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Experts argue diplomacy vs. force in Iraq
Keay Davidson EXAMINER SCIENCE WRITER |
Feb. 22, 1998
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analysts defy stereotypes in U.S. policy debate
How should the U.S. military plan an attack against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein? Retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert Gard's first advice is: Don't attack.
"My concern - a counter-intuitive one for someone with my background - is that the cost of deploying military forces may be too high to achieve the objective. . . . This is a U.S. unilateral action, and my concern is we will reap the whirlwind," said Gard, who recently retired as president of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
Gard's stance reflects the diversity of stereotype-defying opinions among military and foreign policy experts who confront the crisis in the Middle East.
In the post-Cold War world, many former brass are talking like 1960s peaceniks, while some long-time peace advocates - from President Clinton down - are talking tough. John Pike, long a thorn in the Pentagon's side, offers this prescription for grappling with Saddam Hussein: "Blow him up!"
Then Pike, a veteran military and aerospace analyst for the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, laughed and admitted, "I've had too much coffee."
Pike compares Hussein's violations of his agreement to destroy Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to Hitler's treaty-busting remilitarization of Germany in the 1930s, leading to World War II.
"We've been trying diplomacy (with Hussein) for the last seven years," Pike said. "And now it's time to force (Hussein) to do what the United Nations has been asking him to do for the last seven years."
What does Clinton want?
Force him how? That's where the generals - both the retired ones and the armchair variety - can't agree.
One problem, they complain, is that the Clinton administration hasn't clarified its ultimate goals in Iraq. According to a classic dictum of strategy, warfare is an extension of politics. Military tactics - the ways in which generals deploy and choreograph their forces - must be adjusted to the desired end.
For that reason, former diplomat Charles Lichenstein said he understands why audience members heckled Clinton's top national security officials during their televised town hall meeting at Ohio State University last week.
"People want to know the answer to the questions: What are you really trying to do? Are you just trying to put a dent in Saddam Hussein's capabilities, or to destroy them, or to destroy him?," said Lichenstein, a former deputy ambassador to the United Nations under Reagan administration Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. The administration "is giving kind of equivocal answers.
"Are you really prepared for all-out warfare? The administration has insisted on a four-, five-, six-day war fought by the "cleanest' possible methods, with the highest likelihood of a low or even zero casualty list. . . . And after that, (Hussein will) pop right back up out of his foxhole and say, "Still here! I won!'
"The question arises: Is it worth it? I cannot conceive of doing real and permanent damage to the capabilities of this regime short of a long, sustained effort" - including ground troops.
Opposing view on troops
But ground troops aren't needed, insisted Michael O'Hanlon, a one-time Peace Corps volunteer and now a foreign policy studies expert at the Brookings Institution, and he really wants to clobber Hussein.
Assuming that further diplomatic measures fail, "The type of strike we're proposing is too little," said O'Hanlon, who has a Ph.D. in public and international affairs from Princeton. Besides hitting Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, "I think we need to threaten his conventional military forces as well - not just his headquarters, but his tanks and artillery. He has still got 10,000 armored vehicles left over from the Gulf War.
"What I would advocate doing is trying to destroy somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of those (conventional forces) that are the most separated from apartments, schools, hospitals, downtown Baghdad, etc.," O'Hanlon said. He estimates the attack would require 3,000 to 5,000 flights over three to four weeks. In his view, the whole war could be fought from the air, no ground troops needed.
By contrast, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert E. Pursley worries that the United States is too obsessed by Iraq.
Excess focus on Hussein could undercut worthier international goals, such as nuclear arms control and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, warned Pursley, a member of the board of directors of the Arms Control Association in Washington.
Policy or road rage?
In the 1960s, military officials glowered while watching TV images of anti-Vietnam War protesters who accused the United States of acting like the world's policeman.
Yet now, in eerily similar words, Pursley complains that as the world's sole remaining superpower, "We're running up and down the field, flexing our muscles and yelling, "We're No. 1!' . . . I think it is very much in the U.S. character to (retaliate), kind of like "road rage': The guy cuts you off, so you want to cut him off. And we want to solve all the (world's) problems, and we want to solve them now."
Pursley urges the United States to seek more creative, peaceful alternatives to an attack. For example, it should consider unilaterally sending food and medicine to Iraq in order to undermine Hussein's claim that the oil sanctions have left his people suffering.
Other critics accuse the United States of behaving hypocritically - of demanding one standard of behavior from its friends, such as Israel, and a different standard from Iraq.
"I think opening a Pandora's box by decapitating a dictatorship is a very dangerous thing to do, because you create a risk of anarchy," said Peter Saracino, a senior analyst at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey. "And in this case, who knows which faction will rise to power? And can we destroy all those (weapons) before the faction gets its hands on them?"
Both hawks and doves fear the public has lost sight of broader issues - issues much larger than the personal fate of Saddam Hussein.
For example, Pursley said that by defying Russian opposition to an attack on Iraq, the United States risks losing Russian support for the Start II treaty. That treaty, if implemented, would slash both superpowers' nuclear arsenals to a small fraction of their Cold War might.
Pike looked to Iraq's neighbor, noting, "Iran is at a very critical juncture. There are people in Iran who say, "We've got to can this "mad mullah" bit.' If we put Iraq out of business, it's going to be a lot easier to persuade Iran that it does not need these (same weapons).
"Whereas if you've got both Iran and Iraq (developing such weapons) at full blast, it makes it harder to persuade Israel to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction.
"The bottom line is, if we are unwilling or unable to use military force (against Iraq) here and now, then we might as well just pack up, go home and shut the military down. Because if military force is not useful in this circumstance, then it's very difficult for me to imagine when we would ever use it."
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