Clinton Legacy Watch # 11: Dangerous Absurdities on Iraq

(Washington, D.C.): Question: Which of the following is the most dangerously absurd?

1) The United States allowed Saddam Hussein and his Russian friend, KGB thug and
Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, to get away with murder in conjuring up, and then
formulating a “solution” to, the latest crisis with Iraq.

2) The Clinton Administration is trying to claim that its management of the affair was a
complete success, thanks to the President’s effective dual-track strategy of diplomacy backed by
a military build-up in the Persian Gulf. Or

3) The Administration evidently has so little regard for the intelligence of the American
people as to try to deny the first and sustain the second.

The choice is complicated by the fact that all three of these developments are very dangerous
and thoroughly absurd. Consider the following particulars:

Not Even a Phyrric ‘Victory’ for Clinton-Albright

First, the Clinton Administration allowed itself to be completely outmaneuvered by Saddam and
Primakov, demonstrating in the process an inability to marshal and use military force effectively in
a circumstance that clearly demands it. It has been compelled publicly and repeatedly to declare
that the Iraqi regime is not the problem. It says the issue was simply the unacceptable expulsion
of U.S. inspectors. By definition then, the now-accomplished return of these courageous
individuals (or at least four out of the six that left) allows Washington to declare victory.

Now, this is rather like saying that, having left somebody holding your ice-cream cone three
weeks ago, you will be satisfied with coming back and picking it up. You can come back, but the
situation will have permanently changed: Either he will have eaten the ice cream or it will have
long since melted away.

So, too, with Saddam Hussein’s covert weapons program. During the 21 days in which there
were no UN inspectors in Iraq, previously identified assets relevant to ongoing Iraqi
chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missile programs have almost certainly been
moved and returned to service. The Iraqis have also taken advantage of the opportunity to
relocate and redouble concealment of the as-yet-undiscovered parts of these and its nuclear
weapons programs.

Saddam’s Successful Six-Year Shell Game

It should be noted that, even if the status quo ante could be fully restored, it was not all that
satisfactory. The formal review of the inspection program conducted by a UN advisory
committee last week confirmed that Iraq has systematically interfered with, sabotaged and
otherwise tried to defeat the UNSCOM effort. Currently, Baghdad is claiming that the UN
acceded last June to its demand that so-called “presidential sites” — one of which is reported to be
the size of Washington, D.C. — are off limit. While the Clinton Administration now claims that it
will settle for nothing less than the right to visit all sites, as long as Saddam is in power, such
visits will always be a losing game.

This is particularly true if, as William Safire⁽¹⁾ and others have reported, the increased
representation on UNSCOM teams of Russian, Chinese and other foreign nationals friendly to
Iraq — one of the indisputable achievements of Primakov’s hat trick — means that the Iraqis will
get more early warning with which to defeat the inspectors.

What ‘Effective Diplomacy’?

Second, the Clinton Administration was reduced to contracting-out its foreign policy to someone
who is, arguably, the least reliable man on the planet when it comes to showing (in the laughable
expression of State Department press spokesman James Rubin) “the steeliness of the will of the
international community” to resist Saddam.⁽²⁾ Mrs. Albright has been reduced to declaring, as
she did last Sunday, that the United States remains the “dominant power” in the region.
Such a statement calls to mind the President’s peevish utterance “I am still relevant” in the
wake of an earlier defeat — the Republican conquest of Capitol Hill in 1994.

Misperceiving the Saddam-Mideast ‘Peace Process’ Connection

Matters are being made worse — potentially much worse — by the Administration’s panicky
response to Arab excuse-mongering. Our erstwhile regional partners in the grand coalition
against Saddam Hussein have claimed they were going to sit out any military confrontation with
him over unhappiness about the collapse of the Mideast “peace process.” In fact, the status of
the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations has no more to do with the Arabs’ present attitude than
was the case in 1990 when there was no “peace process.”

What is at work here, instead, is the entirely accurate perception on the part of regional Arab
leaders that the U.S. has no idea what it is doing, that it is unserious about toppling Saddam — a
goal which many, if not all, privately support — and therefore is likely to leave him in power and
them at risk. Still, seeing the President’s willingness to distance himself from the present Israeli
government (the unmistakable signal sent by his decision to meet with Shimon Peres but not
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu), the Arabs are shrewd enough to drive through an anti-Israel
opening when it presents itself.

The truth of the matter is that euchring Benjamin Netanyahu into surrendering more
territory to Yasser Arafat, when the latter already has 98% of the Palestinian Arab population
under his despotic control and persists in allowing his areas to be used to conduct terrorist
operations against Israel, will make peace less likely in the Levant, while doing nothing to
promote it in the Persian Gulf. In fact, such thinking is completely backward: Few things
could do more to advance a real peace between Israel and the Palestinians than toppling
Saddam’s regime and converting Iraq from an agent of regional instability into a force for
stability.

Demeaning the American People

Third, most Americans intuitively recognize that it was a mistake to have left the Butcher of
Baghdad in power at the end of Operation Desert Storm. They also understand that the latest
round of “Iraqi Roulette” was no “victory” for the United States. Just because our brains were
not splattered this time by the revolver Saddam has pointed at our head, common sense tells us
that a chemical, biological or possibly nuclear “bullet” remains in the cylinder.

It is to be hoped that the public will be equally skeptical about the Clinton Administration’s
desperate bid to salvage its Russian miscalculation by that last refuge of Strobe Talbott and other
discredited Cold War Kremlinologists: the claim that “doves” in Moscow are being misled and
manipulated by the “hawks.” Now, President Clinton has written Boris Yeltsin a six-page letter
to educate him about the problems with Iraq, on the assumption that Primakov might not be
keeping him informed about Saddam’s record of deception.

The hard truth is that in this, as in so many other things (notably, weapons proliferation, arms
control violations, kleptocratic corruption, etc.), Yeltsin is either complicit or he is irrelevant
to the process. Whichever is the case, the bottom line is the same: Neither he nor his
government is a reliable partner in policies vital to U.S. interests.

The Bottom Line

Politicians who seek to cover their failures by transparently phony declarations that they have
“kept Saddam in his box” and implausible assurances that they will be able to do so indefinitely,
invite public cynicism and alienation. By so doing, they not only insult the intelligence of our
countrymen. Worse, they also jeopardize the popular support needed to accomplish the hard
work of toppling Saddam Hussein that remains to be done.

Whether one selects Items 1, 2 or 3 as the most dangerous absurdity, the bottom line is the same:
Saddam’s regime must be removed from power. Anything less is sure to be absurdly
ineffective in dealing with the increasingly dangerous threat posed by that regime.⁽³⁾

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1. See Mr. Safire’s powerful column in Sunday’s New York Times entitled “Clinton’s Cave-In to
Saddam.”

2. Charles Krauthammer has confidently predicted with two years yet to go that Rubin’s
characterization of the Primakov mission will be regarded as “the most fatuous remark of the
decade.” See his splendid syndicated column entitled “Munich on the Tigris,” which appeared in
the Washington Post on 19 November 1997.

3. See the following Center products: Clinton Legacy Watch # 10: Administration Ineptitude,
Appeasement Put Saddam, Primakov Back in Driver’s Seat (No. 97-D 173, 20 November
1997); Take Out Saddam (No. 97-D 168, 10 November 1997); and
Clinton Watch # 3: Saddam
Lives to Fight Another Day (No. 97-D 106, 28 July 1997).