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DESPITE
SEPTEMBER 11, no president is going to make a speech from the Oval Office
saying, “Guess what, folks? Today I’ve decided to send American forces to
invade Iraq and replace Saddam Hussein’s regime. God bless and good
night.” Remember that at the height of the
Cuban missile crisis—when the Soviet Union was placing offensive nuclear
missiles in Cuba aimed directly at the United States—John F. Kennedy
rejected the option of attacking Cuba. “I don’t think I want my brother to
become another Tojo,” explained Robert Kennedy, referring to the general
who planned the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. |
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If the administration wants to take military action against Iraq—and I
believe it should—it will have to find a provocation, a casus
belli. Some suggest that we push Saddam Hussein and hope he reacts.
Kenneth Pollack, the Council on Foreign Relations scholar, proposes that
the United States launch a major covert operation against Saddam. When
confronted in the past, he has lashed out. In 1996 the CIA helped launch a
Kurdish uprising against him. In response he invaded Arbil, a Kurdish city
under the protection of the Anglo-American no-flight zones. If once again
we make him feel the heat, Saddam might do something stupid, like
attacking his neighbors or collaborating with Al Qaeda. |
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It’s
worth trying but probably won’t work. Saddam knows that America is praying
he will do something provocative. He has learned his lesson from 1990,
when small concessions from him might have derailed the gulf war. “Saddam
is not going to do us a favor,” said Charles Duelfer, who was deputy
chairman of the U.N. inspections team from 1993 to 2000. |
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All of which
means, inevitably, that Washington will have to try to provoke a crisis
over inspections. The United States should propose a new and vigorous
system of U.N. inspections—with a clear deadline for compliance. If Saddam
refuses or delays, he will give America a rationale that has U.N. sanction
and can be used to build international support. Unfortunately the
administration is paralyzed on this issue. The superhawks think
inspections are a trap. They are right to see a danger that inspections
will drag things out, turning into weekly battles about their shape and
nature between Washington and the other members of the U.N. Security
Council. The French and the Russians will quietly support the Iraqi
government and try to defang the inspections.
But that’s where diplomacy comes in. An administration that
constantly declares it represents the most powerful nation in the history
of the world seems scared witless at the prospect of negotiating with a
few French bureaucrats! And even if the inspections do not produce the
perfect crisis, Washington will still be better off for having tried
because it would be seen to have made every effort to avoid war.
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Newsweek.MSNBC.com |
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Click on a section below for more
News: |
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| The
administration seems to believe that it already has a trigger. Saddam is
building weapons of mass destruction, and the Bush doctrine of
“pre-emptive action” argues that, in an age of terror, the United States
does not have the luxury of waiting to be attacked. Pre-emption is a
well-established idea in military history and justifies a decision to
strike first, when hostilities are imminent. Israel launched a pre-emptive
attack against Arab armies that had massed on its borders in the 1967 war.
But Iraq is not gearing up to attack America right now. Invading it would
be a preventive war, which must meet a high hurdle. After all, if
developing weapons of mass destruction is enough to trigger an American
invasion, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, India and China are all legitimate
targets. It is the breadth of this doctrine that so worries staunch
American allies. |
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Newsweek International September 2
Issue |
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| “The
United States should not argue that war against Iraq derives from some
general law of pre-emption, but rather that it is a unique case,” says
Gideon Rose, managing editor of Foreign Affairs. Saddam Hussein is
building nuclear weapons. In fact he wants them so badly that he has, over
the past decade, forgone $160 billion in oil revenues so that he could
keep his labs free of inspections. He has attacked his neighbors three
times and used chemical weapons on his own people. Most important, all
other methods of handling him have been exhausted. The sanctions against
Iraq have crumbled. Three years ago Saddam had access to $200 million to
$300 million. Today smuggling and sanctions-busting gets him about $3
billion. This problem is not going to go
away. Unless Saddam is stopped, in a few years the world will almost
certainly face a nuclear-armed megalomaniac. That’s why we need to get to
work, find a trigger and—then carefully start shooting.
© 2002 Newsweek,
Inc. |
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