The Iraqi dictator probably never intended his attack on the Kurdish region to be primarily a challenge to Clinton. More likely, he was responding to an Iranian military incursion into the region last July, designed to hunt down Iranian rebels and shore up a Kurdish faction supported by Iran. This made Saddam look weak to the constituency that matters most to him: Iraq’s Republican Guard and security apparatus. According to reports from Baghdad, Saddam had already been forced to put down a coup attempt against him earlier this year, executing more than 200 officers. He routinely guns down anyone, from his generals to his own sons-in-law, suspected of having coup-glow in their eyes. But if it had gone unanswered, Iran’s move might have inspired another uprising.
Saddam may have been surprised when the other main Kurdish faction made a devil-pact with him and asked for intervention. He had nothing to fear from the West. Saddam was acting within his own borders, and how could outsiders criticize him after both Iran and Turkey had sent troops into northern Iraq to hunt down their own Kurdish enemies? In any case, the grand alliance that threw Saddam out of Kuwait in 1991 has now fallen apart. That’s why using cruise missiles to punish him was a smart move. Fired from warships or long-range bombers, they don’t require forward bases on the territory of reluctant allies. And because they’re pilotless, none of our fighter jocks would end up being dog-marched through the streets of Baghdad. But the damage to Iraqi anti- aircraft sites and command centers and the expansion of the southern no-fly zone didn’t spoil Saddam’s triumph. “He threw sand in the face of the Iranians, his military was able to claim victory by beating up some Kurds, he took back land and he stood up to the Great Satan,” says a former Bush administration official. “The only price he paid was losing some airspace. What does he care? Iraq is a land power, not an air power.”
Though Saddam’s army has shrunk to less than half its gulf-war size, it is still the most formidable in the region. But he probably won’t be sending it outside his own borders any time soon. An attack on Kuwait or Saudi Arabia might recement the 1991 alliance, and it would certainly draw a vigorous response from the West. The real danger in the gulf is the increasing instability of key U.S. allies, notably Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and the growing power of Iran. Saddam’s machinations make that precarious situation even more volatile.
So what’s to be done? We can’t just kill Saddam. Morality and U.S. law aside, it probably wouldn’t work. Despite all the ordnance we unloaded on Iraq in 1991, not a single bomb or missile went down Saddam’s chimney. Since then, he’s built himself even more palaces and bunkers in which to hide, so the chances of squashing him from the air are slim to none. A land war is a surer way to tree the dictator, but in an election year (or probably any other) Clinton is not eager for such an adventure. A ground force needs a launching pad, and in 1991 the Saudis provided Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf with the perfect infrastructure. But now the Saudis are on the sidelines, leaving their American protectors vulnerable to homegrown terrorists. It’s time for Yankees to go home.
It would be nice if someone would overthrow Saddam, but the past five years have proved that coups can’t be arranged by having CIA agents play games with Iraqi exiles and Kurdish rebels. A better way to make it happen is to grind down Saddam’s armed forces from the air, until his own musclemen turn on him. By hitting antiaircraft facilities in southern Iraq and shifting the no-fly cross hairs closer to Baghdad, Clinton’s generals are preparing for a broader air war–should the president decide he wants one. Now that cruise missiles have shut Iraq’s air-defense eyes, at least for a while, U.S. and British naval aircraft can strike targets ranging from armored vehicles to artillery positions and logistical depots. It should be possible to smash Saddam’s military machine methodically, one target at a time, without sweating the time clock. Once the target-rich southern zone has been pulverized, the playing field could be shifted closer to Baghdad. There are high risks in such a campaign. Warplanes can attack tanks, for example, only by getting up close and personal. Pilots would be lost to antiaircraft fire and accidents. An aerial blitz might quickly sicken even pro-Western Arabs. And if Saddam is eventually overthrown, his successor might turn out to be no better. But an unrelenting air campaign would have to chasten any dictator, present or future. It’s too late to finish Saddam off cleanly–and too early to give up on ridding the world of his evil presence.
