Reward is worth risk, Bush decides
Posted on 03/18/2003 5:38:27 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Reward is worth risk, Bush decides
Invasion could spawn terrorism, but inaction invites it, supporters say
03/18/2003
WASHINGTON - Few presidents, if any, have put as many chips on the table as George W. Bush has in Iraq.
War is a high-stakes gamble that could provoke more terrorism and produce a watershed rupture of diplomatic ties between the United States and other countries, analysts said. The fate of U.S. leadership in the world, not to mention the Bush presidency, is also at risk.
So are the lives of countless American soldiers.
"I can't think of any presidential initiative in American history that looks to be, at its start, a bigger gamble than what Bush is pursuing," said James Lindsay, senior fellow at The Brookings Institution. "Bush is pursuing a discretionary war."
Mr. Bush's aides disputed the idea that this is a war of choice, saying action has been forced upon them by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's determination to obtain weapons of mass destruction.
"He got to decide whether he was going to disarm, and he didn't," Mr. Bush said after his Sunday summit with allies. "He can decide whether he wants to leave the country. These are his decisions to make. And thus far he has made bad decisions."
Although nobody expects military defeat for the United States, skeptics say they can imagine a number of losing scenarios. They include Iraqi retaliation with chemical and biological weapons, more terrorism by angry Islamists, a long and costly occupation of Iraq and a world that remains splintered when it comes to the expensive task of rebuilding Iraq.
"We're going down a dangerous road here," said Charles Kupchan, author of End of the American Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the 21st Century.
Mr. Kupchan called the decision on Iraq a "historic turning point," as did supporters who have long called for Mr. Hussein's ousting. These supporters acknowledged the dangers but said the size of the pot justifies the heavy bet.
At the very least, the optimists said, deposing Mr. Hussein will make other nations think twice before seeking chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. At best, they added, it could lead to an Iraq that embraces democracy, which might spread throughout the Arab world.
William Kristol, who as editor of The Weekly Standard has long endorsed Mr. Hussein's removal, lauded Mr. Bush for seeking to disarm terrorist groups and states before they attack the United States.
"The Bush doctrine as a whole is a bold and very large moment in American history," Mr. Kristol said. "Since Iraq is the first test of it, that makes it big as well."
Sept. 11's effect
Mr. Bush himself has repeatedly linked his policy on Iraq to the war on terrorism, which arose from the ashes of the World Trade Center.
"The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, showed what the enemies of America did with four airplanes," Mr. Bush said in his recent prime-time news conference. "We will not wait to see what terrorists or terrorist states could do with weapons of mass destruction."
In the eyes of critics, a decision to launch a pre-emptive attack could lead to the very thing it is designed to prevent, attacks with chemical and biological weapons.
Many fear that Mr. Hussein might launch these kinds of weapons at American troops or Israel. Others are concerned that Mr. Hussein could strike before U.S. forces attack.
Critics also have nightmares of intense Iraqi resistance, such as the torching of oil fields or house-to-house fighting in Baghdad.
Retaliation could also come from outside Iraq, critics warned, especially from a growing number of terrorists angered and emboldened by the American invasion. Skeptics see a long line of new followers of Osama bin Laden, their efforts ranging from possible suicide bombers at American shopping malls to guerrilla attacks on troops stationed in Iraq.
The occupation of Iraq carries other hazards as well, analysts said. It could be lengthy and would cost billions, and other countries might be less willing to share the burden because of the diplomatic dust-ups at the United Nations.
"The American public is completely unprepared for the long-term occupation and governing of Iraq," said Jessica Tuchman Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "This is going to be a nightmare for us."
Mr. Lindsay, who specializes in foreign policy studies at The Brookings Institution, said his concern is that the United States could win the war but lose the peace, leaving Iraq more like the broken and bloodied Yugoslavia and less like the re-united Germany.
"We are good at breaking things," Mr. Lindsay said. "We are not so good at putting things back together."
'Could be very messy'
Even a relatively successful invasion could have massive unintended consequences, critics said, from radical Islamic takeovers in neighboring states to gas prices that soar past $4 a gallon to other nations deciding to launch American-style preventive attacks.
Bush supporters agreed the potential invasion of Iraq will create a different world - and predicted it would be a better one.
Taking down Mr. Hussein would not only eliminate a dictator who is overly fond of weapons of mass destruction, supporters said, but also wipe out supply lines and havens for Middle East terrorists.
Not that any of this will be easy, they cautioned. Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for the New American Century, said: "We don't think this will be a cakewalk. This could be very messy."
The problem is, he added, "if we don't deal with this, we'll be dealing with even larger threats down the road."
The presence of a friendly state in the heart of the Middle East could also bring ancillary benefits, the supporters said. It could put less-than-subtle pressure on neighboring Arab states to reform. That, in turn, could lead to a settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Then there are the Iraqi people themselves, victims of Mr. Hussein's tyranny for more than two decades.
To do nothing would be the worst option of all, supporters said. After what happened on Sept. 11, 2001, the United States simply cannot run the risk of letting a sworn enemy such as Mr. Hussein get his hands on weapons of mass destruction, they argue.
Other gambles
In many ways, to govern is to gamble, analysts said. President John F. Kennedy did so when he put a naval blockade in the way of Russian missile shipments to Cuba. He won.
On the other hand, another Texas president, Lyndon Johnson, gambled he could forge the Great Society at home and win a war in Vietnam at the same time, analysts said. He lost that bet.
If or when war comes, analysts said, it probably would not be a total disaster or complete victory. It would probably be something in between that will determine whether Mr. Bush will have enough political clout to pursue his remaining agenda.
"If anything goes wrong - and something always goes wrong in war - there is the possibility of a huge international backlash," said Joseph Cirincione, senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "and a huge national backlash that could destroy President Bush's political career."
Mr. Bush's aides said they don't see Iraq as making or breaking the presidency. They called it a national-security issue rather than a political one.
"If the president chooses to run for re-election, the public's going to look at the totality of his record," White House communications director Dan Bartlett said.
Fortune favors the bold but punishes the reckless. As Mr. Bush tries to walk that fine line, analysts said, the result could determine how his administration could meet other challenges.
Kim Jong Il will still be trying to develop nuclear weapons in North Korea. The United States is also worried that Iran, the third part of Mr. Bush's "axis of evil" continues with its nuclear-development program.
With so many potential dangers lurking, some analysts said, it's hard to imagine any major presidential initiative that isn't a gamble.
Walter Russell Mead, author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World, likened Mr. Bush to Eliza in the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, leaping from ice floe to ice floe on the Ohio River to escape the slave masters.
"The Bush presidency is beset by dangers on every side," Mr. Mead said. "After Sept. 11, there's nothing he can do that isn't risky. There's nothing he can't do that isn't risky."
E-mail djackson@dallasnews.com
If or when war comes, analysts said, it probably would not be a total disaster or complete victory. It would probably be something in between that will determine whether Mr. Bush will have enough political clout to pursue his remaining agenda.
"If anything goes wrong - and something always goes wrong in war - there is the possibility of a huge international backlash," said Joseph Cirincione, senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "and a huge national backlash that could destroy President Bush's political career."
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Dictator, sons told to decide between war, going into exile
03/18/2003
WASHINGTON - Abandoning diplomacy, President Bush demanded Monday that Saddam Hussein flee Iraq within two days, or face a U.S.-led invasion to topple his regime.
The president did not say exactly when he might order a military strike, should Mr. Hussein ignore the Wednesday night deadline. But his ultimatum was clear, and the prospect of war was plainly at hand.
"All the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end," Mr. Bush told the nation in a 13-minute prime-time address. "Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours.
"Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing."
All foreign nationals, including journalists, should leave Iraq immediately, Mr. Bush said.
As he spoke, war preparations continued feverishly in the Persian Gulf, where tens of thousands of U.S. troops were poised for battle, and the Department of Homeland Security raised the nation's threat level at home because of the increased likelihood of terrorism.
"These attacks are not inevitable. They are, however, possible," Mr. Bush said. "And this very fact underscores the reason we cannot live under the threat of blackmail."
Speaking directly to the Iraqis through what he said was a translated radio broadcast, Mr. Bush said any war would be "directed against the lawless men who rule your country and not against you."
He said any U.S.-led coalition that would invade Iraq would also bring food and medicine and the other means and material to rebuild the country.
"The tyrant will soon be gone," he vowed. "The day of your liberation is near."
And talking directly to Iraq's military, Mr. Bush warned commanders and their troops not to destroy oil wells or use the weapons of mass destruction that the United States is determined to destroy.
"War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished," Mr. Bush warned. "And it will be no defense to say, 'I was just following orders.' "
Mr. Bush also lamented that his administration had not been able to secure renewed authority from the United Nations to move militarily against Iraq to thwart its development of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
Such authorization was important to large constituencies at home and abroad, according to opinion polls, and Mr. Bush said he had wanted to forge a peaceful solution in the United Nations.
Yet, he declared, he had full authority as commander in chief to use military force to secure the nation as well as earlier authority from the U.N. Security Council to disarm Iraq.
"This is not a question of authority," the president said. "It is a question of will."
Mr. Bush addressed the nation from the White House at the end of a day of fast-paced events, all pointing to a U.S.-led war with Iraq within a few days.
He did not speak from the Oval Office, a favored television venue for presidents in recent decades, but rather from Cross Hall, the ornate, columned corridor that connects the rooms on the grand state floor.
Hussein steadfast
In the Persian Gulf, where nearly 250,000 U.S. military personnel and an additional 40,000 British troops have assembled, Mr. Hussein remained defiant.
"He will stay in place like a solid rock," the Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, told the Arab television network, Al-Jazeera, before Mr. Bush spoke.
At the same time, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan ordered weapons inspectors and other U.N. personnel out of Iraq, and many countries began evacuating their last diplomats. Some journalists also began leaving.
"It's a disappointment and a sad day for everybody," Mr. Annan said after the Iraq talks had collapsed in the Security Council. "War is always a catastrophe. It leads to major human tragedy."
Before his address, Mr. Bush summoned the top congressional leaders of both parties to the White House for a preview, including some of the risks and costs of war.
As early as next week, should the nation be fighting Iraq, Mr. Bush is expected to ask Congress to approve emergency funding of perhaps $100 billion to pay for the initial costs of deployment and battle.
The House and the Senate last fall authorized the president to use force to disarm Iraq if diplomacy failed. But many congressional Democrats have become increasingly critical of the administration's refusal to provide cost estimates of a war and of what they see as a dangerous isolationist foreign policy.
"Sadly, we stand on the brink of war," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who said she continues to question whether military action now is the "best way to disarm Saddam Hussein and whether we have exhausted every other alternative."
Still, she said, "If our troops are ordered into action, Americans will support and stand united behind our courageous men and women in uniform who will bear the burden of that action."
In the House, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the International Relations Committee, praised Mr. Bush and his advisers for their determination to "act decisively" against Mr. Hussein.
'Moment of truth'
Mr. Bush, after a meeting in the Azores Islands on Sunday with the leaders of Britain, Spain and Portugal, had held out one last day for the Security Council to embrace the immediate and unconditional disarmament of Iraq.
"Tomorrow is a moment of truth for the world," Mr. Bush said Sunday, warning that diplomacy had all but run its course in the United Nations.
But he didn't even wait half the day Monday.
"Tomorrow has come, and the diplomatic window has closed as a result of the U.N.'s failure to enforce its own resolutions that Saddam immediately disarm," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters during his regular morning briefing.
First word that the United States and its allies were no longer seeking U.N. support to disarm Iraq came just after 10 a.m. from the British ambassador to the United Nations, Jeremy Greenstock, and the U.S. ambassador, John Negroponte.
It was followed within a few minutes by the White House announcement that Mr. Bush would address the nation to demand that Mr. Hussein leave Iraq to avoid war, and a bit later by a statement from Secretary of State Colin Powell.
After a new round of telephone calls to world leaders overnight and in the early morning, Mr. Powell said, the United States, Britain and Spain had decided not to proceed with a vote in the Security Council on their pending resolution to enforce the United Nations' Nov. 8 mandate that Iraq disarm.
The votes of nine of the 15 council members - and no vetoes from any of the five permanent members - were needed for approval. But Mr. Powell said that repeated efforts at compromise had not mustered enough support and that the resolution faced a certain veto from France and perhaps other nations.
"The U.N. is an important institution, and it will survive," Mr. Powell said, "and the United States will continue to be an important member of the United Nations and its various organizations."
"But clearly," he concluded, "this is a test, in my judgment, that the Security Council did not meet."
E-mail bhillman@dallasnews.com
03/18/2003
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The United Nations ordered its weapons inspectors out of Iraq on Monday, widening the stream of diplomats and foreign journalists heading for the exits before any shooting starts.
Defiant to the end, Saddam Hussein gave no sign of heeding U.S. demands that he step down. He warned that American forces would find an Iraqi fighter ready to die for his country "behind every rock, tree and wall."
But he made a last-minute bid to avert war, acknowledging that Iraq had once possessed weapons of mass destruction to defend itself from Iran and Israel - but insisting that it no longer has them.
"We are not weapons collectors," the official Iraqi News Agency quoted him as telling Tunisian Foreign Minister Habib Ben Yahia, who was visiting Baghdad in a last-minute quest to avert war.
"When Saddam Hussein says he has no weapons of mass destruction, he means what he says," the Iraqi leader said.
His admissions were pushed aside, as President Bush prepared to give Mr. Hussein a final ultimatum in a Monday night speech: Leave Iraq or face war.
In advance of the speech, Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf said that Mr. Hussein wouldn't leave. "He will stay in place like a solid rock," he told Qatar-based television broadcaster Al-Jazeera in an interview Monday.
Baghdad residents prepared for the worst, flooding markets to stock up on food, lining up for gas and bread and taping their windows for fear of flying glass from U.S. bombs. Store owners moved their merchandise to the relative safety of warehouses, fearing bombs and looting if a war starts.
While France, Germany and Russia made clear their continued opposition to war, there were abundant signs that hostilities were imminent.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced that he was ordering all U.N. staffers out of Iraq, including 156 inspectors and support staff, humanitarian workers and U.N. observers monitoring the Iraqi-Kuwait border.
U.N. spokesman Hiro Ueki said inspectors were expected to begin leaving Tuesday. He denied that they were already checking out of their Baghdad hotel Monday night.
On a day of fast-paced events, Britain's ambassador to the United Nations said his country, the United States and Spain were withdrawing a resolution that would have given Iraq an ultimatum to withdraw swiftly or face attack. They did so because France made clear it would veto any ultimatum "no matter what the circumstances," said Jeremy Greenstock.
"The co-sponsors [of the resolution] reserve their own right to secure the disarmament of Iraq," he added, yet another sign that war was imminent.
Israeli authorities cautioned residents to "complete their acquisition" of materials needed to create sealed spaces - protection against possible missile attacks from Iraq.
Mr. al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi information minister, said that while U.N. inspectors were looking "for a white crow," an Arabic expression for something that does not exist, Mr. Annan's decision to pull them out was "regrettable."
Other foreigners were already leaving. Pakistan, Germany and the Czech Republic announced that they were closing their embassies in Baghdad. India and China evacuated their ambassadors while Greece said it expected to have its embassy staff out within days. A Bahrain Foreign Ministry official said the country's diplomatic staff left quietly over the weekend.
Britain also advised all of its citizens except diplomatic staff to leave neighboring Kuwait as soon as possible, citing a potential threat from Iraq. Finland issued a similar advisory to all its citizens in Kuwait.
The United States had already ordered all government dependents and nonessential staff out of Kuwait, Syria, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip; on Monday, it suggested that Americans in Lebanon should consider leaving.
Foreign journalists, including crews from ABC and NBC, were heading out of Baghdad for Jordan. China's official Xinhua news agency said that six Chinese reporters also were leaving.
A week ago, there were 450 foreign journalists in Baghdad. On Monday, there were 300, the Information Ministry said.
In Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, residents streamed out of the city of Chamchamal, a mile from Iraqi forces, heading deeper into the relative safety of Kurdish territory protected by U.S.-British air patrols. Cars, buses, tractors and pickup trucks were laden with rugs, suitcases and other belongings.
Nearly 300,000 U.S. and British troops are in the Persian Gulf, ready to strike.
U.S. military officers in the Kuwaiti desert issued troops ammunition and showed them photographs of Iraqi soldiers so they could differentiate the units and ranks. British Royal Marines gathered around portable radios to wait for any news on how soon they may go to war.
Still, U.N. weapons inspections continued Monday, ahead of any evacuation.
Iraq's Foreign Ministry said the inspectors visited six sites. According to Mr. Ueki, the U.N. spokesman, they supervised the destruction by the Iraqis of two more of Iraq's banned al-Samoud 2 missiles and five warheads. He also reported that an Iraqi biological scientist was privately interviewed by the inspectors.
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