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The eerie green nightscope images
broadcast by CNN from Baghdad
Wednesday night, vividly recalling the
onset of the Persian Gulf air war eight
years ago, brought the world its first
news that a large-scale punitive attack
on Iraq was under way.
Not long afterward, President Bill Clinton presented a strong justification for the attack, based on Iraq's past deceptions and aggression and a reasonable fear of what, left unhindered, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's regime might do in the future. The strike by U.S. cruise missiles and airplanes had been anticipated and in fact had been made virtually inevitable. To no one's surprise, Iraq's promise last month to cooperate fully with U.N. weapons inspectors promptly proved to be as untruthful as all the similar assurances that preceded it. As chief inspector Richard Butler reported to the United Nations this week, Iraq not only failed to cooperate in the inspection process over the past month but "initiated new forms of restrictions" to impede the search for documents and materials used in its outlawed weapons programs. Why did Iraq choose to force a confrontation so quickly? Saddam, a habitual miscalculator in international relations, may have believed the impeachment drama in Washington had left Clinton so paralyzed politically that he would be unable to act. Or he may have assumed that Iraq would be immune from attack during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins this weekend. What he did not take into account was the three-or-four-day window of opportunity for military action preceding the onset of Ramadan. The hard truth, whatever the shoot-from-the-lip suspicions of some of Clinton's pro-impeachment critics, is that Washington and London were left with only one credible course of action. Iraq had refused to provide U.N. inspectors with documents known to detail the extent of its clandestine weapons programs, and it had barred inspectors from sites where prohibited materials may be hidden. That, we think it's clear, more than anything else controlled the timing of the attack that US. and British officials have repeatedly warned could come. More than seven years ago, Iraq was ordered by the Security Council to provide immediate and unconditional access to all information and materials related to its programs to produce weapons or mass destruction. Its repeated evasions and defiance of that order not only invited but compelled the powerful military response that is now under way. Los Angeles Times (Dec. 17) |
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In blocking United Nations arms inspectors
from doing their jobs, Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein gave the
United States no choice but to respond
militarily. That the Iraq crisis has
peaked just as the U.S faces its own political
crisis cannot but raise questions
here and abroad about U.S. motives, and
those of President Bill Clinton. But the
coincidence of events cannot be allowed
to distract attention from the need to
deal with the long-term threat posed by
Saddam and his defiance of international
law.
Saddam's army invaded and occupied Kuwait. The U.S. assembled an international coalition that expelled his troops from that sovereign nation. In defeat, and as a condition of ceasefire, Saddam promised to destroy, under international inspection, his biological, chemical and nuclear weapons components and the missiles that could deliver such weapons. For more than seven years he has done everything he could to violate that promise -- to subvert U.N. inspections and preserve his poisonous weapons. Clinton Wednesday night clearly spelled out the consequences of a refusal to meet this challenge. "If Saddam defies the world, and we fail to respond, we will face a far greater threat in the future. Saddam will strike again al his neighbors; he will make war on his own people; and mark my words, he will develop weapons of mass destruction. He will deploy them, and he will use them" -- as he has used them before, against his own people as well as against external enemies. So the U.S. had to respond. The difficulty for Clinton's credibility is that he threatened action and then retreated a year ago, and again in February, and again last month. His own record invites cynicism -- but that does not excuse Republican leaders who refuse to support the administration if it is finally doing the right thing. These men should know better. Would they rather that the U.S. respond once again with bluster, warnings and empty threats? Another retreat by Clinton would certainly -- and rightly -- provoke catcalls from some of the same Republicans who now attack him for not retreating. No one should be naive enough to expect that any of the players in this drama have or could put domestic politics entirely out of their thoughts. But it is now up to Clinton and his political adversaries alike to keep these two crises as separate as they possibly can. The Washington Post (Dec. 17) |