POLITICS-US: No Consensus on War Aims Against Iraq

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 13 1998 (IPS) - While the mighty U.S. war machine slips into second gear in the confrontation with Iraq, President Bill Clinton is being pressed, to broaden the administrations war aims to include the ouster of President Saddam Hussein.

The idea of sending U.S. ground troops to Baghdad as the advance guard of an occupation force may have been ruled out by all sides, there are “hawks” – many of them closely tied to the powerful Israeli lobby here – who argue that that the aims enunciated by Clinton so far are too limited.

“Unless we remove Saddam, this problem doesn’t go away,” said Republican Sen. Sam Brownback this week as Congressional leaders tried – vainly, it turned out – to agree on the wording of a resolution expressing support for military action.

The administration, which says it will have enough military hardware in the region around Iraq to launch a substantial bombing campaign by late next week, has so far offered different definitions of what it wishes to achieve.

For example, Clinton has stated if Saddam fails to comply with demands that U.N. inspectors be given “unfettered” access to suspected stores of chemical and biological weapons, Washington will try to “substantially reduce or delay (his) capacities to develop weapons of mass destruction and to deliver them on his neighbours.”

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright then expanded on Clnton’s remarks. In prepared testimony this week, she said Saddam’s continued defiance left Washington “no choice but to take strong measures – not pinpricks, but substantial strikes – that will reduce Saddam’s capacity to threaten Iraq’s neighbours and the world.”

Political obesrvers interpreted this to mean that Washington and Britain, the only U.S. ally which has pledged to join the United States in bombing, would try to destroy as much of Iraq’s military arsenal as it could in a campaign lasting from three days to a week.

Primary targets would include suspected missile and chemical and biological weapons sites, elite Republican Guard units, command-and-control facilities, and the remnants of Iraq’s air force and air-defence system.

The big question remained, howqever, what happens after such a campaign is completed if Saddam Hussein remains in power more defiant than before?

“The administration has a very heavy responsibility now to articulate with very great precision … what happens after a period of five or six or seven or eight days of bombing, what we can accomplish by that, what we cannot accomplish by it, and what the follow-on to military action may be,” said Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton Thursday.

The administration has itself so far failed to give a substantive answer to this question, although Albright testified Wednesday that, if Washington received “any hint that Hussein was “reconstituting” his unconventional weapons after such an attrack, “we will strike again. This is not a one-time issue,” she said.

But that is not good enough for the hawks, who are clamouring for a longer-term strategy ultimately aimed at ousting Hussein and installing a new regime in Baghdad.

“I think there is a growing feeling among members in both political parties on Capitol HIll,” said Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman earlier this week, “that we have to state the longer- term goals, and I believe they should be to change the regime in Iraq.”

Many Republicans and some Democrats are rallying around a plan first outlined by former Reagan defence aide, Richard Perle, in the Washington Post Sunday. Subsequently endorsed by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House International Relations Committee chairman Ben Gilman, it proposes following up an extended bombing campaign with a series of measures designed to loosen Saddam’s hold on Iraq.

It calls for extending the two existing “no-fly” zones over the northern and southern portions of Iraq to cover the entire country. It also urges that Washington shield opposition forces and destroy the Republican Guard units with air power.

These steps would be coupled with the lifting of economic sanctions against areas outside Hussein’s effective control; recognition of a coalition of opposition groups as the legitimate government; the release of frozen Iraqi economic assets and military aid to these groups; and creation of a ‘Radio Free Iraq’ that would broadcast across the country.

All these moves would be aimed at inciting either a military coup d’etat against Hussein or popular insurrections like those mounted by Shia and Kurdish areas of Iraq immediately after the Gulf War.

But the administration has distanced itself from Republican sabre rattling. Clinton, citing relevant U.N. resolutions, stated that while, Baghdad would be “better served if it had a different leader, …I don’t believe we need to get into a war with Iraq over the leadership of the country.”

Independent analysts, particularly regional specialists, are likewise sceptical of any U.S. drive to oust Hussein. They say opposition forces have never been weaker or more discredited, while any overt effort to overthrow the regime would no doubt wreck what little remains of international backing for Washington’s stance and weaken allied governments in the Arab world.

“It is hard to discern how we are better placed today to pursue more expansive aims (that during the Gulf War),” wrote Richard Haass, a top Mideast official in the Bush administration, this week. “Americans need to control their frustration and put aside their penchant for solutions.”