I don't think Saddam was mentally ill. If you define him that way why then OF COURSE you can do anything to him and his country, because for goodness sake HE is a MADMAN. But, if one doesn't accept that he is a madman, if one looks at his actions, and one sees a certain rationality working in all of them, as well as a cagey sort of logic, then your argument falls apart.
You didn't really keep up with the literature on Saddam, did you? You obviously did not read Pollack's book.
Since I am not a good source in your view, let me suggest that you read this snippet on Saddam's mentality and decision making from a very good review of Kenneth Pollack's book, The Threatening Storm.
nationalreview.com
I know it's been said before that Saddam is "irrational" — a "megalomaniac who cannot be trusted. Many dismiss these statements as bias against non-Westerners, or as hysteria by those who want to invade Iraq, and who therefore paint an unreasonably lurid picture of Saddam Hussein. Others simply credit the portrayal of Saddam as a "maniac," but perhaps wonder how a crazy man can hang onto power so successfully and for so long.
Pollack explains all this by presenting a detailed, balanced, and persuasive portrayal of Saddam's decision making. What emerges is a frightening pattern of "bizarre decisions, poor judgment, and catastrophic miscalculations," of deeply dangerous moves made with "no assessment of risks or costs." Pollack traces this pattern back decades into the past, to incidents that predate well-known cases like the Gulf War or the war with Iran. The account of Saddam's 1974 abrogation of his agreement with the Kurds, his attack on Kurdistan, and his baseless belief that the shah of Iran would not intervene against him, for example, is very powerful.
I can only begin to touch on Pollack's nuanced and well-supported portrait of Saddam, but the point of all this is that Saddam cannot be deterred. Yes, Pollack does believe that the one line Saddam is relatively unlikely to cross is direct and unprovoked attack on Israel or the United States. Although even here Pollack acknowledges important circumstances in which such attacks may indeed occur.
But what Pollack stresses is the terrible danger that, once in possession of nuclear weapons, Saddam will take this as a license to invade Kuwait, and otherwise terrorize the Middle East. The real danger from Saddam's possession of nuclear weapons is the conviction they will create in Saddam that he can act with impunity in the region, safe in the knowledge that the U.S. or Israel will not dare attack him (for fear of risking nuclear annihilation of their troops).
The frightening scenario described by Pollack, in which Saddam could seize Kuwait and threaten to nuke the Saudi oil fields if we attack, is something I've never seen publicly discussed. But as Pollack lays it out, the scenario is all too realistic. A nuclear-armed Saddam taking over Kuwait and threatening Saudi Arabia leaves us with a choice between ceding him control of the world's oil supply, or of seeing that supply destroyed and contaminated for decades by a nuclear strike, sending the world's economy into radical shock, perhaps for years.
You might not believe that Saddam Hussein would dare to contemplate such an action, given all the attention now focused on him. Read this book, and I wager you'll think differently. Saddam, as Pollack shows, "is generally not deterred by the threat of sustaining severe damage." Instead, he has a "tendency to invent outlandish scenarios that allow him to do whatever it is he wants to do, no matter how dangerous." Again, these generalization become real in Pollack's book. For example, even though Iran had again and again demonstrated its superior ability to harm Iraq with retaliatory missile strikes, Saddam nonetheless repeatedly ordered air and missile strikes against Iranian cities. This was a clear breakdown of ordinary "rational" deterrence.
Of course, this book has grabbed my attention because it bears out much of what I have been arguing of late on NRO, although not entirely so. Above all, Pollack gives chapter and verse substantiating the argument I made in "The Future Is Now" and especially in "Brave New World." In those pieces I maintained that nuclear proliferation tends to embolden rogue nations, even as it cows "rational" nations. The prospect of a world in which our conventional power is effectively neutralized, while the bold (and foolish) exploit the fear of mutually assured destruction to launch dangerous adventures, finds its ultimate realization in Saddam Hussein. Read this book, and you will believe that a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein is an intolerable danger to the world — and danger that must be stopped before the cost becomes something truly horrifying to contemplate. |
