On the Right

National Review, Dec 31, 1998 by Wm. F. Buckley Jr

Wm. F. Buckley Jr.

So Saddam Has Won, What Now?

NEW YORK, DECEMBER 4

IN tight quarters with analysts of enormous experience, bonded by a concern for American strategic interests, the question of Iraq came up.

One man (we'll call him Esterhazy) told that the United Nations Special Commission charged with following up leads that would reveal Iraq's maneuvering to arm with weapons of mass destruction tripped across a very hot lead. Secretary Albright was in India. Suddenly summoned to Geneva to a special meeting of the UN Security Council she expected a revelation in the matter of Iraq and weapons development. But there was a long stall. She did not receive the information and the search party in Iraq was held away. This little diplomatic deflection gave Saddam Hussein the time to reach in and grab the suspect material before it became, so to speak, public property.

What was it? A cache of weapons? Of poison? Of chemical weapons? No, it was documentation on where the stuff was hidden and what were the plans to continue to hopscotch it about from hiding place to hiding place in order to keep it out of the sight of the UN inspectors. Why had Mrs. Albright not been clued in? Because, opines Esterhazy, the White House didn't want to come upon evidence that would absolutely have required hard armed intervention.

Why not?

A second analyst stepped forward (we'll call him Mannheim). Here is the basic reason why the White House, advised by the Pentagon, doesn't want to take Baghdad on. It is that there is no way to do the job without running into impossible problems at home.

Recall (Mannheim said) that if President Bush had had to rely only on the Democrats on the matter of the 1991 U.S. intervention in Iraq, he would not have had the backing to proceed with what was, in the short term, the most successful massive military operation in modern history. The Democrats were reluctant because of the Vietnam syndrome. This is widely known, and here the pacifists join hands with American isolationists. Arthur Schlesinger, in January 1991, intoned that the prospective operation was not worth the life of a single U.S. soldier. And it was believed that the U.S. could not stay firm up against successive, day by day, week by week CNN accounts of casualties, foreign let alone American.

This did not happen, Mannheim reminded us. But an effective operation against Baghdad would be very very bloody indeed. Just to begin with, there would be hostages, every American and European Saddam Hussein could scoop up. Begin then with the military objectives. If you do not take out the Republican Guard, which is the mainstay of Saddam's power, you have accomplished nothing. But in order to smash it, the command posts need to be targeted and missiles of less than fine-tuned size need to be dropped. Actually to pulverize the fighting strength of Saddam requires saturated attacks on targeted areas of Iraq.

Over how long a period of time?, the obvious question was asked.

Two months was Mannheim's estimate. Exactly, Esterhazy agreed. "And that's why the White House isn't going ahead. There is no way to win it unless the character of U.S. citizens alters, in the matter of accepting casualties: not only our own, but casualties, faithfully reproduced hour after hour on the news, of civilians."

What then is forecast?

Inasmuch as Saddam Hussein has mastered the art of delay, we are coming very quickly (one year, in the estimation of Esterhazy) to the point when the United Nations will no longer approve a continuation of sanctions. Saddam will have said: Look, it's been eight years and you have come up with no hidden weapons. The sanctions' removal will mean a flow of wealth (though reduced by the low price of oil) sufficient to build hardware yet again. And the weapons of mass destruction will come up from the catacombs they have danced about in.

What then will we need to rely upon?

If we tackled the challenge quickly and decisively we could develop, based on Aegis technology, anti-missile theater defense. To do it right, we'd have to begin by announcing our withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and its constricting provisions.

And then too, Israel has an atom bomb.

Maneuvers & Counter-Maneuvers

NEW YORK, DECEMBER 1

HERE is a synopsis on the Clinton situation, wrenched out of the busy events of the past few days and including the exegeses on the Sunday talk shows.

1. White House Management feels the need to handle the perjury count on two fronts. One front calls for acknowledging the lies, in the between-us-kids mode- Yeah, I had sex with the girl and denied it. To the other forum, which is the Justice Department, the line is, Who says I lied?! My lawyers are on record as saying I never committed perjury.

2. That line is complicated by the language required to plead Management's innocence. It boils down to, How do you define sexual relations? Management's position is that what he did with "that woman" wasn't "sexual relations," as the term is defined here and there. But an etymological Congressional debate on the question isn't something he wants to burden his defenders in the House of Representatives with. "We will now examine the question, Is fellatio sexual relations? Mr. Conyers, you have ten minutes."