Posted on 02/26/2003 6:18:18 PM PST by lyonesse
India’s leftists say it’s about oil. The VHP say it’s about the clash of civilisations. Everyone sees the US campaign against Saddam Hussein through their own prism. It’s true oil has a role. So does Islam. And WMD and terrorism.
When the US decides to let slip its dogs of war, it does so for multiple reasons, for such decisions require multiple interests to feel they have a stake.
Before 9/11, only two groups in the US security establishment were gunning for Hussein. One group was a traditional, ‘we-need-petrol’ school of thought. Under a policy going back to the Fifties, Washington took it for granted that any country in a position to disrupt the flow of oil through the Straits of Hormuz was a security threat. Invoking this principle, Bill Clinton embedded regime change into his Iraq policy. His reason: a nuclear-empowered Iraq could tip the balance of power in the Persian Gulf against the US forever. But this school was satisfied with sanctions and fomenting coups if it couldn’t get war.
The other group was a Republican lobby that argued the biggest threat facing the US was a future convergence of two trends: WMD proliferation and a new breed of terrorists willing to use such weapons. They argued that the US had to respond with a radically different security strategy: missile defence, pre-emption and rogue State eradication. Of the last, Hussein’s Iraq was seen as the most obvious target. Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney are graduates of this school.
The newly-elected George W. Bush ignored Hussein. He wanted a second term and a risky overseas mess was a no-no. The CIA and State Department argued Iraq was a nuisance, not a crisis. The oil industry went further: they wanted sanctions against Hussein lifted. His national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, wrote it didn’t matter whether Hussein got nukes or not. In other words, Bush’s Iraq policy was initially softer than Clinton’s.
Then 9/11 happened. Rumsfeld and Co. argued that Iraq needed to go down along with Afghanis-tan. Powell, the CIA and Bush gave them a thumbs down. But by the time the Taliban were history, Washington had sketched out a blueprint for a multi-front war on terrorism. Once the battle plan was laid out, it was realised that Rumsfeld’s thinking was right. Many of the warpaths against terrorism ended with an X on Hussein’s face — but for wildly different reasons.
The first and most important front in the war on terror evolved from the WMD-terror convergence theory. Al-Qaeda literature found in Kabul, Pakistani physicists hobnobbing with Osama bin Laden and a flood of other intelligence made it clear terrorists were desperate to get WMD capability. The big, hairy fear of the US today is that the next 9/11 will be done with anthrax or plutonium, not jet fuel.
This is forcing the tectonic shift in US strategic thinking. Stopping a terrorist plan that is already unfolding is nearly impossible. So the US has shifted its sights further down the chain of causality. Go after insecure sources of WMD, knock out States that fail certain indices of international behaviour, target banks that play crooked and so on.
The shortlist of nations who declined to change their ways became the ‘axis of evil’. Iraq was deemed danger No. 1. It was judged the most likely place for terrorists to get WMD. It was also felt a message had to be sent to such countries. Toppling Hussein would do just fine.
The second front was about the long-term eradication of the root causes of Al-Qaeda-type terrorism. All the terrorist-wallahs and Arabists the Bush administration tapped said the same thing: the reason educated Arabs sign up with bin Laden is a lack of democracy in their homelands. The antidote: open up the Arab world.
Two professors, Fouad Ajami and Bernard Lewis, are the gurus of this belief. Their acolytes include Cheney and Rice. Completely overhauling the Arab world is a task roughly comparable to knocking the Soviet bloc, so the White House has preferred not to blow the trumpet on this. Instead, lesser officials like the State Department’s policy planning chief, Richard Haass, and Rice’s deputy, Stephen Hadley, have served as mouthpieces. The second front warriors are pushing for the occupation of Iraq as they need a model Arab democracy. Iraqis are secular and are expected to welcome ballot boxes after decades of dictatorship. It also has enough oil to pay for its own revival.
Arab thinkers and Washington insiders say that another reason is that the US needs a lot of surplus petroleum handy for a showdown with the unrepentant cashbox of jehad: Saudi Arabia. Another derivative: the next secular Arab democracy the US wants is Palestine. The Israelis have already been put on notice.
Hussein must feel befuddled. Before 9/11 everyone from Exxon to the Elysee Palace was plugging for him. Then it all went bad. He became a target of a new, preventive strategic doctrine straight out of Minority Report and a plan to transform the Arab world so radical no one quite believes it.
This represents an enormous shift in mindset for an America-first White House that wanted even a token US troop presence in Macedonia withdrawn. Bush does not seem really bothered to explain all this to his own people. Instead, he has resuscitated genuine, but hoary, Iraqi violations of UN resolutions that all assumed were no longer worth a fight. No wonder half the world thinks the US response is exaggerated.
Bush is taking on an enormous task and even greater risk. Toppling Hussein pales in comparison to the decision to modernise Islam. As Hadley said in a speech, “This is an awesome responsibility. When future scholars look back on the history of the Middle East in the early part of the 21st century, I hope that they don’t ask ‘what went wrong?’ but instead ask ‘Why did it go right?"
Thanks for participating.
Not a great deal to add to this post. It's pretty much as I see the tendencies too. I don't know if any such showdown with Saudi Arabia is in the offing, but an Iraq free of international sanctions would certainly constitute a buffer against instabilities caused by the changes that seem imminent in the Saudi ruling family anyway.
I would add that Pakistan is under extremely close scrutiny as far as the ability of state-supported terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons. But in many ways these are more difficult than chemical and biological weapons for terrorists to employ on foreign ground. Saddam is first on the list for a very good reason - if reports are accurate he's gone places in research where the Soviets feared to tread, and with less caution and professionalism on the part of the researchers. That is so exquisitely dangerous that I marvel at the ability of the left to dismiss or ignore it.
It puts me in mind of Nixon's cagey comment which the press siezed upon and translated baldly into "Nixon claims to have a plan for ending Vietnam." That wasn't what he said.
My point exactly!
Thank you and God bless you.
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