PartyTime: Bush hasn't been listening to this thread <G>...
Why Bush Won't Wait
By BILL KELLER
Columnist
The New York Times
January 25, 2003
President Bush says he has not yet decided whether to go to war with Iraq, but this week the signs were that he had all but given up on peace. Administration hawks, who had been worrying that American resolve would dissipate during a prolonged game of inspection cat-and-mouse, are suddenly being sent forth to proclaim the weapons hunt a farce. State Department officials, who thought they had maneuvered us off the short road to war, seem resigned to the fact that they have probably failed.
Maybe this is just another mood swing, or an effort to ratchet up the pressure again in hopes Iraqis will disarm themselves. But I suspect that the new official refrain — "Time is running out" — means the chief inspector, Hans Blix, should not count on the several more months he wants to do his job. The internal debate now is not war versus peace, or this year versus next year, but February versus March.
So what's the hurry?
I can't claim to know what Mr. Bush thinks, but I have an idea what he is hearing. It goes something like this:
The detour through the United Nations looks more than ever like a dead end. Saddam's shuck and jive shows he will never come clean. The antiwar tantrums of France and Germany just encourage his intransigence.
The only way to force the issue is to set war in motion — but once you do, it can't be a false start. Saddam's nervous neighbors have watched America do that before, talk tough and back down, leaving them in the lurch.
Perhaps if we give Mr. Blix a few more months to chase wild geese around Iraq, the U.N. will reward us by endorsing war, but we can already count on a substantial coalition: The gulf Arabs are on board (if they are sure we will see it through to the end), probably Turkey (which wants leverage over the future of its neighbor), the Brits, the Aussies, Italians, Spanish and all those dependable ex-Communists. The Russians and French might even jump on the train once it's moving, to protect their investments. Where's the unilateral in that?
The polls that show support for war steadily dwindling are not likely to get better. And while Americans may not be eager to go to war, at least they expect to go to war. Plus, once we are no longer worried about the Iraqis playing hide-and-seek with the inspectors, we are freer to lay out our evidence of Iraqi concealment — though, frankly, Mr. President, that's something of a problem, since we can't agree among ourselves how conclusive the evidence is.
Delay means more time for other things to go wrong in the world — more North Koreas. Delay, Mr. President, means the North Koreans wonder what you're really made of. Delay means that all this uncertainty continues to be a drag on the global economy. Delay means more time for Saddam to prepare nasty surprises for an invading force (or to help terrorists go for our back).
By mid-February, 150,000 American troops and at least four aircraft carrier battle groups will be deployed in the region around Iraq. You cannot park the Fourth Infantry Division in the desert for very long before the waiting erodes battle readiness and angers our hosts. And in summer the heat saps a fighting force.
The fact that we are ready for a war is not, by itself, reason to fight one — unless you are convinced that the non-war option has been closed off, that Iraq will never otherwise be rendered harmless. Which you are, aren't you, Mr. President?
This makes a tempting rationale, particularly to a president who worships decisiveness. But you do not have to be a peacenik to fear the cost of rushing in.
So far in its showdown with Iraq, the Bush administration has mostly done the right things, though often with a disheartening lack of finesse. Mr. Bush was right to identify Saddam Hussein as a menace, right to mobilize our might to prove we mean business, right to seek the blessing of Congress and the Security Council. A credible demonstration of will has produced tangible results. The inspectors are at work. Arab neighbors are looking for ways the Iraqis can solve their Saddam problem short of an invasion. (The prospect of a coup or an asylum deal for Saddam may be remote, but give them credit for creative thinking.) Saudi Arabia was moved, first, to propose a peace plan for Israel and Palestine, and second, to suggest a charter for political and economic reform in the Arab world.
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There are compelling reasons for war with Iraq. Mr. Bush has been wise to emphasize the danger Saddam poses because of his unrelenting campaign to acquire weapons of horrible power. His mere possession of such weapons would give him daunting power in a vital region.
Many Americans and some of our allies have mistaken inspection for an answer to this problem. In fact, inspections have always been a way to buy some time, during which the regime might crumble, or Iraq might shock us all by really surrendering its weapons, or Iraqi non-compliance would exhaust the patience of even the French. Eventually, though, the inspectors go away, and if Saddam is still in place his quest for the nuclear grail resumes, presumably with fiercer motivation than before.
This is to my mind the administration's best argument for going to war, but it is not a terribly persuasive argument for going right now. On the contrary, at this moment, a mere nine weeks into inspections, Saddam seems to most people a less immediate threat than he was when inspections began. The presence of 200 inspectors and American technical surveillance is not exactly a lockdown, but it limits what he can get away with. Moreover, we have not yet given the inspectors time to check out our shared intelligence, or to push the demand that Iraqi scientists be interviewed in private. Pulling the plug at this point tells the world that Mr. Bush was never very serious about the U.N. route in the first place.
The second justification for war is that this is a beastly regime, chronically brutal and episodically genocidal. This is true and not irrelevant. Saddam's reign of terror weakens his claim to sovereignty, and suggests that many Iraqis will welcome us as liberators. But this was a stronger argument for ousting Saddam 15 years ago, when he was actively engaged in mass murder.
A third argument for war is that replacing Saddam offers the hope of a (somewhat) more democratic Iraq. This could begin a political and cultural reformation of a region that has been an incubator of anti-American pestilence. I'm somewhat less optimistic than the romantic interventionists about America's ability to do for Iraq what we did for Japan and Germany after World War II. Re-engineering that misbegotten region is a noble undertaking, but will the impatient Mr. Bush and his successors have the attention span for a decade of nation-building? In any case, this is another argument without a deadline. On the contrary, delay might allow us to invest more of our authority in resolving the neglected, bloody impasse between Israel and Palestine, which is a sinkhole for American credibility.
The fourth reason for wresting Iraq from the hands of Saddam is oil. I don't share the cynical view of many war opponents that this whole adventure is nothing more than a giant oil grab. Big oil companies (my father ran one until 1989) have always been much more in sync with the order-loving sheiks than with the boat-rockers touting upheaval and democratization. But oil is a big prize, and in the hands of a new Iraqi government it could be either a force for stability or a lever for rattling OPEC and undermining other Arab tyrannies, depending on your preference. It will be no less a prize if we hold off.
All of these are reasons to want Saddam gone. None are reasons not to wait — especially if haste further alienates the nations whose partnership we need to rebuild Iraq, to fight the terrorism that will surely escalate in response to our war and, incidentally, to sort out other messes that arise on our new imperial watch.
What Mr. Bush has failed to do over these months of agitation is to explain his urgency to the American public or our allies. In the year since the "axis of evil" speech, popular support for war has declined by at least 10 points. It's not that people doubt Saddam is a danger. They just think Mr. Bush is in too much of a rush. They want to see the evidence the president claims to have. They would like to know what costs and dangers we're in for. Most of all, they want the world, as much as possible, with us.
Presidents should not make decisions of war and peace based on polls. (Mr. Bush's father launched the last war against Iraq with less support than the current president has.) Nor should our national interests be decided by the faintest hearts among our allies. But the dwindling of support here and resentment abroad represent a failure to persuade, and persuading is worth taking some time.
nytimes.com |
