Pundits already at war on Iraq
Conservatives debate tactics against Hussein
By Edward Epstein
San Francisco Chronicle Washington Bureau
Tuesday, September 3, 2002
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Washington -- The war for Iraq has already broken out, as leading U.S. conservatives battle on the nation's op-ed pages and TV talk shows and in high-profile speeches.
The goal behind all the sound and fury is to convince one man, Commander in Chief George W. Bush, to either launch a pre-emptive military campaign to oust Saddam Hussein or to wait, build an international coalition and give U.N. weapons inspectors another chance to ferret out Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
The participants in the debate read like a roster of the Republican foreign policy establishment's stars.
On the side of a U.S. strike, apparently even if it means going it alone against a military establishment of some 400,000 men, are two of Bush's most trusted senior advisers, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, plus Richard Perle, a Reagan-era Pentagon official who is the ideological godfather of the tough-on-Iraq school of thought.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice has also made tough statements about Iraq in recent weeks.
On the other side, urging a go-slow approach, are several figures from the administration of Bush's father, the 41st president, who led Operation Desert Storm to oust Hussein from Kuwait but decided against continuing that operation to bring him down in Iraq. These include Desert Storm commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf; the elder Bush's national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft; and his secretary of state, James Baker.
Such conservative leaders in Congress as House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, and Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., also have urged caution. And retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East who has served as the current administration's unpaid Israeli-Palestinian shuttle diplomat, said a war with Iraq would hurt chances for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Somewhere in between is former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who says a pre-emptive strike isn't a bad idea, after a toughened plan for U.N. inspections, with a strict time limit for Iraqi compliance, is given a try first.
POWELL BACKS INSPECTIONS
Current Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview with the BBC that the United States should first seek a return of U.N. weapons inspectors to Iraq before taking any further steps. But, he added, "We should not think that the inspections in and of themselves might give us the kind of assurance that we could take to the bank."
Powell also said the international community needs to be presented with more information about the threat Hussein poses.
Rounding out the lineup is another former secretary of state, Alexander Haig, who says everyone should stop arguing and get on with the business of throwing out Hussein.
"We need less talk and more unity in Washington," he wrote in an op-ed article in the Washington Post.
The intense verbal combat is sure to intensify this week as Congress returns after its long August recess and President Bush comes back to Washington from his Texas ranch.
Most leading voices in Congress want both houses to vote on military action against Iraq, while the White House says such legislation isn't legally required. However, the administration's latest indications are that it will ask for a congressional vote of some kind, if military action is ever definitively decided upon.
NO DISSENT ON HUSSEIN
Nobody in the unusual debate within conservative ranks has anything nice to say about Hussein, whom they universally scorn as a brutal dictator who has used poison gas against his own people, invaded Kuwait and worked secretively and diligently to develop chemical, biological and perhaps nuclear weapons.
One way or another, they all agree, Hussein should go. But they disagree on how to go about this next phase in the war on terrorism, or even whether Hussein has much to do with anti-American terrorist acts.
Cheney intensified the rhetoric last week as he laid out the case for removing Hussein.
"The risks of inaction are far greater than the risks of action," Cheney said in an address to a veterans group in Nashville."Deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terror network or a murderous dictator or the two working together constitutes as grave a threat as can be imagined."
But, writing in the Wall Street Journal, Scowcroft said it's unclear what Hussein's intentions are toward the United States. "There is little evidence to indicate that the United States itself is an object of his aggression," he wrote.
He said it shouldn't be forgotten that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network has not been vanquished, and that opening another major military front would be inadvisable.
"The central point is that any campaign against Iraq, whatever the strategy,
cost and risk, is certain to divert us for some indefinite period from our war on terrorism," Scowcroft added.
MILITARY FIGURES URGE CAUTION
Analysts have also noted that the military men in the debate -- Scowcroft, Zinni and Schwarzkopf -- all urge caution.
That's not surprising, said Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland Middle East analyst. "Generals see that even though Iraq's military capabilities may be limited, they have to plan for unknown contingencies," he said.
Those possibilities include Hussein's use of weapons of mass destruction if he feels U.S. action threatens his life and his regime, either against invading forces or against Israel, which he attacked with Scud missiles in the Persian Gulf War.
Another problem is what would follow Hussein's downfall. "If we get him out of office, we'll probably have to stay there in Iraq for some period of time," Lawrence Eagleburger, also a secretary of state under the first President Bush,
said in an interview on CNN.
Baker warned that before striking, the United States must build international support. Currently, only Israel and the conservative government of Australia have spoken up in favor of attacking Hussein. Baker said a new U. N. resolution for Iraq inspections is a must.
But that, in turn, brought a response from Frank Gaffney, another former Reagan administration Pentagon official who favors a hard line against Iraq.
"We know in advance that the Baker diplomatic gambit would be a fool's errand, adding obstacles, not clearing them away," said Gaffney, who now heads the Center for Security Policy, a Washington think tank.
A WILLINGNESS TO STAND ALONE
Gaffney said the administration's hard-liners are on the right path, particularly in encouraging Bush to have the United States go it alone when it feels its interests are threatened. This is what Bush has done when he opted out of the Kyoto accords on global warming and the new international criminal court, and abrogated the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
"The party line from the foreign policy establishment types at home and abroad is that such behavior constitutes damnable unilateralism," Gaffney added.
But he maintains that the world is better off when the United States feels strong enough to "engage unilaterally where necessary and is led by an individual who is willing competently to exercise such power."
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