BAGHDAD BY CHRISTMAS
Bruce Anderson explains why,
how and when the West will topple Saddam
'IF THE trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?' At last, the rallying cry is once more audible in Washington, after an interval in which the Bush administration found it hard to march in step. Back in December, there had been no such confusion. Then, it seemed clear that the US would invade Iraq, sooner rather than later. With the New Year, however, will-power appeared to seep away. By Easter, Washington's intentions were clouded in doubt and disputes. Though this was widely interpreted as a disagreement between the doveish Cohn Powell and hawks in the White House and the Defense Department, the reality was more complex. Those who had diplomatic reservations found allies among risk-averse generals, who claimed that an invasion of Iraq would require half-amillion troops: an absurdly high number. There were also the high-tech enthusiasts. Even some of those who willed the end fantasised about the means. They deluded themselves that regime change in Iraq could be achieved by a combination of air power, local surrogates and magic weaponry: lobbing a cruise missile through Saddam's bedroom window, or some such.
Fantasy is no longer in fashion, unlike Kipling. 'Boots — boots — boots — boots — movin' up an' down again.' Technology may have improved, but in crucial respects the nature of warfare has remained unaltered. The Americans now accept that if they want to get Saddam, they will have to go in and get him, in strength. It is unlikely that Saddam's men will offer sustained resistance, especially once they realise that the war is lost. These are hardly the type of troops who would fight all the way back from Normandy to the Elbe. But no sane general would undertake an invasion on a best-case analysis. The force figure most widely mentioned is 250,000 men, including a significant British contribution, which has already been tacitly promised. Though no preparations have yet been announced, every regiment in the British army is desperate to be involved, while every major-general is bursting to be offered a divisional command. There is nothing risk-averse about our generals.
Nor, ultimately, about President Bush. This is one of the least guileful Presidents in American history: what he says, he means. When he announced that the US would deal with al-Qa'eda in Afghanistan and then move on to Iraq, that was what he intended to do. In Qatar, where there is an American base, the provision merchants are already building up their stocks. Over the centuries, these characters have proved that they are good at reading markets and anticipating future demand. That food will be needed. Mr Bush's phase two is now beginning.
The Americans will not be deflected by the absence of support from continental Europe. A few months ago, William Hague asked George Bush how he would deal with European objections to ballistic missile defence. 'I've got a secret plan,' Mr Bush replied. 'What is it?' I'll go ahead anyway.' So he will on Iraq.
So he should. Now that they have lost both the appetite and the capacity for power politics, the Europeans are in the grip of a contradiction. They insist that acts of war can only be justified by moral absolutes. They also insist that we live in a world of moral relativities. European governments had a double quarrel with Mr Bush's 'axis of evil' speech. They do not believe in the axis. Nor do they believe in the evil. They prefer to live in a world as depicted by Whistler, in which everything is a subtle symphony of endless grey. From this perspective, Saddam may be a bad man, but he is merely a darker shade of grey than Arid l Sharon.
In France, this reluctance to confront basic moral judgments is reinforced by antiAmericanism. To almost all French politicians, it is an article of faith that the world is always more complex than the Americans would have it. This aversion to moralism is also strengthened, and not only in France, by a quasi-Marxist belief that history is ultimately the interplay of economic and social forces, and that it is ridiculously old-fashioned to believe that great events are caused by great men — or by greatly evil men.
This is curious. Those who disbelieve in the motive power of evil men cannot have read much 20th-century European history. Nor can they understand Saddam Hussain. Saddam started out as a blend of Atatiirk and Bismarck, whom he had studied. He wanted to transform Iraq, as Atatiirk had transformed Turkey; he decided to use surgical wars a la Bismarck to help him in this. But the surgery went wrong. Like Bismarck's clumsy German successors, Saddam could neither calibrate the blood and iron nor organise his diplomacy. His attack on Iran, intended as a quick kill, became a decadelong war of attrition. The invasion of Kuwait, also planned as a brief Bismarckian campaign, also misfired. Bismarck, never gratuitously ruthless, was a statesman and a nation-builder. Saddam is no Bismarck. He is more a Hitler.
Unique evil deserves unique opprobrium. Comparisons with Hitler should not be lightly undertaken, especially after Anthony Eden's absurd attempt to compare Nasser with Hitler. But there are similarities between Hitler and Saddam. Saddam has not only launched genocidal onslaughts on the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs. Like Hitler — and, indeed, like Charles XII of Sweden — he has come to regard his nation merely as raw material for his own aggrandisement. By the end, Hitler was disdainful of the German people's sufferings. As they had failed him and history, they deserved what they got. Saddam, as much a humanitarian as Hitler was, has turned Iraq into a bunker, with one vital difference. As his fate closed in, Hitler dreamt of terrible weapons. Saddam has done more than dream. He already possesses biological weaponry, including botulinum and anthrax. He does not yet have a missile system which could deliver a biological attack, but hideous damage could be inflicted by a single suicide agent with a suitcase.
Saddam's emissaries are also relentlessly probing the Russian nuclear industry, offering massive bribes. Thus far, he has probably been unsuccessful. The Russian authorities are doing what they can to frustrate him, and if he had eluded their precautions, the Israelis would probably know, in which case pre-emptive action would have been taken. But that might be harder now than it was in 1981, when Israel destroyed the Osirac nuclear reactor. That mission was one of the major humanitarian successes of the postwar years. A nuclear confrontation between Israel and Iraq would hardly be beneficial to world peace.
During the Cold War, defence analysts concentrated on capability, a constant, rather than intentions, which can change. With Saddam, there is a difference. A man of such evil intentions cannot be allowed to acquire the capability to use weapons of mass destruction. There will be risks in preventing him; we are about to enter a most dangerous period in world history. But those risks are manageable, and ultimately containable. The risks of allowing him access to terrible weaponry are unmanageable and uncontainable. This man has made manifest his hostility to all things Western and all things humane over more than a decade. He has thrown down a fundamental challenge to us, to our way of life, and to our hopes for a peaceful future. He cannot be allowed to prevail. Saddam delendus est.
Previous page
