Posted on 08/26/2002 4:33:04 PM PDT by ru4liberty
Hidden agendas are to Washington what cars are to Detroit or skyscrapers to Manhattan: They come in all shapes and sizes. Silent motives color the flawed "debate" over Iraq rattling through the capital.
Critics have developed the Saddam Hussein two-step to glide over underlying concerns: YES, they dutifully say, the Iraqi dictator is a thug who has done terrible things (pause) BUT the time is not right, the administration has not made its case, the allies are not with us, we can still contain and deter the beast of Baghdad.
Why this rush to prejudge a case not yet made for a decision not yet made? Let me decode a central fear of some critics: They do not think that George W. Bush and his divided administration are capable of implementing an orderly and successful military campaign in Iraq without inflicting major casualties and national damage on the United States.
They don't think this president and all his squabbling men are up to the job, despite America's experiences in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the successful use of air power in Bosnia and Kosovo and the surprisingly swift breaking of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The first thing to be said about this line of argument is that it is legitimate, important and could even come to be correct in one circumstance that I will identify. For the American public to understand the stakes in a war that no one should want to wage, this misgiving and others should be plainly stated by our current crop of foreign-policy wise persons.
But very few of those urging "Don't Attack Iraq," as Brent Scowcroft did in The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 15, are prepared to engage in open debate on the competence issue. The frontal assault is not the way the Washington policy elite fights. Positioning, deception and undoing a president's decision one piece at a time are the ways of Washington.
But the steady drumroll of opinion pieces by former national security advisers and CIA chiefs -- who when in office encouraged the Iraqi dictator to attack Iran, bolstered his forces during that war or made sure he paid no significant price for kicking out U.N. weapons inspectors later on -- suggest some of them share the skepticism of many of my journalistic colleagues over Bush's intellectual and leadership abilities.
How else to explain the judicious Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush's father and mentor to George W.'s adviser, Condoleezza Rice, going postal and public rather than seeking a quiet meeting with Bush the younger?
One problem of dynastic politics is that personal and national history become interwoven. Can Scowcroft really look at George W. and see THE president, rather than the son of the president? Perhaps he can, making him even more remarkable.
But the scar tissue is deep in the Bush 43 administration from unresolved battles of Bush 41 over Iraq. Many senior officials argued back then that: (1) Saddam Hussein could be co-opted, or at least deterred from attacking America's friends, by words and favors. (2) Economic sanctions would drive him out of Kuwait once he had proved (1) wrong. (3) The war their mistakes on (1) and (2) helped produce should be stopped short of victory because the Iraqi dictator would soon be toppled by his army.
Going zero for three might deter some from predicting with great certainty what Saddam's future actions will be. But humility would be a less important issue to a team player like Scowcroft than the need to sound the alarm of a looming disaster.
The circumstance that might prove such fears justified? There is one huge difference on the American side this time around. Bush the elder and his secretary of state, Jim Baker, were intimate friends and political allies. Baker bent the State Department to his president's will to organize the effective diplomatic and military coalition of 1991.
Bush the son is constantly at odds in public and in private with his secretary of state, Colin Powell, whose skepticism about warring against Iraq has not been hidden in 41 or 43.
Those who predict that Bush 43 will not come up with an effective diplomatic strategy to support a new Gulf War may be dealing in a self-fulfilling prophecy. If Bush cannot show that he has convinced Powell of the wisdom of his Iraq strategy, how can he convince the nation and the world? That is the question that needs to be asked openly and debated clearly, not in sub-rosa fashion.
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