Posted on 01/30/2002 6:08:26 PM PST by hc87
WASHINGTON-When a dramatist places a gun on the table in the first act, the astute playgoer knows that the weapon will be used before the drama ends.
In his State of the Union address, President Bush warned three nations sponsoring terror — North Korea, Iran and Iraq — that the U.S. "will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."
That means he has decided to destroy the destructive potential of the most dangerous states before any of them can credibly threaten to wipe out a U.S. city or infect our nation with an epidemic. Bush's refusal "to leave terror states unchecked" leaves only secondary decisions: when and how to attack "the axis of evil" (an apt allusion to the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis of World War II).
In ascending order of pre-emptive priority:
North Korea is "a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction"; we have been paralyzed by South Korea's fear of renewed invasion despite our intelligence indicating the North's secret nuclear buildup.
The South's capital, near the border, is vulnerable to long-range artillery. This could be countered by shipment to the South of advanced counter-artillery capable of tracking the trajectory of "incoming," thereby nullifying an artillery-backed assault on Seoul. Our B-52's could then take out Kim Jong Il's key nuclear bomb-making sites, which he now adamantly refuses to permit International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to see.
Iran is secretly building nuclear bombs with Russia's help. It supplies and controls the Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, and just escalated its war on infidels by shipping 50 tons of rockets, C-4 terror explosive and other arms to Yasir Arafat's army to kill more Israeli civilians.
These acts have exploded the myth, long embraced by wishful thinkers at our State Department, of a "moderate" ayatollah supposedly resisting the hot-eyed fundamentalists. That rosy scenario of rapprochement was sunk with the capture of the Iranian-Palestinian terror ship.
The Bush strategy to deal with Iranian theocrats sponsoring terror: Continue our isolation of them and encourage — with open broadcasts and clandestine support — the growing spirit of rebellion among repressed Iranians. This hunger for freedom has been expressed not only by soccer fans applauding America, but in candlelight vigils of 20,000 young Iranians unafraid of photographs by clerical police. A revolution is brewing, and we should be on the right side of it.
Should intelligence reveal a nuclear danger from Tehran coming onstream, however, a surgical airstrike would be called for. Saving our lives comes before winning their hearts and minds.
Iraq, of course, is the most immediate target. Because Saddam Hussein has dispersed his nuclear facilities and placed his germ warfare plants in such places as the basement of the Baghdad hospital, airstrikes alone won't meet the threat.
Despite C.I.A. chief George Tenet's dislike of the leaders of the anti-Saddam Iraqi National Congress, and despite furious posterior-covering by Brent Scowcroft and Colin Powell, our wartime president has evidently decided to force a change of regime in Baghdad.
To avoid certain military defeat, Saddam is likely to send Tariq Aziz out with "inspection feelers" to the U.N. Six months of negotiation about who (other than spying Americans) would be on the inspection teams would be followed by six months of misleading the inspectors, by which time Saddam would have his deadly weapons — and would thereby tip the strategic balance in terror's favor.
If Bush follows words with deeds, he will avert that disaster. Instead he will apply his Afghan template: Supply arms and money to 70,000 Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq and a lesser Shiite force in the south, covering both with Predator surveillance and tactical U.S. air support.
In Phase II, I'll bet it was recently agreed in Washington that Turkish tank brigades and U.S. Special Ops troops will together thrust down to Baghdad. Saddam will join Osama and Mullah Omar in hiding. Iraqis, cheering their liberators, will lead the Arab world toward democracy.
It's not a pipe dream. It's the action implicit in the Bush doctrine enunciated this week. The gun laid on the table by this political dramatist will go off in the next act.
Great line, sounds like the old Safire, at his best.
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