No More Halfway Measures

Calls have grown louder for the United States to take action
against Iraq’s
Saddam Hussein. Outlook asked a proponent of the “oust Saddam” movement
to explain how such a campaign would work.

By: Richard Perle
Washington Post, 08 February 1999

In what may be the best advertised war in modern times, the United States is marching again
toward the use of force against Iraq. The immediate provocation is Saddam Hussein’s defiant,
unrelenting attachment to weapons of mass destruction and his interference with U.N. inspectors
charged with finding and eliminating them. Given the prospect of chemical and biological
weapons in Saddam Hussein’s murderous hands, military action is long overdue.

But the more fundamental threat is Saddam Hussein himself. As long as he remains in
power, it
is idle to believe that this threat can be contained. That is why even a massive bombing campaign
will fail — unless it is part of an overall strategy to destroy his regime by helping the nascent
democratic opposition in Iraq to transform itself into Iraq’s new government. The United States —
alone if necessary, with our friends if possible — should encourage, recognize, help finance, arm
and protect with air power a new provisional government broadly representative of all the people
of Iraq.

Such a program would be neither quick nor certain. It would not be easy. But it has a better
chance, and is a more worthy contender, than yet another failed effort to organize an anti-Saddam
Hussein conspiracy among retired Iraqi generals or another round of inconclusive airstrikes. There
is no — repeat, no — chance that even a carefully conceived and well-executed
bombing campaign
would eliminate the arsenal of chemical and biological weapons (and the capacity to make more of
them) that Saddam Hussein has hidden away.

First, we simply do not know the location of all the facilities such a campaign would need to
destroy. Some would remain unidentified and never come under attack. Indeed, we would never
have learned of his biological weapons program had his son-in-law not defected with the
evidence. Since the son-in-law was executed on his inexplicable return to Iraq, we should not
expect such serendipity again. Second, despite the formidable capability of precision weapons, we
cannot expect to destroy all the targets at which we aim. Some will survive attack. Third, Saddam
Hussein would have many opportunities and even greater motive to move and conceal his
chemical and biological weapons during a war (when all inspections would cease) just as he has
done in peacetime.

Most important, even if the United States succeeded in destroying all his weapons of mass
destruction in a single, massive, sustained air campaign, there is every reason to believe that
Saddam Hussein would begin to make more as soon as the bombing stopped. Indeed, he almost
certainly has suppliers in place outside Iraq for the reconstitution of essential elements of his
weapons program. After all, no one argues that his borders are effectively sealed. The production
of chemical and biological agents can — and sometimes does — take place in facilities scarcely
larger than a living room.

To make matters worse, there is a real danger that an inadequate bombing campaign,
especially
if it appeared decisive, would be quickly followed by calls from other nations to lift
the U.N.
sanctions on the grounds that the danger was over. This would be the ultimate example of
winning the battle and losing the war.

It can no longer be argued that stopping halfway is good enough. The idea that we and our
allies could find safety in a “contained” Saddam Hussein encouraged the Bush administration to
halt Desert Storm before the job was done. That error was compounded in 1991 by Gen. Norman
Schwarzkopf’s agreement to allow flights of Iraqi helicopters, which Saddam Hussein then used to
put down uprisings in the north and south of Iraq. Left with enough military force to remain
firmly in power, including major elements of the infamous Republican Guard, the Iraqi leader
brutally crushed his opposition.

Despite Western fear and loathing, his regime has been on the mend. Since Desert Storm,
Iraq’s
leader has given us one casus belli after another. By June 1993, he had plotted the
assassination
of former President Bush, planning to blow up the president’s motorcade during a visit to Kuwait.
In October 1994, he menaced Kuwait by mobilizing his Republican Guard. Only an urgent
dispatch of American troops prevented another attack on Kuwait. In August 1996, he invaded
northern Iraq above the “no-fly” zone and killed many of the Iraqi opposition closely aligned with
the United States. And throughout the period he has violated the no-fly zone repeatedly.

Now he has broadened and deepened his interference with U.N. weapons inspections,
reducing
their effectiveness and facilitating evasion, deception and concealment. We have learned from
experience that even with intense and technically sophisticated scrutiny, hiding is far easier than
finding. At the time of Desert Storm, intelligence agencies had seriously underestimated the extent
to which Iraq had begun to assemble critical elements of a nuclear weapons program. And they
knew little about the extent of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons. Even now, after nearly
seven years of U.N. inspections, there is much that we have been unable to locate, including
mobile missiles and the weapons of mass destruction that the U.N. inspection teams have been
blocked from unearthing. Within the current U.N. inspection operation, optimistic findings from
teams in Iraq have often been contradicted weeks or months later by new evidence of clandestine
activity.

A serious Western policy toward Iraq would be aimed at the destruction of Saddam
Hussein’s
regime through a combination of military and political measures — with the political measures
every bit as important as the military ones. Chief among these would be open support for the Iraqi
National Congress, an umbrella opposition group in which all elements of Iraqi society are
represented. To be effective, support for the Iraqi opposition should be comprehensive; support
we have given them in the past has been hopelessly inadequate. In fact, help for the Iraqi
opposition, administered in an inept, half-hearted and ineffective way by the CIA, has been the
political equivalent of the insubstantial, pin-prick airstrikes conducted against targets in Iraq in
recent years.

A serious political program for Iraq would entail five elements:

• The U.S. government should, first, recognize the democratic opposition as the legitimate,
  provisional government of Iraq and support its claim to Iraq’s seat at the United Nations. (This
  would have the immediate and welcome effect of getting that slick apologist for Saddam
  Hussein’s terror, U.N. Ambassador Nizar Hamdoon, off our television screens.)
• We should begin to disburse to the provisional government some of the billions in Iraqi
  assets
  frozen after the Kuwait invasion.
• We should lift the sanctions on the territory (now principally in the north but likely to
  spread)
  not under Saddam Hussein’s control. This would catapult these areas into significant economic
  growth and attract defectors from within Iraq. Much of Iraq’s oil lies in areas he cannot now
  control or over which he would quickly lose control if an opposition government were
  established there.
• We should assist the opposition in taking its message to the Iraqi people by making radio
  and
  television transmitters available to them.
• We must be prepared to give logistical support and military equipment to the opposition and
  to
  use air power to defend it in the territory it controls.

This is what we should have done in August 1996 when Saddam Hussein’s troops and
secret police moved into northern Iraq and murdered hundreds of the opposition Iraqi National
Congress supporters. Shamefully, we stood by while people we had supported were lined up and
summarily executed. And while we did manage to evacuate many — to Guam, of all places — we
allowed Saddam Hussein’s opponents to suffer heavy losses. We must not do this again.

Skeptics will argue that the Iraqi National Congress is too frail a reed on which to base a
strategy for eliminating Saddam Hussein. It is indeed a small corps (of perhaps a few thousand)
and, to succeed, it would need to rally significant popular support. But it has been steadfast in its
principled opposition to Saddam Hussein, consistent in its democratic ambitions and, when given
the chance, able to establish itself in a significant area of Iraqi territory. It has earned our support
by the sacrifices of its members. And with American backing, it has a chance.

The fainthearted will brood about what we would do if air power alone proved insufficient
to
protect the opposition from Saddam Hussein’s army. On this we should be clear: We cannot fight
all the world’s wars in all the ways they may be fought. But we can help those who share our
goals and are willing to fight where they can contribute most. It would be neither wise nor
necessary for us to send ground forces into Iraq when patriotic Iraqis are willing to fight to
liberate their own country. And I would not want to be in Saddam Hussein’s tanks in the narrow
defiles of northern Iraq, or in parts of the south, when U.S. air power commands the skies above.
This strategy aims at eliciting a full-blown insurrection against Saddam Hussein, taking off from
territory he does not control and spreading as his opponents find security and opportunity in
joining with others who wish to liberate Iraq.

There can be no guarantee that it will work. But what is guaranteed not to
work is a quick-fix
air campaign that leaves him in power and even more intent on vengeance.

It is fair to ask why we have not had a serious political strategy for Iraq before now. In part,
the
reason is a dreadfully wrong-headed belief that somehow, despicable as he may be, Saddam
Hussein actually serves Western interests. Some diplomats and theorists believe that Iran would
be sure to benefit if he were removed from power, but holders of this view seldom do more than
assert their conclusion with little explanation and no proof. Others are daunted by the challenge of
gaining support from our allies for a policy as ambitious as the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s
regime. A combination of modest goals and hoping for the best in the long-term is, well, easier.

Effective strategy has been thwarted by the breathtaking incompetence of the U.S.
government
team responsible for Iraq policy, especially the CIA, which has been charged (by default) with
developing a program for removing Saddam Hussein. Preferring to work with Iraqi military
officers in exile to encourage a neat, tidy coup d’etat, the agency has never been enthusiastic about
supporting the democratic opposition. It repeatedly got it wrong — conspiring, unwittingly, with
groups Saddam Hussein had infiltrated, organizing amateurish clandestine operations that led to
Iraqi casualties and left him stronger than ever, maliciously undermining the Iraqi National
Congress, squandering substantial sums on consultants and public relations firms instead of
supporting those Iraqis who are fighting to free themselves from his terror. The team responsible
for dealing with Iraq, with the CIA leading the way, should go peacefully. But it may be harder to
remove than Saddam Hussein. Baghdad first, then Langley.

Richard Perle, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was assistant
secretary of
defense for international security policy from 1981 to 1987.