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To: jlallen who wrote (9226)	4/17/2002 2:05:47 AM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

I think we all agree that it is folly to start a war without a clear and achievable objective. In this case, the objective is to remove Saddam and destroy the Iraqi WMD capability. This is clearly achievable: I do not doubt for a moment that the US military can defeat the Iraqis and remove Saddam, though some sticky fighting in the last stages, especially in urban areas where options for air and artillery support are limited, is quite possible. As is often the case, though, the military objective is less significant than the political one. Every war is fought to attain a political objective. If this objective is not intelligently chosen, it is entirely possible to win every battle and still lose the war. This was demonstrated rather well in Vietnam. I trust our soldiers a lot more than I trust our politicians, one reason why I am more inclined to listen to Colin Powell then to the Perle/Wolfowitz clique. The political objective here is not just to remove Saddam and destroy WMD. That's fine as far as it goes, but we also have to install a government that is not a threat to us and is capable of sustaining itself without eternal US military support. This is where it gets complicated. Please do not jump to the assumption that anything would be better than Saddam. This is not the case at all. Saddam is many nasty things, but he is not an Islamic fundamentalist. He may pay lip service to Islam, but in fact he is just an old-style dictator. Saddam doesn't want an Islamic state, he wants a Saddamic state, one run by him, not by the mullahs. He may cooperate with the fundamentalists and with groups like Al Quaeda, but they will never really trust each other. Now look at Iraq. 75% Arab, with almost all of the non-Arab population concentrated in the Kurdish area. 97% Muslim. 65% Shiite. If you're going to create a political vacuum in that environment, you'd better have a pretty good idea of what you intend to fill it with, because if you let it fill itself, you will probably not like what you get. The leading Iraqi opposition group outside the Kurdish areas is SAIRI, the Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Doesn't that name just get you all warm and fuzzy? SAIRI is widely regarded as a front for the Iranian secret service. Isn't that reassuring? If we send in troops to remove Saddam, how do we assure that we won't get a fundamentalist government that could give us more trouble than Saddam? We will have to keep the troops there until we find a suitable government that is capable of sustaining itself without our support. We will have to defend that government against its internal enemies, which would likely lead us into conflict with Iran as well, since the Iraqi fundamentalists are heavily supported by Iran. Then we have to set up suitable and sustainable governments in both countries. This could take decades. Do we want to take on that kind of commitment? We also have to remember that the bulk of the Taleban/Al Quaeda force in Afghanistan remains intact, in neighboring countries. It feels nice to thump our chests and declare them a bunch of chickens that ran away, but it is also possible that they are waiting for the US to take on a major commitment elsewhere before slipping back in and starting the old guerilla warfare game. If we remove Saddam, we have to either make a long-term commitment to a goal that may not be achievable at all, or pull out and face the possibility of a fundamentalist government allied to Iraq emerging. This is not a detail, it is a major factor that has to be dealt with before a decision to fight is made. I am not sure that we cannot protect ourselves from Saddam just as effectively by means that do not require such extensive and uncertain commitments. I also suspect that the desire to "go in there and get Saddam" is driven more by emotion than by strategic necessity.