Baghdad doesn’t know the score (a good read)

Pre-emption? Well, two can play at this game of diplomatic poker. As the UN Security Council prepared to work on a resolution demanding that Iraq readmit its weapons inspectors into the country or face dire consequences, the Baghdad government indicated on Monday that it is ready, promptly and unconditionally, to allow the inspectors in.

With President Bush having opted to take the UN route, which most of the international community has urged him to do all along, the ball was now in the Iraqi court, and Iraqi leaders would’ve had no one to blame but themselves if this time around they brought a disaster on their people similar to the one that had hit them 12 years before.

The White House denounced the overture as a ruse and a 'tactic that will fail.' Dan Bartlett, President Bush’s communications director, told reporters that 'the tired tactic of Saddam Hussein’s overture on inspectors is something he’s done in the past and is met with a healthy dose of skepticism.'

Baghdad should show good faith and prove him wrong. Will it, instead, prevaricate by setting improbable conditions on the tasks of the inspectors, as had been its wont till 1998 (no inspection of the president’s palaces, no inspection during business hours, and the like), thereby missing an opportunity to avert a devastating war waged against it? For keep in mind, neither the UN nor the US is in a mood to negotiate conditions here.

If the country does not possess 'weapons of mass destruction,' then it has nothing to fear from UN inspectors, whatever the tasks they are called upon to perform. If it does have them, the price it will pay for their removal will be miniscule compared to the one it will surely pay otherwise.

Sometimes those who do not learn from history are not only doomed to repeat it, but are just doomed. So, are we going to see a repeat performance of what happened after August 2, 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and rejected mediation efforts to have it withdraw its occupation forces from there?

In his memoir, Pilgrimage for Peace, Javier Perez de Cuellar, the UN secretary-general at the time, tells us that the six weeks prior to Jan. 15, 1992, the deadline that had been given by Resolution 678 for the withdrawal of Iraqi troops, was used for intensive efforts to find a diplomatic solution by UN, Arab, Islamic and Third World delegations. All failed.

During September and late October, Yevgeny M. Primakov, the special representative of Soviet President Gorbachev, traveled twice to Baghdad to find a way that would preclude the use of force to drive Iraq from Kuwait. No go.

Then came that fateful meeting in Geneva on Jan. 9, less than a week before the UN authorized deadline for allied forces to attack, between American Secretary of State James Baker and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tareq Aziz, where not only did Iraq fail to seize the opportunity, there and then, to offer to withdraw its troops unilaterally, but Aziz refused receipt of a letter from the White House addressed to Saddam Hussein as too 'insulting.'

And finally, there was that one last-ditch effort by Secretary-General de Cuellar himself who arrived in Baghdad on Jan. 12 for a meeting with the Iraqi president, just three days before the time limit set in Resolution 678 would expire. Again, no go. 'Saddam walked me to the entrance of the building as we left and told me almost jocularly that the package I had brought was not good enough,' writes de Cuellar. 'Come back with something better next time.'

What the Iraqi leader clearly did not understand was that there was not going to be a next time. For any package would have had to start with Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Some nations repeat their history not only because they do not learn from it, but because they do not take the trouble to understand it in the first place.

In this regard, consider this: In one of his many encounters with Tareq Aziz during the crisis, de Cuellar quotes the Iraqi foreign minister as telling him dismissively: 'The United States is foolish. Iraq recognizes American military superiority, but its planes could not win the war. Iraq is fighting on its own territory. It has one million men under arms and could double that number. Moreover, no political leader would be weakened by fighting against the United States. Egyptian President Gamal Nasser had lost a war but remained the most popular leader until his death.'

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The Gulf War was not a popularity contest. The allied forces who set out to fight it, giving Iraq a six-month leeway to soberly consider the consequences of its actions, set out to fight it in earnest. They did. And the people of Iraq paid and continue to this day to pay the price of that folly.

Those of us engaged in writing commentary in those hectic months between Aug. 2 and Jan. 15 — lackeys of imperialism and unpatriotic reactionaries, one and all — who could see the impending disaster and urged Iraq to withdraw its troops from Kuwait before all hell broke loose, find themselves at it again today. In the name of reason, do what’s right for your people.

So, we say it one more time, with feeling: If you don’t have weapons of mass destruction, you have nothing to fear from UN inspectors — loss of face, if that’s what the problem is — is a little price to pay. And if you do have them, elimination of the darn things is even a little price to pay in order to avoid the fire next time. And make no mistake about it — the US is hellbent on seeing them destroyed, by force of reason, through the UN, or by force of arms, through a lethal military assault.

And the aggregate of support by the American people and by the international community for that assault is mounting, not diminishing. Leading Democrats in Congress have already signaled their readiness to stand behind a vote in coming weeks authorizing military action, and the Republicans are solidly behind their president. In the UN, many of the nearly 200 member states have climbed on the US bandwagon heading rapidly toward confrontation with Iraq after listening to President Bush’s speech at the General Assembly last Thursday.

Have Iraqi leaders over the last few months been trying to make a point as they had done on the eve of the Gulf War, and between 1991 and 1998? And if so, what would that point be?

At a time like this, making a point is a marginal pursuit, since, with war writ large, good points become even more ephemeral than bad ones. At a time like this, one acts to save one’s hide — that is, one’s citizens and one’s nation from destruction.

The nuclear armament issue is an important one, but it is not the central one.

Lots of countries have nukes. Lots more are eventually going to have them. Possession of a nuke is not a crime. Possession of a nuke by someone who could conceivably pass it on to a third party for use against the US is the issue. The consequences of a miscalculation on either side, us failing to see it coming, Saddam gambling he could get away with it, would be so terrible that we simply won't risk it.

This is why, although we regret that India has nukes, we have no intention of invading. India would not pass them to terrorists for use against us. Israel, same answer. Pakistan, under the present government would not. But, to be clear, an coup in Pakistan that would place its nukes under Islamist control would trigger a lightening invasion by the US. We have already planned for it, and would not hesitate to pull the trigger.

The problem, then, is not the weaponry. It is "who" is commanding it. It is not about nukes, it is about Saddam.

And inspections do not solve that problem. Sooner or later, the inspectors must finish their work and go home, and when they do, we are left with Saddam in command of an army as large as all of Europe's armies combined. And several thousand engineers and technicians still working on his nuclear weapons program. You see, if the inspectors can certify that, at a shapshot in time there is no nuclear weapon, they will have left intact his nuclear armament research and design staff.

Were the inspectors planning to kill his designers? Blowing up a few warheads while leaving his experts only sets him back months. If we cannot destroy his nuclear R&D, the logical alternative is to remove the master of this ship.

In the end, its not about nukes, its about Saddam. Its not about finding an incriminating document in some dumpster somewhere. Anyone can read his career and know what he will do in the end, with or without nukes. If, knowing this, we flinch at dealing with him now, when we have the window of opportunity to do it, and a leader fully prepared to face the risks involved, and an army trained and prepared and positioned to do the job, then we have learned nothing from the past.

The inspections gambit is merely a ploy to delay us, and to tie our hands. If they are successful, they will be gone in three months. And we will be left with Saddam.

If the country does not possess 'weapons of mass destruction,' then it has nothing to fear from UN inspectors, whatever the tasks they are called upon to perform.

Iraq has nothing to fear from weapons inspections, who will find nothing -- just as they found nothing the first time. The song-and-dance over the weapons inspectors is a passion play for the sake of world opinion. Iraq can balk for a while, then capitulate, so Bush can look tough (fine by Saddam), and Saddam can play defiant victim. Then the inspectors go in, they can't find anything, Iraq is vindicated, Saddam wins again. Just like last time around.

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