Saddam’s Enemy Within
Better than a Northern Alliance.

By James S. Robbins, a national-security analyst & NRO contributor
December 21, 2001 8:00 a.m.

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.