Iraq talk

National Review, March 9, 1998 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 10

On the Iraq question, here is the consensus of a privately consulted, civilized fraternity.

1. The threat from Iraq is intrinsically there, and dangerous. It is safe to assume that Saddam has been carrying further the chemical (and perhaps biological) weapons he used against the Kurds early in the decade. Which is to say, he is arming himself with devastating weapons, and we are being warned of the awful lengths science has taken us to.

2. What would Saddam do if there were no interruption in his development of these weapons? Assume Day X has arrived and he has demonstrated the effect of his weapons in the style of our demonstration of the atom bomb's strength at Alamogordo in 1945. One doubts he would use the weapons even against Israel, inasmuch as the deterrent (nuclear retaliation) speaks its own language. What the biological weapon would do is make a regional superpower of Saddam, a prospect very agreeable to him.

3. As a matter of UN policy, we have an interest in preventing the development of such weapons, and this extends to a willingness to exert force to keep this from happening. The orthodox weapons available to us haven't proved successful. What Saddam most desperately wants is an end to the oil embargo imposed after the Gulf War. There is no prospect of an end to the embargo under existing circumstances: Saddam has done nothing either to redeem the bloody record of his rule, or to ingratiate himself as a newborn member of the Arab community. Inasmuch as he has no intention of undertaking reform, we prudently assume that he will continue his chemical weapons development until prevented.

4. To undertake an interdiction of this development is not possible from the air. Even if we were lucky enough to target all three (eight? twenty?) of the underground laboratories in which the work is being done, at best we'd have achieved a delay. There is no way to identify and eliminate the twenty (fifty? one hundred?) scientists who are the sorcerer's mad apprentices, and no way to prevent the raw materials from insinuating their way through such a blockade as now exists. The only way to prevent a continuation of the program is to wield effective government power from within Iraq.

5. It is not only tempting but gratifying to impose damage, when justified, of a punitive character. On the old theory of Nemo me impune lacessit (Nobody transgress upon me unpunished), we can tell Saddam that he has gone too far. How can we hurt him? Well, he has over 45 palaces, one of them just completed; it would be a chore to rebuild these, but there would of course be corollary sacrifices. These would be in human lives lost (the people who maintain the palaces) and architectural landmarks destroyed. An effort could be made to isolate special concentrations of military strength, though one assumes that some time before the bombers arrived, dispersal would have been ordered. But what is contemplated is nothing more than a magnification of the famous pinprick of 1996. Nothing came of it.

6. There are attendant losses to weigh. They include the popular vision of the superpower resisted, deflated, and humbled. The kind of thing that happened to the United States in Vietnam. There is a marked historical tendency to take satisfaction from the little man who resists the big man, never mind the reasons for the confrontation. Such a consolidation of Arab sentiment would specifically focus on Israel, that being the theater where the United States is most directly concerned. The battering could plausibly strengthen the internal hand of Saddam, if he emerged as the defiant defender of Iraqi sovereignty.

7. If that were to happen it would discourage whatever prospects there are for the opposition through the Iraq National Congress, active mostly in the north. Efforts to bring on a political transformation of Iraq depend heavily on energizing the opposition. This will require very active work by friendly intelligence operators in the region and require, also, certain cautious approaches to Iran, which has a very heavy score to settle against Saddam and presumably feels some concern over the development of decisive weapons by a country with which it shares a very long border.

8. Given these considerations, our recommendation is that on the military front we do: Nothing. Not easy to do nothing, under the impulses of military momentum. But we do have a Commander-in-Chief who can call it off, and should do so. Unless, of course, he knows something we don't know. Unlikely.