The New Republic September 1, 1998
Another Clinton scandal: UNSCOMSCAM By Martin Peretz
Madeleine Albright denies the devastating August 14 Washington Post story by Bart Gelman. The article explains how squelched two surprise United Nations weapons inspections on Iraqi sites that intelligence
authorities had determined contained incriminating evidence of forbidden chemical, biological, and ballistic missile arms. Of course, concealing important truths is one of Albright's lifetime habits. But her carefully parsed denials, like those of her boss on other matters, is believed neither by careful observers of U.S. foreign policy nor by the general public. Indeed, it is hard to imagine even she really believes the wider implication of disclaimer, which is that the administration has backed down from its commitment to visit the "severest consequences" on Iraq if it impedes the inspection regime mandated by the U.N. in March--a regime which is itself a pale, weak version of the enforcement arrangements to which Iraq
submitted after the Gulf war.
And the very terms of AIbright's disavowal signaled squishiness: "There will be no sanctions relief if we can't have inspections going on." After all, the point of sanctions was to maintain them until inspections had proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Iraq was no longer in the unconventional weapons business... and not before. Only months ago a U.S. spokesman had warned Baghdad of our intended
response to any violation by Saddam Hussein of the agreement his government had made with Kofi Annan: a "snap back" policy of decisive armed force. There was to be no "carrot" simply for allowing the
inspections; rewards depended on what the inspectors did--or, more precisely, did not--find.
Not surprisingly, there have been many such violations by Iraq. And, just as predictably, there has been no snap-back response or any other practical response, for that matter. Indeed, the United States has
consistently and conspicuously averted its eyes, passing the buck to the U.N., where three of the Security Council's veto-possessing members shill for the killer-tyrant. Still it was stunning to learn that this policy reversal actually included Albright's direct interventions against the inspection teams' specific plans. The secretary of state was actually micromanaging a policy she wanted to throttle. If anything calls for congressional hearings, certainly this is it. The hard information about all this was leaked to the
press and to other concerned experts from none other than demoralized U.N. personnel. And one needs no leakers to know that it was the government for which the secretary works that cut the deterrent
presence of the U.S. military in the region by just about half. No wonder Saddam was encouraged to do important mischief.
A second eye-popping article, by Judith Miller and James Risen of The New York Times, reported on the 1994 defection to the United States of a top Iraqi nuclear physicist-a defection that brought more grim
tidings for the administratinon Dr Khidhir Abdul Abas Hamza was chief planner for Baghdad's ambitious nuclear weapons program, and the picture he paints of Iraq's scientific culture is simply ghoulish, a
mixture of high technology and primitive cruelty. Iraqi officials routinely employ torture as a motivator--that is, when they're not using murder And it works: As early as 1991, Hamza says, Iraq was
mere months away from having a working uranium bomb. Never fear. Like the Bush administration before it, the Clinton administration will wave away as alarmism any near-time projections of a functional Iraqi
nuclear capability.
At least half of Hamza's own knowledge is four years old. Still, his facts mesh with the paralyzing obstacles Saddam created to thwart UNSCOM and the International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring operations, plus the routine cupidity of Western corporations manufacturing "dual use" technologies, providing good reason to think that reassuring estimates of when Iraq could have a bomb are just sop
estimates.
This is of concern to every state in Iraq's neighborhood--even those, like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, that tend culturally to extenuate danger. But one country that can never do that is Israel. That's why the Israeli air force took out the Osirak nuclear facility in 1981, the most successful instance in our time of arms control that wrested tools of mass death from barbarous regimes--an act for which even the Saudi princes, to say nothing of the Iranian mullahs, may still privately bless Menachem Begin.
It may yet fall to Israel to repeat this now admittedly more complicated feat, and not only in Iraq. The position and power of Iraq are critical to Israel's estimate of its own long-term security. When Israel and the surrounding states (with the PLO also there tucked into the Jordanian delegation as Arafat's punishment for having cheered for Baghdad) were summoned to Madrid in October 1991, it was with the
glib assumption that Saddam Hussein had been at last tamed. Few then had weighed fully the consequences of the victory that did not vanquish. So Iraq was not widely seen as a salient actor in the
ongoing drama. But that was before Bill Clinton demonstrated both his polemical outrage at, and functional indifference to, Iraq's various provocations, including Saddam's movement into Kurdish "safe
havens" and the attempted assassination of George Bush.
Albright is readying for another confrontation with Israel in the next days. She wants a win somewhere, and it's easier to squeeze an ally than confront an adversary. Maybe Benjamin Netanyahu will give her the altogether arbitrary 13.1 percent of the West Bank she wants for the Palestinian Authority, with the last three percent of this under some form of more limited Palestinian control. But this will do nothing to advance a real peace process based on compromise and concessions from both sides. Yes, the Palestinians will make some reciprocal promises for what they get. But, when they fail to deliver on them, the secretary of state will not muster anything like the anger she has focused on Bibi. Albright is intent on pacifying Arafat, much as she is intent on pacifying Saddam.
The grim reality is, however, that no one will be able truly to pacify or to reconcile Arafat. He and his polity want what they cannot get, not from the present Israeli authorities, and not from the Labor
opposition either Israel does have a final line, drawn quite literally in the sand, beyond which it will not and dare not go. When it finally dawns on the Palestinians that no responsible Israeli government would allow descendants of Arab refugees and voluntary emigres of 50 years ago to settle in the homes of their over-rich imaginations in Haifa and Jaffa, Ramle and Safed, or to give up anything near what the PLO has convinced its population it will get of the territories, or to divide sovereignty in Jerusalem, or to cede
control of aquifers, we will find them holding what has already been achieved by way of self-government hostage to their grander ambitions. Riot is what is threatened, and riot is what is likely to happen.
And what has this to do with Saddam Hussein's Iraq? One day the ruler of Baghdad will try to have his troops sweep through Jordan. May King Hussein live, as the Jews say, until 120, and may he ward away
evil from his land. But, if he can't, Israel would have to intervene immediately against Iraqi forces just as Israel did when, in 1970, Syrian ranks headed south with aggressive aims against the monarchy. Iraq's troops will certainly try to reach the Jordan River if I am right about what is likely to happen in emergent Palestine, and they will attempt this even if I am wrong in my gloomy anticipations. Just maybe, in exchange for a more or less contiguous state, the official Palestinians will actually stop taking political hallucinogens. But this won't affect Saddam. Nothing Israel does will ever conciliate a man whose imperial pretensions are whetted by the sheer presence of a Jewish polity in the area. Were Israel even to retreat to a new city-state in Tel Aviv this wouldn't be enough for the Tikriti mass murderer. And, truth to tell, it won't be enough for many Palestinians either. Ever.
One of the reasons Benjamin Netanyahu may seem so obdurate is that Saddam is still on the center stage from which we had every right to expect he would have long ago been removed. Saddam and the political culture of which he is an authentic expression constitute the wildest card in Middle East affairs. After the Gulf war, then Secretary of State James Baker brooded about forcibly linking Israel's withdrawal
from the West Bank to Iraq's withdrawal from Kuwait, and it isn't as if he didn't try. This was illogical. Israel's conflict with the Palestinians had, and has, nothing to do with Baghdad's coveting another Arab country's oil fields. The linkage actually goes the other way. Israel has good reason to be anxious about Iraq. Already in 1991, Saddam targeted Israel with SCUD missiles, even though Jerusalem had been pointedly excluded from the military alliance Secretary Baker cobbled together for the Gulf war. Saddam makes no secret of his hatred for Israel and of his contempt for those Arabs who have, however reluctantly, come to tentative terms with the Jews. Courting all kinds of troubles, Baghdad does not invest so heavily in biological agents, chemical compounds, and nuclear functionality just to make a statement. The regime knows where it will direct whatever weaponry it possesses, and one of its targets surely is the people of Israel.
This is the salient linkage between how Iraq behaves and what Israel can and should do. It is ironic that Albright seems not to grasp what the administration's cosseting of Saddam Hussein means to the peace
talks with which her own conceits have become so unprofessionally entangled. When this administration came to power, Iraq was in seriously reduced straits--and this despite the Bush administration's own stubbornly naive concern for the territorial integrity of that country. Saddam's new aggressiveness is an index of how he measures American resolve, and he does not measure it highly. As a consequence, the Middle East is now a more dangerous place than it was eight years ago, a more unstable place. It is particularly insecure for Israel, powerful though it is. The territory it is being asked to hand over to the Palestinian Authority--empty desert territory, as it happens--is land from which it may have to mount a defense against Iraq, whose regime has the support of both Arafat and his opponents among the
religious ultras, the support, that is, of virtually all the Palestinians. A rule of warfare: when their enemies are at the gate, there's trouble in the cities. Iraq on Israel's border? Unlikely, you say. I'm not so sure. In any case, the United States is not giving out guarantees. And, frankly, if it did I wouldn't trust them. |
