Bush risks isolating US, cautions Kissinger timesonline.co.uk
[ perhaps the view from Murdochville will be more to your taste, Nadine. I'm not holding my breath, though. ]
HENRY KISSINGER, the former US Secretary of State, urged President Bush to use extreme care in drafting war plans against Iraq or risk isolating America in the eyes of the world.
With his intervention yesterday, Dr Kissinger joined a growing band of prominent American military and foreign policy experts appealing to the President to show caution in his desire to oust President Saddam Hussein.
But at the same time Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, is considering controversial plans to send American special forces on to foreign soil to seize or kill al-Qaeda terrorists even without the host country’s permission.
Dr Kissinger, the elder statesman of American foreign policy, said that Saddam’s arsenal of chemical and biological weapons did provide a basis for a preemptive strike against Iraq.
But he said that the ground-breaking status of such an attack, which breached international codes about using force only in self-defence, required meticulous planning to counter the scepticism of allies and the hostility of foes.
Mr Bush should contemplate military intervention only if he were ready to see through a much longer diplomatic offensive, preparing the ground for war and ensuring a stable settlement afterwards, Dr Kissinger said.
“Because of the precedent-setting nature of this war, its outcome will determine the way US actions will be viewed far more than the way we entered it,” he said.
But that should not deter Mr Bush. The President’s aim should be to use intervention in Iraq to recast the accepted workings of the international system for a post-September 11 world, he said.
The biggest danger, though, lay in allowing other countries to use America’s intervention to justify their own acts of pre-emptive hostility, he said. “It is not in the American national interest to establish pre-emption as a universal principle available to every nation.”
Potentially the most “fateful reaction”, he said, would be if India used the example of US military action in Iraq to attack Pakistan.
Dr Kissinger, National Security Adviser to President Nixon and Secretary of State to both Presidents Nixon and Ford, echoed other sceptics when he used an article in The Washington Post to call on Mr Bush to clarify his thinking. “The time has come to define a comprehensive policy for America and for the rest of the world,” he said.
Dr Kissinger’s is the latest and most heavyweight voice to urge caution on Mr Bush as he contemplates how to bring about his Adminstration’s policy of “regime change” in Baghdad.
Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, questioned the wisdom of attacking Saddam when it was likely to prompt him into using weapons of mass destruction. “He’d have nothing to lose,” he said.
The senator argued for more diplomatic pressure to bring about a return of weapons inspectors.
However, after a week in which senior Republicans asked searching questions about White House plans, other congressional Republicans began to speak up at the weekend for the President. Senator Fred Thompson, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that Mr Bush was “in the process” of making his case against Saddam.
Senator Thompson said that a new agreement on weapons inspectors would merely give Saddam time to develop a nuclear capability. “Do we sit back and hope that we can negotiate our way out of that situation with Saddam? I don’t think so.”
Baghdad appeared to close the door on the resumption of arms inspections yesterday when the Iraqi Information Minister said that the inspectors had completed their work four years ago. Saeed al-Sahhaf told the Qatar-based satellite television station al-Jazeera that the US was trying to use them as a pretext for attacks.
Mr Rumsfeld’s plans, which would require the approval of Mr Bush, would run close to breaching the presidential order prohibiting assassinations.
They would also blur an area traditionally dealt with by the CIA.
Mr Rumsfeld, frustrated with the lack of progress in the hunt for al-Qaeda, has recently asked the Special Operations Command to consider how its highly trained counter-terrorism forces could be used against al-Qaeda elsewhere in the world. |
