Not ready to buy ticket to Iraq war

Doubts stop me from buying tickets early to President Bush's "Depose Saddam Hussein Spectacle."

Iraq's president is a risk-taker who makes big mistakes, as seen in the devastating 1980-89 Iraq-Iran war he launched and his 1990 invasion of Kuwait, leading to the 1991 Gulf War.

But the evidence says that he is a regional threat to his Mideast neighbors, not a strategic threat (at the moment) to vital U.S. interests.

If the neighbors, with the exception of Israel, don't want us to intervene, why should we do so?

Also, what are U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East, especially given Russia's rapid rise as an oil exporter of Saudi Arabian dimensions?

Driven into hiding, would the elusive Saddam be more likely to sell or give chemical or biological weapons to terrorist cells of all stripes?

The massive nation-building investment needed for a postwar Iraq would fall mostly to the United States. Would this country really stay the long, costly course to repair a broken nation with a near-vacuum of plausible potential leadership?

Whoever is given control the day after we declare victory almost surely will face an armed opposition waiting to re-engage. The losers will also argue convincingly that the winner is a U.S. puppet. To what extent are we willing to stabilize the new government and crush opposition to it?

Support for Saddam supposedly will collapse like a balloon hitting a pin. You might have assumed the same when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Yet millions of Soviet citizens whose loved ones had been killed in purges or sent to the gulags rallied to preserve Mother Russia.

How sure are we that a similar patriotic response would not lead to our waging war against Iraqi civilians?

When you announce your determination to topple Saddam, do you increase his risk-taking behavior? Witness a translation (www.memri.org) of a Sept. 5 editorial in the Iraqi weekly Al-Iqtisadi, owned by Saddam Hussein's eldest son Uday, calling for the formation of suicide squads to strike U.S. targets and interests.

Countering terrorism is not a do-it-alone effort because people, money and goods move so freely across borders. Yet U.S. refusal to sign the world's treaties on the environment, land mines, biological weapons and the International Criminal Court tells others that the United States plays only if everyone agrees to its terms.

Does this law-unto-itself behavior, amplified by a go-it-alone invasion of Iraq, set us up as the bullying Goliath, tempting would-be Davids to twirl their slings against us?

U.S. intelligence has not pinned down evidence that Iraq is responsible for any of the terrorist outrages of recent years -- the World Trade Center attacks, the suicide attack on the USS Cole in Aden, the attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam or on the Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 Marines. So in concentrating on Iraq is Bush pursuing outdated plans that have lost focus on the changing face of terrorism?

Does this preoccupation with Iraq and its high-end technologies divert attention and treasure that more usefully should be applied to other terrorist activities of greater threat to vital U.S. interests?

Without incontrovertible evidence that Saddam is able and intends to strike in ways that threaten our or close allies' existence, is it foolhardy of the United States to legitimize a pre-emptive-strike, hit-'em-first doctrine? Is that an invitation for India or Pakistan or China to follow our example -- but using nuclear missiles?

It will take clear, non-slippery answers that include a coherent strategic doctrine to persuade me to buy a ticket to President Bush's big show. Reach Robert Landauer, editorial columnist, at 503-221-8157 or robertlandauer@news.oregonian.com

Where do I start? The US has never said that Iraq was responsible for the Cole. Jaish Mohammed, a terrorist cell located in Chechny, was the only group to come right out and claim responsibility for the Cole. Bin Laden's support for Chechnya is how we tie him to that event. I reallly don't think that Iraqis will stand up and defend their country like the Russians did. Stalin had everyone who ran away from the front gunned down. The people of Ukraine thought they were being liberated by the Nazis and in a way they were right. There's his e-mail and phone number. Time to freep him.

This leads a U.S. bystander to ask questions:

A "bystander" eh? Mr. Landauer looks old enough to have bystood the invasion of Afghanistan and the Viet Nam, Korean, and Second World wars. On the other hand he was probably all over the himself supporting Slick's high altitude bombing of Serbian civilians. What a doofus!

the doctrine of containment and mutually assured destruction won the cold war

Well, containment cost at least several thousand American military lives in Korea and Vietnam. That, and MAD, did NOT win the Cold War. What won the Cold War was individually assured bankruptcy, on the Soviet side. Nobody threw up their hands and said, "well, we all have so many nukes, we'll never win. Let's be friends." The Soviets were forced, by Reagan, to conclude they could not compete. They dissolved.

So, now that your premise is moot, I'll at least try to answer: One of the saving graces of the Soviet regime was its inestimable bureaucracy. Even Stalin and Kruschev had to answer to somebody. One madman would have had a difficult time pulling the trigger (or pushing the button) on a nuclear attack. Saddam, on the other hand, may do as he chooses. As he gets older, he may decide that his last, best attempt at Islamic (or just regional) immortality is a stunning blow to the West in the form of a nuclear attack on us or even Israel. I'm not so sure just letting him linger is a good idea, which is why I'm for invasion and overthrow.

Expert testimony, not contradicted by the administration, is that Saddam
has been unable to create or buy nuclear weapons fuel. Interdiction has succeeded.
So might's and maybe's aside, where lies the urgent problem?

We don't want to wake up some day, six months or six years from now...
and read headlines that tell us:
1. Sadaam got his three nukes and has smoked Tel Aviv and two other major cities in Israel
(what his "bomb-maker" has told us Sadaam planned to do)
OR
2. Sadaam has his three (or more) nukes and has just rolled into Kuwait and Saudi Arabia
to take possession of their oil fields without firing a shot.
(I think Sadaam's bomb-maker now thinks that is the more likely scenario, if Sadaam
gets The Bomb.)

I dread whatever "poison pill" Sadaam may unleash if the USA attacks him...
I also fear what Sadaam might do via proxies in the future if left unmolested.
Just my opinion, but the price of waiting is probably higher than the price
of acting sooner rather than later.

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