Posted on 02/19/2003 6:52:09 AM PST by knighthawk
WASHINGTON - 'We do not find that the administration has made a compelling case that he [Saddam Hussein] poses an immediate danger to the vital interests of the United States." So said an influential U.S. voice last week. But an equally influential voice opined: "the Europeans and the United Nations must recognize that Saddam Hussein does pose a clear and present danger to the peaceful international order ..."
If you make the reasonable assumption that U.S. vital interests include the peaceful international order, and that the difference is more apparent than real between a clear and present danger and an imminent one, then these two views flatly contradict each other.
The amazing thing is not that people disagree so absolutely, but that the two views were expressed by one and the same voice -- that of The New York Times. Those sentences appeared in consecutive paragraphs of the same editorial last Thursday.
Under Captain Raines and Chief Petty Officer Dowd, the Times is terribly at sea on the subject of President Bush and the war against terrorism. But the paper is not alone in its befuddlement. Incoherence or cynical inconsistency -- often both -- are typical of those whom realpolitik or political partisanship prompt to assail President Bush for his clear intention to mount a disarmament war against Iraq.
Dominique de Villepin, French Foreign Minister and commander of the diplomatic sappers mining Mr. Bush's path to Baghdad, is just as inconsistent. He and his government fought mightily -- impressively, too, except for their dishonesty -- over the wording of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441. France insisted that Saddam's 11 years of lies and deception be rewarded with "a final opportunity" to disarm.
Through gritted teeth, Washington agreed. But since that chance was granted, Hans Blix, head of the UN's chemical and biological inspectorate, has repeatedly said that Saddam is not co-operating -- is spurning his "final opportunity." Mr. de Villepin surely knew this moment was coming, yet now he is defending Saddam against the "serious consequences" that France, with the rest of the council, made plain in 1441. Instead, France suggests, Saddam needs another final opportunity in the form of an open-ended inspection regime to continue until Mr. de Villepin can think of another reason for breaking his word.
Increasing the size of the inspectorate with a few thousand extra snoops is pointless unless your purpose is to prevent action. Even when 7,000 UN inspectors combed Iraq in the 1990s, they failed to find illegal weapons. The weapons were there; Baghdad admitted to them later when a high-level defector disclosed their presence. The key point though is that even a huge inspectorate cannot find them.
The UN is no good at hide-and-seek. It can only verify voluntary disarmament. If Iraq hands over hardware and documents, the inspectors can tell whether the disclosure is honest or a crock like all the previous ones. And the inspectors have already said Saddam isn't disarming. A formal declaration is hardly necessary; the world has heard Iraqi military officers on tape discussing their "nerve agents" and "prohibited vehicles."
So we come to the final inconsistency. We know Iraq is developing weapons of mass destruction and hiding them. We know it harbours terrorists, and pays for their suicide operations. The evidence suggests Iraq was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. We know it plotted to assassinate the first president Bush. And, we also know beyond peradventure that the Islamofacists would happily nuke New York.
Every particular of the "axis of evil" speech has been proven true in the year since it was delivered and widely mocked. North Korea is now a nuclear power, and last week Iran was revealed to have two secret nuclear facilities. If we delay and appease the enemies of freedom and of all that makes us good, they will acquire the power to threaten us and all we hold dear.
There is no point in waiting and every reason to grapple with Iraq now. The legal, moral and pragmatic case for military action against Saddam is clear. Those who say they are not persuaded do not wish to be persuaded. Indeed they cannot be persuaded. And when it is too late, when another member of the axis is a declared nuclear power, the case for military action will get weaker not stronger, as it already has in North Korea.
Everyone not blinded by partisan distaste for a Republican president with more moral clarity than sophistication (the Times), or determined to hobble the superpower despite it being a massive force for good (France), should back the destruction of Saddam's terror state.
Hugo Gurdon is editor-in-chief of The Hill.
will do the job.
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