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Time for Saddam to finally face the truth, music

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, February 16, 2002

By Jim Hoagland / Washington Post columnist

WASHINGTON — For more than a decade, Americans have been told by officials of three administrations that ending the deadly and unique threat that Iraq’s Baathist regime poses to U.S. interests was not urgent. This was never true. Iraq is America’s most important unfinished business abroad.

President Bush’s recognition of a reality that so many worked so hard for so long to obscure has rallied his own officials to a still evolving policy of regime change in Iraq. No longer are we told by Colin Powell and others that Saddam Hussein is "in a box." Now we are told that the Iraqi dictator must be ousted through diplomatic, political or military means.

There may be less immediate change than meets the eye. In the weeks and months just ahead, both Washington and Baghdad will engage in set pieces of posturing and playing for time during a period of phony war, phony peace. If you get confused by plans to "smarten" economic sanctions on Iraq, implied promises to renew weapons inspections there or Iraqi officials’ ostentatiously paying court to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, then you will have been paying attention. Much of this is dust in the eyes.

But there are key points on which to focus as premature war whoops from hawks and equally uninformed warnings of disaster from doves compete for your attention. Here are my top five:

  • The president’s clear emphasis on Iraq since the State of the Union message is a significant positive change in itself. It puts Saddam Hussein on notice: Helping al Qaeda or any other terrorists to develop or acquire the weapons of mass destruction that Iraq has or covets will lead to immediate and devastating reprisal. That is language that the Iraqi just may understand, for a while at least.

  • Bush is conducting a serious review. Annan, the Russians, the French and others may not like the results. But they should respect the rigor and deliberativeness of the process as it unfolds rather than trash American impulsiveness. Vice President Cheney’s trip next month to the Middle East is designed to advance final decision-making here by shoring up frayed relations with the Saudis and other regional leaders — not to carry to them hastily drafted options and specific operational requests.

  • The three to six months needed to train and equip Iraqi dissidents to play a significant role in toppling Saddam can be put to good use for other purposes as well. Ahmed Chalabi, a senior figure in the Iraqi National Congress, is urging the Bush administration to give his organization training in civil administration as well as in military tactics. Chalabi wants to prevent a Kabul-type sudden collapse and a chaotic transition in Iraq.

  • Neither Americans nor foreigners should fall into the trap of setting Iraq up as a symbol of American power and global intentions. This confrontation is about Saddam Hussein’s indisputable record of using war, terror and weapons of mass destruction as his only instruments of policy, and his clear threats to do so again as soon as he can. The long, costly and misguided delay in dealing with him shows this is not part of an American master plan of global domination.

  • Fears that Iraq will fall apart if the strong tyrannical hand of Saddam is removed are both exaggerated and irrelevant. No society held together by terror can or should long survive. The tired predictions that what will come next will be worse — voiced to oppose the breakup of the Soviet Union, for example — is almost always an excuse for doing nothing. There is no immutable destiny for humans or nations.

    Bush’s new and determined focus on Iraq strips away much of the evasion and creative fiction deployed to justify inaction by officials in his father’s administration after Operation Desert Storm, by Bill Clinton &Co. throughout eight disgraceful years and by Bush’s own team in the first seven months of this presidency.

    Progress came last week when the State Department dropped the pretense that Syria and other states could be persuaded to police their borders and halt lucrative, sanctions-breaking smuggling with Iraq. Poorly advised on his first trip to the Middle East last year, Powell originally trumpeted Syrian promises to that effect. The secretary of state also now seems not to be pushing his sanctions-streamlining effort as a way to stall or deflect military action against Iraq, but to set the stage for it.

    Saddam Hussein recently published his first novel. But fiction seems to be going out of style in Washington, at least on the subject of the Iraqi dictator. Time for him to face the truth — and the music.

    Jim Hoagland can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or hoaglandj@washpost.com.

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