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May 17, 2002 12:40 p.m. On to Baghdad An anti-Iraq coalition is already there.

n Washington debate, as we all know, certain notions freeze into place, become conventional wisdom, and then are repeated mindlessly over and over again whether or not they still apply.

For a perfect example, consider the debate over U.S. action against Iraq, and in particular whether there will be an international coalition in support of it.

The almost universal answer is "no," or at the very least "not yet."

But there's a clear anti-Iraq coalition there for the taking, and it has some interesting possibilities for expanding beyond its obvious base members.

Reliable members of the budding coalition are Turkey, Britain, Israel, Kuwait, Qatar, Georgia, and Oman — all of which will probably be lending us basing, operational, or intelligence help. That's not bad for a start, and provides us with the essentials for doing the job.

But important, although slightly more speculative, additions could be Russia and Jordan.

Would that we were always so "diplomatically isolated"!

But Bush critics seemingly won't be satisfied until the coalition also includes Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Iran — the backwards, corrupt, dictatorial countries that, bizarrely, are allowed to define mainstream Middle Eastern opinion.

Syria and Iran are enemies of the United States, and will be threatened by the arrival of a Western-sponsored government in Baghdad, so they shouldn't matter when it comes to assessing international support for toppling Saddam.

The Saudis, of course, are a more complicated case. But their opposition to going after Iraq is entrenched and entirely understandable.

The new Iraq, if the U.S. succeeds, will be a reasonably free, decentralized state that allows relative autonomy to Iraq's Kurds and Shiites.

These groups have been quashed by the Sunnis in Iraq throughout the 20th century, in the contemporary Middle Eastern model of governance: One ethnic or religious faction brutalizes all others.

As the indispensable Paul Michael Wihbey of the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies points out, a high-profile departure from this model scares the Saudi regime, since it operates in the traditional way: The Saudi Whabbis run a dictatorship over the rest of the diverse tribal and religious groups in Arabia.

The Saudis especially don't want repressed Shiites in the country's Eastern Province — where all the oil is — to start thinking that there's no reason they need continue to be quashed by a corrupt and dictatorial Whabbi regime (check out Max Singer's excellent piece in Jerusalem Post on the Eastern Province).

So you can count the Saudis out. But the Kuwaitis are definitely in, since it was American might that saved its royal family from a permanent life in Switzerland when Saddam came calling in 1990. Elements of the 3rd Army, including heavy equipment, are already positioned there.

Israel and Britain are America's most loyal allies. They can be counted on, even if Tony Blair occasionally has to sound nervous for the benefit of his very nervous Labor party base. (Israel, of course, will be mostly a passive ally in this case.)

Turkey is also a reliable friend, and an important one. As Wihbey argues, it will be hard to say that the Iraq campaign is an anti-Muslim affair, if it is backed by the most advanced and functional Muslim country in the Middle East.

Turkey should want to secure its southeastern border with a peaceful and prosperous Kurdish autonomous area in Northern Iraq, and with a decent government in Baghdad.

Indeed, if you want a snapshot of what post-Saddam life could be in Iraq, look at the Kurds who are thriving under the U.S.-enforced no-fly zone in the north. This should help put to rest the latent notion that the Middle East (outside of Israel) can't manage, and can't be expected, to create decent societies.

The Turks, meanwhile, continue to pay the price for the economic sanctions on Iraq, which have cut it off from what had been its biggest export-import partner. All the more reason to support removing Saddam and moving beyond the sanctions regime (which is, of course, beginning to look tattered-here's an excellent Washington Post edit on the topic).

Joining the coalition will allow Turkey to step up into the (well-deserved) leadership role in the region that the U.S. has in mind for it. An indication of this new role is Turkey's impending takeover of the peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan.

The U.S. will presumably be able to use its bases in Qatar, where it is reportedly moving equipment from the increasingly unfriendly confines of Saudi Arabia; in Georgia, where it has just established a presence at a former Soviet military base; and in Oman, were the U.S. maintains an airbase.

Russia is trickier, but still promising. The recent Bush-Putin arms deal and the new partnership with NATO are signs of a fundamental Russian reorientation toward the West.

It is not hard to imagine, in the spirit of this cooperation, the U.S. cutting a deal with Moscow to guarantee Russia oil contracts in a post-Saddam Iraq, putting dollar signs in Putin's eyes and giving Russia an important stake in an American victory.

With Jordan, it might not be a payoff, but payback that makes it a quiet member of the coalition. If the Bush vision for the post-Saddam Iraq is a constitutional monarchy with a Hashemite on the throne, sign up the Hashemites ruling Jordan.

They remember that a Hashemite king was hanged in a 1958 coup that eventually brought Saddam's Baathist thugs to power. King Abdullah would love to see a member of the family back in Iraq, even in the sort of figurehead role envisioned for the returning king in Afghanistan.

So, it seems that the proper question when it comes to Iraq isn't about the "coalition," but instead simply whether the United States will have the will to go after Saddam, and begin to wrench the Middle East status quo from its currently rancid state.

Opponents of U.S. action against Iraq, therefore, should have to explain what it is they like about the current regimes in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, and why they think that Arabs don't — just like the rest of us — yearn to be free.