Sen. Kerrey's Address on Iraq
Iraq News, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1999
By Laurie MylroieThe central focus of Iraq News is the tension between the considerable, proscribed WMD capabilities that Iraq is holding on to and its increasing stridency that it has complied with UNSCR 687 and it is time to lift sanctions. If you wish to receive Iraq News by email, a service which includes full-text of news reports not archived here, send your request to Laurie Mylroie .
I. TEXT OF SEN. KERREY'S REMARKS TO THE WILSON CENTER, SEPT 29
The text of Senator Kerrey's remarks on Iraq to the Woodrow Wilson
Center follow below.
During the question period, Sen. Kerrey was asked whether his
vigorous support for the implementation of the ILA didn't also imply the
potential or likely use of US forces.
Sen. Kerrey replied that if he were president, he would be prepared
to use U.S. forces. He explained that we are already engaged in a
serious military confrontation. Peoples lives are at risk. The danger
is that we are not committed enough and not getting done what has to be
done.
In a follow-up question, Sen. Kerrey was asked if the American people
would support such a course of action.
Sen. Kerrey replied that he thought, yes if 1) they understood the
costs of the current policy; 2) the risks already involved to US forces;
3) the dangers posed by Saddam's unconventional weapons programs.
Sen. Kerrey was also asked if he was familiar with an article in
Foreign Affairs last January, denigrating the ILA and arguing that it
could not be implemented. The questioner noted that one of the
co-authors was now employed as the Iraq specialist on the NSC staff and
asked Sen. Kerrey to comment on the article, if he was familiar with it.
Sen. Kerrey replied that he was familiar with the article. He
described it as a classic case of a person putting up a straw man and
then proceeding to knock it down.
I. TEXT OF SEN. KERREY'S REMARKS TO THE WILSON CENTER
Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs
Forum on Iraq
September 29, 1999
Remarks of Senator Bob Kerrey
Thank you, Lee. Those of us who stayed behind in Congress
certainly miss your wise counsel on foreign policy.
I appreciate the opportunity to exchange views with you about the
situation in Iraq and the US role in resolving what we still must call
"the Iraq crisis.''
When Iraq is discussed these days, there is a certain air of
resignation, even depression, hanging over the topic. The Iraq
Liberation Act has been the law of the land for about a year, yet Saddam
is not noticeably weaker as a result. The Administration has spent only
a fraction of the aid Congress appropriated for the Iraqi opposition,
and that fraction is being spent on conferences and travel and office
supplies, items that probably create little apprehension in Baghdad.
The Iraqi opposition, both inside and outside Iraq, until recently was
disunited and more interested in tactical advantage than in joining
together to overthrow Saddam. US and allied aircraft attack Iraqi air
defenses every few days, but if these attacks are having any serious
effect on the Iraqi military, the news media seem unaware of it.
Because Iraq has refused to comply with a number of UN resolutions, it
has been internationally sanctioned for almost the entire decade. Our
media repeatedly tells us the most notable effect of the sanctions is on
the health and wealth of the Iraqi people. There are no longer
international inspections in Iraq to detect weapons of mass destruction,
and Saddam's history gives us ample reason to presume Iraq is working at
present on all forms of these weapons.
As for the regime we are sanctioning, it seems unaffected.
Visitors to Baghdad report the security forces are driving late-model
vehicles. The military is strong enough to keep dissidents at bay in
Northern Iraq and in the southern marshes. Saddam has built forty-eight
new palaces and recent reports tell of a new amusement park on an island
near Baghdad, reserved for regime and Baath party functionaries and
their families.
Given this evidence, there is a basis for pessimism about Iraq. My
purpose today is to tell you why I do not share that pessimism. Why I
think the liberation of Iraq is inevitable. Why it is necessary, and
why it is so important that it happen soon. I am not interested in the
tactical nuances of our nine-year effort to deal with the Iraq problem.
Nor do I think the Iraqi regime is much interested in them either. We
both go quickly to the bottom line. For the regime, it is survival in
power. For me, it is their replacement by a democratic, free market
system.
Before I take up inevitability, let me address necessity. The
current situation in Iraq must be changed because it is intolerable. It
is intolerable for the Iraqi people on humanitarian grounds, but it is
also intolerable for the states in the region. Think, for example, of
the costs sanctions on Iraq have imposed on the Jordanian economy since
1991. Think of the added problems Iraqi instability has created for
Turkey's national security planners. Think of the threat posed to
Israel by a regime which has already fired SCUD missiles into Israeli
cities. Think of the continuous threat the Iraqi regime poses to
Kuwait, and the cultural and political stress on Saudi Arabia growing
out of the stationing of foreign forces to counter the Iraqi regime.
And although it may be hard to put ourselves in Iranian shoes, think of
the effect of Saddam's retention of power on Iran. Saddam harbors the
most violent anti-Iranian revolutionary group. This, and his very
existence in power, gives Iranian hard-liners another excuse not to
liberalize.
Continuation of the Iraq problem is also intolerable for the United
States. Proponents of inaction in Iraq argue that a more aggressive
stance against Saddam might draw us into military operations. But we
are already engaged in a dangerous military operation in Iraq. In fact,
our Air Force, Navy, and Marine pilots are seeing combat action in Iraq
on almost a daily basis. The periodic spikes in the crisis over the
past decade have caused massive and expensive US deployments to the
region, weakening our ability to cover our other military
responsibilities.
We must not forget we have suffered casualties as a result of this
crisis. The 19 Americans killed in the Khobar Tower bombings died as a
result of the anger directed at the American military presence in the
Gulf. The terrorist bombings of the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es
Salaam, in which 12 Americans were killed, were directed by Osama bin
Laden--a man who had been stripped of his Saudi citizenship for
financing Islamic militants in Algeria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Today,
bin Laden remains at large and remains a significant threat to American
citizens around the world. So it is too late to avoid military
operations or American casualties in the Iraq crisis. We can't keep
this up forever. Out of US strategic necessity, if for no other reason,
Saddam must go, and soon.
There is also a moral necessity to which I alluded a moment ago, and
it concerns the Iraqis themselves. The Iraqi people are suffering.
They need basic foods and medicines. Under the Oil-For-Food program,
the regime has earned $14.9 billion in the past two and a half years.
They will earn $6 billion in the last six months of 1999. But only a
fraction of that amount is being spent on food and medicine. According
to the UN, $200 million worth of medicine sits in Iraqi warehouses,
undistributed. As of last April, 60 percent of all the agricultural
supplies and 45 percent of all the medicine purchased by the
Oil-For-Food program remained undistributed in Iraq. These figures
demonstrate Saddam's regime has no interest in the welfare of its
people, and maintains their misery only to make political points.
Iraq's political system is more opaque, but we know from exile
statements and from the books of Kanan Makiya that we would have to go
back to Stalinist Russia to find a government based so completely on
terror. In Iraq there are two classes of people -- those who live in
fear of being brutalized and those who have already been brutalized by
it. On the inevitable day of Iraq's liberation, I want America to be on
the right side of history. When Iraqi political prisoners are freed
from Saddam's jails, when family members are finally allowed to tell the
world about the indiscriminate killing of their loved ones, I want the
Iraqi people to know that the American people stood with them. I want
the media to document the horrors of this regime so that Saddam and his
sons and lieutenants will be held accountable for their crimes against
the people of Iraq. Although Iraq is a closed society, we know how
Saddam is treating his people. It would be a moral failure on our part
not to assist in the liberation of Iraq.
I believe this regime must inevitably fall because the human spirit
inevitably triumphs. Given the fatal weaknesses in Saddam's position,
this day could come sooner than many people think. Unfortunately
Saddam's weaknesses are concealed by false presumptions. Often these
false presumptions are used to hold us back from a fuller commitment to
Iraq's liberation.
The first is the notion that dictators bring stability. The Arab
world is proof of the falsity of this notion. Dictators bring stasis,
not stability. Stasis freezes things. It is no accident that the Arab
world has seen virtually none of the economic development which most of
Asia has enjoyed over the past two generations. Despite the
entrepreneurial talents of their peoples, the Arab one-man regime states
remain pathetically poor. And because frozen things inevitably thaw,
dictatorships in their endings do not bring stability, but uproar, with
a potential for conflict.
A variation on this theme is the presumption, also false in my
view, that Iraq is an artificial state with a weak center. That without
a repressive central authority, it would dissolve into ethnic
mini-states which would threaten the stability of neighboring
multi-ethnic states like Turkey, Iran, Syria, and even the Arab states
of the Gulf. Saddam keeps Iraq together, so the argument goes, and
since we need an Iraq strong enough to balance Iran, we should leave
Saddam where he is. The performance of Iraqi soldiers in the Iran-Iraq
war and the polyglot composition of Baghdad demonstrates Iraqis of all
ethnic groups have a stronger sense of Iraqi nationality than many
think.
A second false presumption is that Iraqis cannot practice democracy.
They cannot understand it--only a strong dictatorship suits them, and
that since they have one now, we should let it alone. The presumption
that Iraqis have some genetic defect, that the "democracy" lines are
missing from their DNA codes is almost racist. But it requires an
answer. Because I am a democrat with a small as well as large D, I
believe Iraqis, and all other Arabs, can practice democracy and rule
themselves better than others can rule them. I believe this on the
basis of the evidence: elections in Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, and even
Yemen; the recent referendum in Algeria; the participation of Israeli
Arabs in Israeli politics; and, most important to me, the participation
of Arab-Americans in American self-government at all levels. Iraq's
ability to do democratic politics has been eroded by generations of
Saddam's terror. But Iraq still has the resources to recover its will,
its brains, and its ability to collectively guide its fate.
A third false presumption is that Saddam is strong. In truth, he is
weak. I don't have the data to say what the true state of his military
is, and I doubt if Saddam's commanders tell him the truth about their
readiness, or about much else. However, Iraq is almost surely
developing more weapons of mass destruction, probably nuclear,
biological, and chemical, as well as the rockets to carry them. But in
terms of present-day capability against a well-armed rebel force, Saddam
looks weak to me. Certainly he has enough operable tanks and artillery
pieces to terrorize Kurds or Shia rebels armed only with light weapons
-- but not enough to conquer them. Their air defenses are revealed
every few days to be completely ineffective. And finally we saw in the
Gulf War that few Iraqis wanted to make the supreme sacrifice to carry
out Saddam's orders, and the many military desertions since then suggest
to me that there is not much fighting spirit in the Iraqi military.
Saddam is also weak in terms of subordinates who can act creatively
to carry out his orders and give reach to his authority. In truly
Stalinistic fashion, Saddam has not only eliminated his rivals, he has
also gradually eliminated his more effective subordinates. Family ties
have provided little insulation to Saddam's wrath. He has murdered his
cousin and two sons-in-law. His leadership circle has shrunk to himself
and his two sons, at least one of whom is a criminal psychopath. This is
not a robust, broad-based leadership that could withstand the challenge
of a unified, well-financed rebel movement. This is the kind of
leadership which will inevitably topple.
A fourth false presumption is that Iraq's future depends on the
wishes of the neighboring states, especially the neighboring Arab
states. For a citizen of a country that is dedicated to the
self-determination of peoples, it is objectionable to consign more than
twenty million Iraqis to the whims of their neighbors. But it also
rings false, given the relative size and resources of Iraq and many of
its neighbors. Jordan, Syria, and the Arab states of the Gulf lack the
size and power to define Iraq's future. Iran and Turkey are larger, but
their interest is in an Iraq which controls its territory and does not
threaten them. The best way for them to obtain this outcome, the best
way for all the neighboring states to get an Iraq which serves their
interests, is to support the replacement of Saddam with a democratic,
free-market regime.
A fifth false presumption, lurking behind arguments for inaction on
the Iraq crisis, is that no one cares anymore. From some of our allies
we hear entreaties to accept the Iraqi regime as it is, to drop the
sanctions, to accept a "less confrontational" weapons inspection system.
We are told by the French Foreign Minister in Saturday's New York Times
that we Americans are "insensitive to the human disaster underway in
Iraq" and that Iraq no longer poses a threat, although it could in the
future.
I agree with Foreign Minister Vedrine that we have been callous, but
not with regard to sanctions. We have been callous by not acting boldly
and vigorously to support the Iraqi opposition in their efforts to
overthrow Saddam Hussein. We have been more interested in avoiding risk
than in ending the regime which has caused immense tragedies at home and
abroad, which used chemical weapons on its own people, which invaded two
of its neighbors, which fired ballistic missiles at Israeli cities, and
which even today embroils our military in combat operations.
I, and many of my colleagues, became convinced that we could and
should do more. The Iraq Liberation Act is the consequence of our
conviction. In my case, it is a counter to the false presumptions about
Iraq and about human nature which seemed to shape our government's
safe-sided approach to the Iraq crisis. We wanted the Administration to
actively and publicly assist the Iraqi opposition in their efforts to
get rid of Saddam, to free the Iraqi people, and to begin a transition
to democracy and the free market. The ILA has been mocked and derided
by those who favor a go-slow approach, even though eight years have
passed since the end of the Gulf War. They are offended by the notion
that the United States should publicly demand and work for the overthrow
of another government. For me, conversely, the best thing about the ILA
is that is put the US on record as opposed to the existence of this
regime. I praise President Clinton for his courage in signing it, just
as I praise him for his bold rescue of almost 6,000 Iraqi oppositionists
in 1996 and his determination to enforce the no-fly zones in Iraq.
However, I think the Administration ought to act more boldly in
accordance with the ILA, especially with regard to the draw-down of
defense articles for the Iraqi opposition. But I am encouraged the ILA
has brought together a previously disunited opposition. Their meetings
and press conferences over the next few weeks will have no meaning,
however, unless they unite with the internal Iraqi opposition and
together inspire the people of Iraq to rise up against their oppressor.
The liberation of Iraq is inevitable. When that day comes, and the
whole truth about Saddam Hussein's regime spills out, we will be proud
of the stand we took. And if our post-overthrow support of Iraq aids a
transition to democracy, our pride should double. For democracies do
not wage war against one another. Democracies do not allow their people
to starve.
I do believe freedom and democracy are possible in Iraq. And when
the people of Iraq obtain their freedom, it will transform the Middle
East, creating a new region in which ethnic rivalry, poverty, and
excessive armaments will be supplanted by security, prosperity, and
creative diversity. If we will it and work hard for it, it can happen.
Thank you.
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