ON TO BAGHDAD! LIBERATE IRAQ (TAKE TWO)

(Washington, D.C.): On 27 February
1991 — hours before President Bush
announced that U.S. war objectives had
been achieved and offered Iraq a
cease-fire — the Center for
Security Policy urged the Administration
and its coalition partners not to settle
simply for the liberation of Kuwait.
Instead, the Center argued the
American-led coalition should continue
offensive operations until such time as
the liberation of Iraq
had also been accomplished.

This recommendation was prompted by
the concern that, should the coalition
stop short of sweeping Saddam Hussein
from power, indigenous Iraqi opposition
forces might prove unable to do the job.
As the Center put it at the time:

The reality is that brute force
has kept Saddam Hussein and his
ruling clique in power for over
almost two decades. Even if
humiliated, even if clearly
disgraced, what will likely
determine Saddam’s future ability
to threaten Western allies and
interests in the region will be
his ability to continue to
exercise brute force.

The Center believes that — as
positive as the wholesale
destruction of Iraq’s offensive
military potential is — if
Saddam’s police state
apparatus is not similarly
destroyed, the Iraqi people will
be denied an opportunity for
self-governance too long denied
them. For Iraq, this
would be a tragically lost
opportunity; for the other
nations of the region, it would
probably represent a precursor to
a future conflict.

Regrettably, subsequent events have only
reinforced the Center’s concerns.
Saddam’s armed forces are brutally
suppressing rebel elements throughout
Iraq. Toward this end, a staggering array
of advanced weaponry from tanks and
artillery to helicopters and napalm have
been employed; civilian
casualties from internecine fighting are
said to have exceeded those inflicted in
the course of the war.

What
is more, reports in today’s New York
Times and elsewhere have confirmed
that considerable quantities of
the military hardware now being used
against the anti-Saddam opposition is
equipment that would likely have been
destroyed had the allied campaign not
been prematurely suspended. In
other words, innumerable Iraqis are
paying the price for yet another in a
long series of Western miscalculations
about Saddam Hussein’s intentions and
capabilities.

It would be unforgivable if
the West were now to compound this
tragedy by deluding itself into thinking
that an effective, formal cease-fire can
be entered into with the Iraqi despot.
For that matter, it is hard to see how
the various conditions now being hammered
out in the UN Security Council (for
example, the supervised destruction of
Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction) can
take place even if Saddam is not in
absolute control and his country is
simply racked by civil war. Withdrawal of
U.S. and allied forces under such
circumstances would only encourage Iraqi
non-compliance with the cease-fire and
set the stage for wider tumult.

Worse yet, the destructive effects of
the earlier conflict on the Iraqi
infrastructure — and the understandable
reluctance of Western nations to rush in
to assist in its rebuilding while Saddam
Hussein remains in power — will greatly
aggravate conditions of pestilence and
famine sure to inflict a still higher
toll on the innocent people of Iraq. Such
carnage will serve neither to advance the
stability of the region nor to promote
Western prestige and interests there.

Naturally, the alternative of moving
allied forces on to Baghdad — and, as
necessary, elsewhere in Iraq — to root
out and destroy Saddam Hussein’s military
and his police state apparatus are not
without risks. Using such forces to
create conditions under which an orderly
transition to a post-Saddam Iraq can be
accomplished exposes them to danger; at
the very least, their presence in the
region would be required for longer than
President Bush had anticipated.

The Center believes that perpetuating
the present situation runs a far
greater danger for long-term U.S.
interests, however: If the
United States continues by its actions to
appear largely indifferent to Saddam
Hussein’s persistent reign of terror —
yet partly responsible for stymieing
Iraq’s physical rehabilitation, the
political and strategic benefits that
should accrue from the American role in
liberating Kuwait could be seriously
jeopardized.

Accordingly, the Center urges the Bush
Administration to issue an ultimatum to
Saddam Hussein and his ruling clique: Surrender
power within forty-eight hours or face
the prospect of being removed by
coalition forces. Either way, an
interim government, ideally representing
all Iraqi factions, must be swiftly
installed. Its principal tasks should be
to organize and conduct within six months
under UN auspices free and fair elections
to determine a successor regime and to
begin the process of rehabilitating that
devastated nation.

To be sure, this approach does not guarantee
either the future territorial integrity
of Iraq, its tranquility or its inability
to threaten neighboring states in the
future. Neither, however, does the course
now being pursued by the U.S.-led
coalition.

The principal difference is that, by
adopting a revised approach along these
lines, the Bush Administration and its
allies can help create circumstances relatively
conducive to stability and security
in the Gulf. This is much to be
preferred, despite its risks, over the
alternative upon which the allies are now
embarked, one which threatens seriously
to compromise the benefits of their
recent, heroic efforts to liberate
Kuwait.