EDITORIAL
The return of Saddam Hussein
Ahem. Weren't we supposed to have taught Saddam Hussein a major
lesson two weeks ago when the United States and Great Britain
pounded Iraq for 70 hours with all sorts of ordnance? Didn't National
Security Adviser Sandy Berger brag that we had put Saddam back
in his box -- a metaphor so overworked it would be a mercy if
the State Department brains could come up with another one?
Well, someone obviously forgot to
tell Saddam that he's supposed to have been humiliated and his
military capacities "degraded." This weekend, the Iraqis stepped
up the confrontation with the United States and United Nations,
insisting on an end to the U.N. oil-for-food program (which after
all only benefits the Iraqi people, not its rulers), threatening
that the 400 aid workers monitoring the program would be forced
to leave. Of course, the weapons inspections teams from the U.N.
Special Commission (Unscom) are long gone, pulled out before the
Dec. 16 bombing. Iraq further started shooting at American and
British planes patrolling the no-fly zones in northern and southern
Iraq. As Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin said defiantly, "the
so-called no-fly zones only exist in the British and American
imagination." Yesterday, American planes started firing back,
retaliating against Iraqi missiles fired in northern Iraq. And
President Clinton, wearing his take-that-Saddam look, vowed to
keep the skies clear over territory inhabited by Iraq's Kurdish
population.
All of which prompts the question:
Did anyone actually think through what would happen if the airstrikes
did not bring Iraq's mad dog to heel? Will we continue to bomb
until Saddam listens to our commands? Of course, now that Ramadan
is upon us, it would be a religious faux-pas to start bombing
again. Just consider the case of the hapless sailor who committed
the sin of writing on a 2,000 pound bomb "Here's a Ramadan present
from Chad Rickenberg." This provoked the Pentagon to declare that
it was "distressed to learn of thoughtless graffiti mentioning
the holy month of Ramadan written on a piece of U.S. ordnance
during Operation Desert Fox." Oh, dear.
As noted by former crack weapons
inspector Scot Ritter in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, "Desert
Fox . . . highlighted the reality that smart bombs cannot make
up for failed policies. In fact, the military strike has achieved
the opposite of its intended effect. Rather than supporting the
work of weapons inspectors of the United Nations Special Commission
by degrading Saddam Hussein's ability to build long-range ballistic
missiles and weapons of mass destruction, the bombing has most
likely destroyed any chance Unscom had to do its work effectively."
Of course one could well argue whether
Unscom was ever able really to function effectively being thwarted
at every turn by the Iraqis and sometimes even by the American
administration as well. Sometimes it seems a case of damned if
you do and damned if you don't.
What is clear, though, is that whatever
support for keeping sanctions against Iraq in place, the only
truly stable element of U.S. policy by now, has evaporated in
the Security Council and among Arab states as well whose leaders
this week issued a statement denouncing Operation Desert Fox at
a meeting in Amman, Jordan. It will be up to the United States
and Great Britain to exercise their veto power in the Security
Council to keep the sanctions regime in place -- which will pretty
much be the only thing that stands between Saddam Hussein and
his ambitions as far as weapons of mass destruction are concerned.
Do the Clinton White House and the Blair government possess that
kind of backbone? Regrettably for the Iraqi people, sanction will
have to remain in place until Saddam leaves office, through a
coup, rebellion --or old age. Until then, he'll undoubtedly be
thumbing his nose at the world.
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