|
 veryone
by now is well aware of
the drawbacks of proxy armies, as the Eastern Alliance's endless
surrender negotiations may have helped let Osama bin Laden slip
away to Pakistan.
The only thing
the Eastern tribes were better at than negotiating and arranging
bogus ceasefires was boasting: Every day for about two weeks, there
were reports that the anti-al Qaeda tribes had claimed the capture
of Tora Bora.
I wonder if,
for all the footage we saw on TV of Northern Alliance/Eastern Alliance
tanks firing, they ever actually hit anything. I kind of doubt it.
But now there
will be much less of that footage as the war enters the new phase,
with new hand-wringing over whether we can "get" bin Laden
or not. The search for bin Laden will be the media's latest "quagmire"
— which has been steadily shifting from Mazar-e Sharif, to
Kandahar, to Tora Bora, and now to points unknown.
There is some
legitimate worry about the fight against terrorism being so personalized.
As the brilliant
Richard Perle warned at a National Interest forum in early
October, "It is terribly important that we not define the objective
at the outset as 'getting' Osama bin Laden, because if we do not
get him, it looks as if we have failed. Unfortunately, the administration
may have lost control with perceptions on this. Whether they can
reestablish it, I don't know."
Of course,
perceptions have lurched even further in the getting-bin-Laden direction
since October. The problem with this is that we have limited control
over when we actually can get bin Laden. It will depend on some
luck. It could happen tomorrow, or could take months.
But there's
a political upside to an ongoing hunt for bin Laden, which is that
it will keep the American public mind focused and maintain the urgency
of the war on terrorism. There's no reason bin Laden cannot remain
terrorism's poster boy as we take the fight on to the next logical
target, Iraq.
The New
York Times had an extraordinary piece Tuesday on how Iraq suddenly
seems much more doable to the Arab world in light of our victory
in Afghanistan, a vindication of what Daniel Pipes and other writers
on NRO have been saying for weeks: The Arabs mostly want to be on
the winning side.
The Times
quotes a highly placed Arab diplomat:
The diplomat,
who refused to be identified, noted that most countries in the
region harbor a latent desire to be rid of Mr. Hussein. He argued
that the current military success in Afghanistan, the demonstration
of a new model of warfare there and the undermining of Osama Bin
Laden's radical message have created a new opportunity to act
in Iraq.
"I now
think it is a doable," the diplomat said, adding that his
own government might oppose such an operation in public until
it became clear it was going to succeed. "This would require
a lot of governments to accept big political risks, but I believe
that in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, the governments
are strong enough to hold the people and not have an uprising."
"How
many people will cry for Saddam if he goes?" he asked.
What we'll
witness, in coming weeks, is a direct relationship between the Arab
attitude toward a war against Iraq and our seriousness about pursuing
it. The more serious we are, the more likely the Arab states are
to go along.
As NR
contributing editor John Hillen points out, in 1990 the Saudis wouldn't
have been willing to accept a U.S. troop deployment of anywhere
between 100 all the way to 250,000 soldiers. Anything under 250,000
would have been judged a half-measure.
It was only
when Dick Cheney told them we would pony up a quarter of a mil that
they knew we were serious about prosecuting the war, and welcomed
us with open arms and wallets.
Also, as the
debate over Iraq progresses, watch for liberals to be "more
Arab than the Arabs," arguing against the war more fiercely
than Arab governments on the ground who will be perfectly happy
to see Saddam go (so long as they're sure we will actually make
him go).
As for bin
Laden, we shouldn't be too picky about timing: It doesn't matter
too much whether he is killed before or after Saddam Hussein.
|
