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Splits emerge over post-Saddam
plan
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON -
An almost audible sigh of relief could be heard from a
nondescript downtown building in the United States
capital on Thursday morning when Iraqi President Saddam
Hussein appeared on television some hours after US
warplanes and cruise missiles had bombarded a residence
in Baghdad.
Media reports quoted US officials as
saying the raid was directed at a "target of
opportunity", possibly Saddam and his two sons, shortly
after the expiration of the 48-hour ultimatum delivered
by US President George W Bush on Monday for the three
men to leave the country or face a full-scale invasion.
If the raid had succeeded in killing the three,
US officials told reporters, their war plans might have
changed. But, fortunately for the neo-conservative hawks
at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) three blocks
from the White House, it appears that Saddam remains
alive, and the invasion will now go forward.
"That we appear not to have gotten Saddam
Hussein last night ... may be a blessing in disguise,"
came the e-mail message from the AEI's press center. "As
in Operation Desert Storm [in 1991], the measure of
victory in this war against Iraq will not be how big we
start but where and when we stop," continued the message
from resident fellow Tom Donnelly.
"'Going to
Baghdad' means more than physically occupying the city.
It is a metaphor for tearing out 'Saddamism', root and
branch. There will be many moments - and a quick kill on
Saddam would be one - where some might be tempted to
say, as the first Bush administration did when the
television pictures of the famous Highway of Death hit
American airwaves in 1991, that enough has been done."
Perish the thought, say the AEI hawks who, led
by another resident scholar and chairman of the
Pentagon's Defense Policy Board (DPB), Richard Perle,
are deeply worried that that their hopes for a
thoroughgoing purge of officials from Saddam's Ba'ath
Party as the first step to transforming the entire Arab
Middle East, may yet be frustrated.
Eighteen
months after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks,
the coalition of forces that has beaten the war drums
against Baghdad virtually since the dust settled in
Lower Manhattan has agreed that the "war on terrorism"
must include the ouster of Saddam.
The
coalition, in the administration centered in the offices
of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President
Dick Cheney, has in essence consisted of three
components: hard right-wing or nationalist Republicans
such as the Pentagon chief and vice president;
neo-conservatives like Perle and most of Rumsfeld's and
Cheney's immediate subordinates, such as Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; and the Christian right, whose
concerns have been represented most forcefully within
the White House itself, particularly among Bush's
domestic advisors.
While all three groups have
agreed on key tactics - such as marginalizing to the
greatest extent possible the influence of Secretary of
State Colin Powell and other "realist" veterans of the
first Bush administration - and strategy, including
ousting Saddam, they have never agreed on what happens
once the leader is removed.
"The earliest and
most salient rift [in the hawks' coalition] will be the
hard-right nationalists, like Rumsfeld and Cheney, and
the neo-conservatives," said Charles Kupchan, a
foreign-policy analyst at the Council on Foreign
Relations and a National Security Council strategist
under former president Bill Clinton.
"For the
hard right, this is really about getting Saddam Hussein
and weapons of mass destruction. Once that's done,
they're going to say, 'OK, we've done our job, now let's
get the hell out and go home.'"
But the
neo-conservatives will want to stay to ensure that the
Ba'ath Party is as discredited as the Nazi Party was in
Germany, and to use Iraq as a base from which to exert
pressure on other presumably hostile regimes,
particularly Syria, Iran and even Saudi Arabia.
The third wing of the coalition, the Christian
right, is more likely to side with Rumsfeld and Cheney
than with the neo-conservatives, in Kupchan's view,
creating a split that "will complicate George Bush's
life immensely".
In many ways, these rifts were
already apparent in Afghanistan, as Rumsfeld and Cheney
were dead-set against serious "nation-building" and the
extension of peacekeeping forces beyond Kabul for fear
it would interfere with US military operations against
Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network.
The result, which the neo-conservatives warned
against at the time, is that the authority of the
US-installed central government is basically confined to
the capital, while most of the countryside remains in
the hands of warlords. Washington cannot afford to leave
Iraq in a similar state of disorder, say the
neo-conservatives.
While Cheney and Rumsfeld
have both given lip service to the idea that
Washington's occupation of Iraq will be the first step
toward the democratization of the entire region, they
have also been the most outspoken in affirming that
Saddam's self-exile would be one sure way of avoiding
war.
This has caused no end of anxiety among the
neo-conservatives both within the administration and in
the think-tanks - including the AEI - and media outlets
such as the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard
(headquartered in the AEI building), Fox News, and the
editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal.
The
neo-conservatives say that Iraq must not only be
"de-Ba'athized", but that Washington must also be
accorded the opportunity to show the world, and
especially other Muslim states, just how powerful and
determined it is both in waging war and reforming their
political systems.
For them, "Saddamism without
Saddam" would be the worst possible outcome of the
present crisis, and they have excoriated Powell's State
Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, which
have generally opposed going to war against Iraq, for
encouraging coups d'etat or enlisting the participation
of even former senior Ba'ath officials in any
post-invasion administration.
The
neo-conservatives have long favored a far-reaching purge
that would bring to power the core of the exiled Iraqi
National Congress (INC) led by Ahmed Chalabi, an old
friend of Perle and Wolfowitz, who would cooperate with
US efforts to knock over the other "dominoes" in the
region that are perceived as hostile to Washington or
Israel.
In their view, a "decapitation" strategy
targeted on Saddam, his sons and a few other top Ba'ath
officials without a full-scale invasion and occupation
risks falling far short of their regional ambitions.
(Inter Press Service)
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