THE SEVEN DEADLY TRUTHS
James Bowman lists seven
unmentionable problems for America in the Gulf
Washington JAW JAW may be better than war war, but both can be pretty nasty. Last week began with the sacking of the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Michael Dugan, for suggesting to a reporter that the US strategy in the Gulf was one of 'decapita- tion', or bombing aimed at Saddam Hus- sein personally. It ended with George Bush proclaiming his pacific intentions, by way of a videotape with Arabic subtitles, to the Iraqi people (or at least to the two-thirds of them that can read). In reply their leader told them to prepare for total war with the United States. The low point of public discourse was reached when Leona Helm- sley, the convicted tax-dodger and hotel magnate, took out full-page newspaper ads to tell Saddam that it was 'time to check out'.
In the rhetorical crossfire, several truths, not yet casualties, have dived for their foxholes, where so far they have remained largely unobserved and unarticulated. Here are the seven deadliest: General Dugan was right on strategy, wrong on tactics. As the press focused on the issue of insubordination, it mostly neglected or took for granted what he had said. It is true that, in the Saddam v the rest of the world match, the best hope for the rest of the world is the removal of the dictator before it finds itself tangling with his army in a struggle that will swiftly generate its own momentum. But bombing Baghdad is a very poor means to that end; it would stand less chance of success than President Reagan's bombing of Colonel Gadaffi's bungalow in Tripoli in 1986, and the concomitant destruction of civilian targets would bring Saddam a level of public support that he does not at present enjoy. Even if it were successful, it might stop the war too soon. As Richard Perle, assistant secretary of defence in the Reagan administration, points out,
Having demonstrated the capability to over- whelm and plunder Kuwait and hold the US and its allies at bay, the Iraqi army would go home to regroup for its next adventure. Having struck a dagger in the heart of Kuwait, it would now strike fear in the heart of all within its reach.
Bush, therefore, wants a smallish sort of war; Saddam wants none. Both men are publicly advocating the opposite of their real positions. Bush needs to neutralise Iraqi military power for a decade or two without going so far as to create a power vacuum into which Iran or Syria might step. Saddam knows that, once war breaks out, he is finished. Barring a rout of the US and allied forces, his removal, bloody or otherwise, will be the price of peace. Economic sanctions have as their aim exactly the goal articulated by General Dugan: to create such dissatisfaction with material hardships that some of the many within the Iraqi establishment who would like to get rid of Saddam will finally succeed. But history shows that this might take a very long time — long enough, at least, for him to negotiate a partial victory. A share of Kuwait's oil wealth and forgive- ness of debts beats a bullet in the back of the neck.
No one knows what will be the human cost of the war. At the beginning of the month, US News reported that the Penta- gon estimate was 20,000 to 30,000 casual- ties — and that Bush thought this too much. Since then, in the absence of official comment, that figure has been repeated by everybody, including the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, as if it were authoritative. Yet it is obvious that the most it can be is a worst-case estimate of the cost of one of the several military options available — probably a frontal assault on entrenched defences. That op- tion is unlikely to be our first move, and after the first move the situation is too hypothetical to admit of reliable estimates.
No one knows how troops on either side will perform. The all-volunteer American forces of the post-Vietnam era — which are, to an extent as yet undetermined, dominated by careerist rather than patrio- tic motives — have never really been tested. Grenada and Panama were trifling in comparison with what we contemplate in the Gulf, and there were signs even in those operations of some of the ineptitude that marked President Carter's 'Desert One' attempt to rescue the Iranian hos- tages in 1980. The harsh desert conditions on that occasion are obviously more like what the troops face now than those which prevailed in the Caribbean and Central American victories. Iraqi troops are a better known quantity, but their state of morale is uncertain and they have never come up against an arsenal like that which they now face.
Buchanan was only half wrong. It is certainly not the case that, as the columnist Patrick Buchanan notoriously said, only 'the Israeli Defence Ministry and its amen corner in the United States' want war. But the consequent wild charge of anti- Semitism against him for saying so obscures the extent to which it is the Israeli interest in the region that we find ourselves defending. To be sure, the United States, like Egypt, Syria, Turkey and Iran, has its own interest in denying hegemony in the Middle East to any one power. But that consideration, even in conjunction with our dependency on Gulf oil (whose import- ance as a strategic factor is overrated), is not decisive: we might not have come so far down the road to war as we have if it were not for Israeli political influence in America. They stand to lose a lot more than we do, and yet they have to be kept on the sidelines for as long as possible, lest the Arab allies be offended. This is a situation that will naturally breed a bit of rancour on both sides.
The wimpish State Department was only half wrong. Again, the press's attempts to blame the State Department for our mis- judgment of Iraq's intention towards Kuwait have generally missed the point of what American diplomacy was trying to accomplish. Ambassador April Glaspie's emollient conversation with Saddam on 25 July ('We have no view on Arab-Arab conflicts') and Assistant Secretary John Kelly's testimony to Congress against sanc- tions on 31 July were only the last man- ifestations of a decade-long 'tilt to Iraq' which was America's reaction to the loss of its Iranian alliance in 1979. The point of cultivating the friendship of a militarily potent Islamic nation in the region was precisely to avoid what has happened now that our second would-be client has spurned us: the commitment of American troops. Although it is not 'ludicrous', as Mr Baker, the Secretary of State, said on Sunday, to suppose that the invasion could have been avoided had the United States talked tougher to Saddam, it is at least open to question. And it is certain that Mr Baker's new vision of a Nato-like security arrangement in the Gulf in place of a single powerful friend is very unsatisfactory.
The world alliance is a mess just beneath the surface. Bush's succdss in extracting men and money from half the world has obscured the reluctance of Japan and Germany to ante up, the continuing pre- sence of Soviet advisers in Iraq (some of them, it is speculated, now jamming allied radar), the subtle manoeuvrings of Iran and China to profit from the blockade, the unsavouriness of our ally, President Assad of Syria, which is at least as great as that of our enemy in Iraq, and the frictions already being generated between uneasy allies with incompatible war aims. Accord- ing to one report, the real reason for General Dugan's removal was that his remarks suggest a US willingness to under- take unilateral action — and on the advice of Israel. Imagine the diplomatic sensitivi- ties once war breaks out. It's almost enough to make the sanctions route seem preferable. But on the whole it looks as if these seven articles buried in the subtext of American policy add up to one more: we're going to have to fight.
Previous page
