TruthNews Commentary, August 31, 2002

The on-again, off-again war against Iraq appeared to be on again this week as Vice President Dick Cheney, Under Secretary of State John Bolton, and British Prime Minster Tony Blair all made the case for deposing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, polls show that American public support for a war has dropped, while our Arab and European "allies" warn us against going to war with Iraq.

In the face of this opposition, should America attack Iraq? The State Department has for years listed Iraq as a sponsor of terrorism, but no direct evidence has been published to link Hussein to the September 11 attacks. But this should not alter our resolve to depose the Butcher of Baghdad. Hussein may not be an immediate threat to world peace. But his determination to bent on rearm Iraq and develop nuclear weapons poses a near-term threat to both regional and homeland security.

The situation with Hussein today is similar to where we were with Osama Bin Laden four years ago. When Bin Laden blew up two of our embassies in Africa 4 years ago, then-president Bill Clinton shot off a few cruise missiles, declared victory, and went home. The missiles killed no one and only destroyed a pharmaceutical plant with questionable ties to chemical weapons manufacture in Sudan. If Clinton had displayed some backbone and destroyed Bin Laden and Al Qaida on the spot, the 9/11 attacks would never have happened. But Clinton, whose strategic planning horizon was never more than 30 seconds in the future, did not see Bin Laden as an immediate threat and was satisfied with a token retaliation to divert public attention from the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Bin Laden was allowed to continue to develop his terrorist infrastructure and recruit suicide terrorists in order to mount the 9/11 attacks four years later.

We are now at the same point with Iraq. At the moment, it will be fairly easy to get rid of Hussein. Give him a few more years, and he can blow up New York with nukes. And if you think he has no reason to blow up New York, well neither did Bin Laden. Both men are of similar mental instability. The threat of nuclear attack was real enough during the cold war when the only thing that held the Soviet Union at bay was the threat of nuclear annihilation. At least the Soviet Union was ruled by cautious dictators who were more interested in murdering their own population than in attacking America. But Saddam Hussein’s reckless miscalculations have already led him to two disastrous defeats, first by Iran in the 1980s, then by the U.S. in 1991. To allow such an unstable character to continue his headlong rush to develop nuclear weapons would put America in far greater peril than Bin Laden poses.

Besides, a war against Iraq will be a cakewalk. Hussein is considerably weaker in 2002 than he was in 1991. He lost a significant quantity of military equipment in the 1991 campaign that he has yet to recover. He gave his air force to Iran, and most of his missiles were destroyed in the inspection regime that followed the war. No-fly zones in the north and south of Iraq have established areas of virtual autonomy for a significant proportion of the country. Much of the population is disgruntled with Hussein’s corrupt and brutal regime, and a significant opposition movement has developed. In 1991, after absorbing a month of American bombing, Iraqi soldiers surrendered in droves at the first site of American troops. It’s unlikely that Hussein’s much-reduced army will put up any stiffer defense in 2002.

However, we should recall that to defeat Iraq in 1991, we took 6 months to deploy some 500,000 troops before beginning the attack. Even with such a large force, we bombed Iraq continuously for over a month before beginning the successful but prematurely aborted 100-hour ground campaign.

A war against Iraq in 2002 would entail a similar large force. With proper preparation and planning, U.S. casualties could be kept to a minimum. However, a cornered wild animal is the most dangerous animal. When Hussein sees that he’s going down, he’s likely to throw all of the dirty weapons at his disposal at anybody within reach. Just as Adolf Hitler worked feverishly to finish murdering the Jews even as the Allied armies closed in about him, so Hussein may try to kill as many Jews as possible by aiming his few remaining missiles at Tel Aviv.

In spite of this threat, Israel has encouraged the U.S. to attack Iraq. Today, Hussein has nerve gas and anthrax. In 5 years, he may have nuclear weapons. The Israelis know that, whatever the peril today, the danger tomorrow is far greater.

Besides, Hussein may be deterred by the thought of possible war crimes trials after he’s defeated. If he refrains from using weapons of mass destruction and survives the war, he could end up living a life of luxury in a Florida condo as Manual Noriega’s roommate. If he’s crazy enough to attack Israel again, he’ll end up like Adolf Eichmann -- dangling from a noose in Rabin square.

Even if Hussein succeeds in taking refuge in Saudi Arabia with his fellow Jew-hater Idi Amin, he would be unlikely to pose a future threat to world peace. Dictators, like CEO’s, are very difficult to dislodge, no matter how corrupt and unpopular they are. But once they’re gone, they hardly ever make comebacks. Their power is based on patronage, favors, and payoffs, which they can no longer dispense when they’re in exile.

Britain and France failed to deal with Hitler in the 1930s when he and Germany were weak. Failure to deal with Hussein today would have similar consequences. "Peace in our time," proclaimed that great appeaser Neville Chamberlain, fresh from carving up Czechoslovakia with his good buddy Adolf Hitler. A year later, Britain was locked in a life-or-death struggle with Germany which lasted six years and resulted in the deaths of 45 million people and the almost complete extinction of European Jewry. George Bush, Sr., called Hussein "worse than Hitler." His comparison was about as accurate as his pronunciation of Hussein’s name, but he had a point -- Hussein was then, and is now, well on his way to becoming a Middle East Hitler. If we don’t deal with him now, we could end up with Armageddon on our hands.