Center to President Bush: Get On with the War

(Washington, D.C.): In the wake of President Bush’s announcement this afternoon that the United States was greatly increasing the size of the American contribution to Operation Desert Shield, the Center for Security Policy urged the President not to await the arrival of these reinforcements before beginning offensive operations against Iraq.

"While the President’s evident determination to prepare for hostilities is commendable, allowing deferral of their outbreak at our initiative and on our terms could prove a fatal mistake," said Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director. "The passage of time is not making the essential task of toppling Saddam Hussein and neutralizing Iraq’s power projection capabilities any easier. To the contrary, it is only increasing the costs of the inevitable conflict."

Gaffney added, "Clearly, the 230,000 U.S. airmen, ground troops and sailors currently in the Persian Gulf region possess more than a purely defensive potential. They could still be used to mount a crippling air strike against Iraq’s command and control, nuclear, chemical, biological and ballistic missile capabilities. When combined with unconventional warfare against the Iraqi leadership itself, the effect of such an attack would likely dramatically alter the situation on the ground in Kuwait and greatly improve the prospects for a satisfactory resolution of the crisis.

The Center is concerned, however, that with each passing day more forces will be required to do the job. Assuming Baghdad uses the month or so that it will take the additional U.S. forces to be deployed to the Gulf as effectively as it has used the two months it took to get the original multinational contingent there — particularly in digging in and hardening Iraqi defensive positions in Kuwait, it is perfectly possible that the new "correlation of forces" will be roughly as disadvantageous to the United States as the Bush Administration perceives the present one to be.

In addition, the weeks of military build-ups and posturing without action has already given rise to portentous divisions between the nations of the multilateral force, in the U.N. Security Council and in the American body politic. The recent factiousness in the Arab coalition currently arrayed against Saddam and Moscow’s pernicious double-dealing in the Gulf — epitomized by Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Primakov’s several diplomatic missions to Baghdad — are cases in point.

In short, it is absolutely predictable that a further month spent in a similar state of paralysis will only exacerbate these divisions; worse yet, it may give rise to political conditions which, as a practical matter, prevent the United States actually from taking necessary military steps.

Gaffney observed, "To be sure, there are risks involved in striking quickly. There are, however, even more serious risks entailed in postponing action further. One thing is certain: If President Bush has at last recognized that diplomacy and sanctions will not resolve the fundamental problem — Saddam Hussein, his ambitions and his weapons — he must get on with the war lest he greatly increase the costs of addressing this problem with military forces."