
this country are debating whether the model was unique to Afghanistan
or has a generalized application, but one thing is certain —
the only way to settle the debate is to try it again elsewhere and
see what happens. Elsewhere is increasingly coming to mean Iraq.
Saddam's regime is already diplomatically isolated and has been
since his 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Thus step one has already been
achieved. The U.N. Security Council extended the "oil for food"
program and also reinforced the associated sanctions when it passed
Resolution 1382 on November 29. The resolution was appended with
a ten-page list of specific prohibited items, e.g., "equipment
for the microencapsulation of live microorganisms and toxins in
the range of 1-15 micron particle size, to include interfacial polycondensors
and phase separators." (I have no idea what these things are
but I know Iraq should not have them.) These new "smart sanctions"
as they are being called will prevent Iraq from exploiting gaps
in the humanitarian program to engage in prohibited activities,
but as
I have argued before in NRO, the existing U.N. resolutions could
be used to establish sweeping controls over Iraq were they enforced
fully, and hopefully the smart sanctions are only a first step.
Saddam has been trying his best to find an issue the Arab world
can unite behind, hoping any such show of unity will work to his
benefit. On December 15 the Iraqi leader issued a lengthy plea for
an emergency meeting of Arab leaders "for the sake of all humanity,
which is afflicted with the tyranny of the evil American-Zionist
alliance." The purpose of the meeting would be to discuss Israel's
"destruction, terror, murder and sacrilege" against the
Palestinian people, with the support of the chief terrorist nation,
the United States. Saddam has tried to play the Palestine card before
— focusing attention on the Palestinian issue was one of the
reasons he gave for invading Kuwait in 1990. This claim was the
occasion for the very astute remark from Secretary of State James
Baker, "You didn't invade Kuwait to help the Palestinians."
Sometimes you just have to state the obvious. Saddam's call for
an Arab summit hasn't found any takers so far. No Arab leader wants
to get in front of a moving train just to help Iraq. In fact a Saudi
report called the emergency-meeting idea a "cheap propagandistic
ploy" designed to ingratiate Saddam to the Arab world "to
avert the hanging noose of terrorism that is slowly tightening around
his neck." Well said.
The Iraqi opposition is not in much shape yet to challenge Saddam's
regime, but there have been some interesting developments. A report
appeared in the Israeli press that Iraqi military intelligence sent
a secret communiqué through a businessman from Abu Dhabi
to U.S. Middle East envoy General (USMC ret) Anthony Zinni detailing
the important reasons the United States and Iraq should be friends.
Among them — Iraq could share its wealth of knowledge of Muslim
extremist groups to assist the war on terror; Iraq is a stable country
in a region about to be destabilized; Iraq could give Yasser Arafat
a safe haven and "the resources for continuing his political
and military activities." Wait a minute, that's a plus? Well,
never mind, ever since we saw videotape of Uncle Saddam trying to
warm up to that frightened British boy back in 1990 we've know his
way of sending diplomatic signals is a little odd. What was noteworthy
about this communiqué was that the military intelligence
sources indicated that it was Saddam's Baath Party that stood in
the way of peace, and they were trying their best to bring the supreme
leader to their way of thinking. In other words, Iraqi intelligence
is saying, don't blame us, we aren't the bad guys, we're trying
to talk some sense into the hard liners but they just won't listen.
Was this report true? Hard to say. Maybe it is a smoke screen.
Stalin used to do the same thing, portray himself as the reasonable
moderate who had to go back and deal with the hard core Bolsheviks
in his government ("so please, a few concessions would really
help me out a lot guys"). And one can suspect that a critical
lever of power like military intelligence is under the thumb of
the Baath Party anyway, so it isn't as though its members can independently
communicate with the United States and hope to survive. But it is
possible that cracks are beginning to appear on the Iraqi facade.
Saddam is not the only one who can see which way the wind is blowing.
Other members of his regime are no doubt calculating probable outcomes
should the anti-terror alliance focus next on Iraq, and the math
doesn't look good. These calculations of interest are ultimately
what will bring Saddam down. Either his internal opponents will
overthrow him in a coup, or his search for traitors will become
so vicious and all-consuming that the regime will devour itself
in a spiral of paranoia, denunciations, and back-stabbing. The point
is that the United States might not have to build up an equivalent
of the Northern Alliance in Iraq in order to get the job done. Fomenting
a factional war within the regime could be just as effective in
engaging the natural instrument of Iraqi succession, i.e., the bullet
in the back of the head.
Tower
Medals
I have always admired the fact the Victoria Cross was originally
manufactured from metal taken from Russian artillery pieces captured
during the Crimean War, from which the decoration originated. In
that spirit I would like to propose something similar — that
all service medals awarded during the War on Terror be cast from
metal from the World Trade Center towers. Currently the salvaged
beams are being cut up and sold for scrap in Asia. One long beam
would supply enough metal for thousands of medals. And I think it
would make the decorations that much more meaningful to the men
and women who earn them, as well as let the survivors know that
a small piece of the buildings in which their loved ones perished
has been put to a noble use.
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