Erosion of resolve on Iraq

by Jon Kyl
Washington Times, 27 August 1998

“This isn’t a negotiation. I don’t plan to give them anything. I’m here to tell them exactly
what we expect them to do, said Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf as he walked toward a tent in
Southern Iraq to lay out the terms of the cease-fire ending the Gulf war with Iraq in 1991.

Oh, how things have changed seven years later. Today, the Clinton administration is so
eager
to avoid a new military confrontation with Iraq that the United States has blocked more U.N.
weapons inspections this year than has Iraq. Quoting diplomatic sources, the London Times first
reported that the administration has repeatedly intervened to prevent inspectors from mounting
what it feared would be provocative searches in Iraq; and that Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright had personally appealed to UNSCOM Chairman Richard Butler for restraint. The
American calls for restraint apparently resulted from a policy review conducted this spring, in
which President Clinton’s top advisers concluded the United States no longer could back U.N.
inspections with the threat or use of force.

One can only ask: What strategy is the administration pursuing?

During last fall’s standoff with Iraq, Mrs. Albright said unfettered access for U.N.
inspectors
and the elimination of Baghdad’s proscribed weapons programs were the overriding goals of
American policy. Yet it’s hard to reconcile the administration’s present interventions to prevent
inspections and the decision to remove the threat of force as consistent with a policy leading to
“unfettered access” for inspectors or the elimination of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. In
fact, lack of administration support for UNSCOM inspections led one of its top inspectors, Scott
Ritter, to resign.

Other senior officials have testified that the White House is pursuing a policy of
containment.
But just this year, the United States led efforts to relax economic sanctions, permitting Iraq to
export more oil than it can currently produce and authorizing the sale of equipment to rebuild oil
infrastructure destroyed in the Gulf war. In addition, the administration has only reluctantly
pursued international efforts to indict Saddam Hussein as a war criminal and has not engaged in a
vigorous public information campaign to shore up international support for maintaining sanctions.

The administration also seems uninterested in chipping away at the power and legitimacy of
Saddam Hussein’s regime. Earlier this year, Congress appropriated $5 million to support the
Iraqi opposition. Instead of using these funds to reinvigorate the opposition groups that have the
best chance of undermining or overthrowing Saddam Hussein, the administration drafted a
proposal that, in essence, would create an Iraqi debating society on the outskirts of London.

According to this detailed, 27-page plan, U.S. funds would be used to “facilitate a
continuing
series of small conferences (as many as 10-15 each year) bringing together members of the Iraqi
opposition” to discuss diverse topics such as “human, civil and minority rights in Iraq; women in
Iraqi society; federalism vs. centralism in Iraq,” as well as “the role of the U.N. in Iraq’s
economic development; rebuilding the middle class; [and] the transition from dictatorship to
pluralism.” In order to expand the ranks of the opposition, the plan calls for using U.S. funds to
pay for training sessions conducted by organizational management consultants on “office
administration, fund-raising, grant proposal writing, accounting, data processing, intra- and
intergroup communications, desktop publishing, web/internet usage, media relations, and related
topics.”

It’s simply hard to imagine how this plan could ever create an insurgency capable of
overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

The time has come for the United States to regain the will to accomplish what we sent
Gen.
Schwarzkopf and our troops to do in the Gulf war – to end the threat posed by Saddam Hussein
to his neighbors and the international community. To accomplish this goal, we need to develop a
clear strategy to replace the current regime and then begin the process of rebuilding the Iraqi
opposition, undermining Saddam’s regime through the free flow of information via Radio Free
Iraq and other outlets, systematically publicizing Iraqi abuses to shore up international support for
sanctions, and working to indict Saddam as a war criminal to further lessen the legitimacy of his
regime.

To be sure, the current situation in Iraq defies easy solutions, but the administration’s
unfocused, ad hoc policies remind me of Yogi Berra’s observation about the need for clear goals:
“You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”

Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican, is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.