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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: yard_man who wrote (5486)	8/30/2002 11:23:28 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

President should listen to his father's advisers By William Pfaff Syndicated columnist The Seattle Times Thursday, August 29, 2002 PARIS — It is hard to judge whether the generational split on the Iraq issue — between Republicans who governed under the first President George Bush and those in Washington today — is more likely to block a war or speed its coming. The young George Bush and his neoconservative advisers and cheerleaders want the war, but opposition is widening and solidifying, in public opinion, as well as within the Republican Party. It is possible that the administration will feel compelled to go to war while it can. Gallup poll findings released last week say that only 20 percent of Americans support a U.S. attack made without allies. By now, the public has also taken note that members of the war party and their main backers in the press seem, without exception, to have arranged to be elsewhere while the last serious fighting was done, in Vietnam. The "chicken-hawk" issue is not simple demagogy. It justifies asking if those planning this war are serious, and if they know what they are doing. "Sweet is war," wrote Erasmus, "to those who know it not." James Baker, formerly the senior President Bush's secretary of state, is the latest from the father's administration to tell that president's son that while fighting against "rogues like Saddam ... is an important foreign-policy priority for America," there are some conditions to be met. The United States must have allies. To have allies, it must respect international law. U.N. Security Council backing is needed for an attack. This means a new U.N. demand that Saddam admit inspectors, with time for him to react. Next, the Palestine problem has to be out of the way before attacking Saddam. That requires an end to Palestinian suicide bombings, Israeli withdrawal to last September's positions and an immediate end to Israeli settlement activity. Therefore, Baker's actual message to the younger Bush is that the U.S. can't go to war, either now or in the near future. These conditions have not been met, and the last of them possibly cannot be met. A Palestine-Israel truce or settlement is impossible without the United States abandoning the policy of unqualified support for Israel that the younger President Bush has followed since he came into office. Until now, the hawks have simply insisted that war is necessary because Saddam Hussein is a murderous and dangerous despot, and because the world would be better off without him. Few disagree with the description, but many disagree with the proposition, since there are many such figures in the world and the Bush administration coexists comfortably with most of them. The only occasion I can recall when Washington found the sordid character of a foreign leader sufficient to justify a war was in 1989, when George Bush senior invaded Panama to seize Gen. Manuel Noriega. That operation, not the Gulf War, seems to be what the younger President Bush wants to repeat. However, Iraq is bigger, and presumably better-defended than Panama, and the political context is explosively different. In any case, the justification for a war has nothing to do with a war's feasibility. Overturning Saddam could simultaneously be a good cause and a bad idea. It is reasonable to argue that the foreseen casualties, and the foreseeable international political backlash to a unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq, could outweigh the advantages of getting rid of the Iraqi leader. This administration and its supporters argue as if the feasibility issue can be resolved by willpower or "resolve." If you question the feasibility of the project, you must somehow be on Saddam's side. If you think it is desirable to overturn Saddam, you are required to think that most of his army will run away when Americans arrive, and that the people will cheer the United States in the streets of Baghdad. It is not allowed to imagine that the Iraqi army might fight simply because it is the nation's army. The public is listening when Baker, Brent Scowcroft, Lawrence Eagleburger and other senior Republicans say that realism requires that plans to invade Iraq accommodate the possibility of a big and expensive war, significant casualties and major negative political backlash. They are making it necessary for the younger George Bush's administration and its backers to give up the irresponsible arguments they have been using. But they almost certainly have not convinced them, and by complicating their situation, they could be forcing them toward what George W. Bush has already threatened, a preemptive war — which in this case would be a war of domestic political preemption. _______________________________ William Pfaff's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Seattle Times. Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company seattletimes.nwsource.com