What’s Wrong With This Picture? Clinton Doesn’t Get the Need For Strategic Air Strikes — Or the Right Tool For Conducting Them

(Washington, D.C.): The latest refusal of a U.S. ally — Saudi Arabia — to provide the U.S.
access
to the ports and airfields necessary to support an effective military campaign against Iraq ought to
be a wake-up call for the Clinton Administration. For one thing, those facilities would likely be
available if only the objective of American military action were the liberation
of Iraq from
Saddam’s tyranny. For another, the inability to utilize them, and those of Turkey,
underscores
the folly of the Administration’s refusal to use the ideal instrument for long-range air strikes over
heavily defended territory — the B-2 bomber.

Our Allies Will Follow If the United States Leads
Properly

Saudi Arabia and Saddam’s other neighbors understand all too well the bottom line that eludes
—
or is anathema to — the Clinton Administration: The Iraqi regime is the problem, not
just its
products.⁽¹⁾ Regrettably, Mr. Clinton and his
subordinates insist that they are only concerned
with the latter and will not seek to bring about an early end to the former.

This approach is doomed to fail. If the seven years since Operation Desert Storm prove
nothing
else, military strikes can destroy at best just some of Saddam’s weapons of mass
destruction. And
as long as his clique rules Iraq, it will be but a matter of time before the danger posed by these
weapons is reconstituted.

What is Required: In the attached article
from Sunday’s Washington Post, Richard Perle — a
former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy who now serves as a
resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a valued member of the Center for
Security Policy’s Board of Advisors — offers a different approach. In contrast to the Clinton
Administration’s doomed, symptomatic course of treatment for the metastasizing
cancer Saddam
& Company represent, Mr. Perle recommends a systemic one.

Specifically, Mr. Perle argues such a strategy should begin with substantial air strikes
designed to
take out what weapons programs it can, while targeting the Republican Guard infrastructure upon
which Saddam relies to terrorize his people into submission. Working in combination with such
military measures, Mr. Perle proposes “a serious political
program” designed to foment dissent
against the regime and encourage effective opposition to it. This program would include:

• Recognition of “the democratic opposition [i.e., the broad-based Iraqi National
  Congress]
  as the legitimate, provisional government of Iraq and support its claim to Iraq’s seat at
  the United Nations;”
• a plan to “disburse to the provisional government some of the billions in Iraqi
  assets
  frozen after the Kuwait invasion;”
• “lift[ing] 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;”
• “assist[ing] the opposition in taking its message to the Iraqi people by making radio
  and
  television transmitters available to them;”
• And “logistical support and military equipment to the opposition and to use air
  power to
  defend it in the territory it controls.”

Mr. Perle believes — and the Center for Security Policy agrees — that this approach holds
out
the best prospect of “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.”

An Indispensable Tool

Whatever the purpose of future air strikes against Iraq, the United States has at its disposal a
weapon system ideally suited for the task. The absence of nearby ground-based airfields and the
absence of stealthy sea-based aircraft though, places a particular premium on the only manned,
penetrating bomber capable of precisely delivering ordinance anywhere in Iraq from outside the
region. As General Charles Horner (USAF, Ret.), who commanded U.S. air forces during the
Gulf War, observed in an op.ed. article published in the 7 February New York
Times: “The
advanced Block 30 B-2 aircraft in Whiteman, Mo., need not rely on bases in Saudi Arabia to
bomb with impunity.”

Yet, the Clinton Administration refuses to employ the B-2 in an air campaign against Iraq. Its
refusal, however, is motivated by political considerations, not military ones. Should the
extraordinary, unique capabilities of this weapon system ever be demonstrated in combat, Mr.
Clinton’s campaign to truncate this program at ridiculously low levels would likely become
unsustainable. As a result, his Administration may needlessly expose American personnel to
enemy fire and invite avoidable collateral damage by using less efficient and capable forces. href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

The Bottom Line

The Center strongly endorses Mr. Perle’s conclusion that “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.” The Clinton Administration’s refusal to address the root of the problem in Iraq —
that is, Saddam Hussein’s regime — will inevitably result in further decay in the constraints placed
on the Butcher of Baghdad after the Gulf War. While the futility, not to say reckless
irresponsibility of this course is clear to Saddam’s neighbors, the question remains: When will it
become clear to the Clinton Administration, and at what cost?

– 30 –

1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Clinton on Iraq: Wrong Question, Wrong Answer:
It’s Not the Weapons — It’s the Regime, Stupid (No.
98-D 25, 6 February 1998).

2. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Bureaucratic Foul Play is a Threat to the B-2
Bomber, Not Foul Weather (No. 97-D
116, 25 August 1997).