WASHINGTON: With the Taliban on the run and US allies advancing on all fronts in Afghanistan, Phase II of President George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism” - specifically, the merits of a major military ouster of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, have re-emerged as the US’s favoured topic of speculation.
An attack on Baghdad seemed far-fetched when Washington and the Northern Alliance appeared to make little headway in the early days of the war. The sudden collapse of the Taliban has put the question squarely back on the table, much to the discomfort of the US’s Arab and European allies.
They sense that anti-Saddam hawks, concentrated among top political appointees in the Pentagon and on Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff, now are greatly strengthened in relation to the administration’s most influential dove, Secretary of State Colin Powell, because of a number of factors.
First, the clear successes in the military campaign in Afghanistan appear to have bolstered the stature and influence of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose chief deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, is seen as the leader of anti-Saddam forces within the administration.
“The great hope of the War Party is that Rumsfeld’s greatly increased influence will decide the issue,” Edward Luttwak, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) here, wrote in the Los Angeles Times last week. ”If all goes well in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld will be the great victor, displacing Powell as the president’s most authoritative adviser.”
Aside from the successes achieved in the military campaign, the way they have been achieved - apparently, with few US casualties and primarily through air power combined with land offensives by rebel forces advised by US Special Forces - also has helped the anti-Saddam forces.
Powell, backed by most of the uniformed military in which he made his career, has long argued that ousting Saddam would require a massive US invasion force. The hawks counter that the victories being racked up in Afghanistan, like the 1999 Kosovo War, demonstrate that air power, combined with a very limited US ground presence and a proxy army, may be all that is necessary.
In their view, supplying rebel Kurdish forces in northern Iraq and eventually Shia in the south - both areas in which the United States has enforced a no-fly zone against Baghdad’s aircraft - may, if combined with US tactical advice and bombing, achieve the same result as in Afghanistan.
“I wouldn’t recommend doing it in a conventional way at all,” Richard Perle, chairman of the Defence Policy Board (DPB), told the Wall Street Journal last week. “The model is rather similar to what has been happening in Afghanistan.”
Bush singled out Iraq for the first time during a Nov 26 news conference. “Saddam Hussein agreed to allow inspectors in his country, and in order to prove to the world he’s not developing weapons of mass destruction, he ought to let the inspectors back in,” Bush said. “Afghanistan is still just the beginning.”
Bush’s remarks effectively overruled Powell and the Arab and European allies, who had objected to hitting Saddam for want of evidence linking him to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network.
Powell still has formidable allies in his struggle to head off a war with Saddam. Powell also has support among the uniformed military and more establishment foreign policy figures, who point out that comparing the Taliban to Saddam’s 100,000-strong Republican Guard is as misguided as comparing the battle-hardened Northern Alliance forces with the largely office-bound Iraqi National Congress (INC), the hawks’ proposed proxy forces in Iraq.
Powell still has some aces up his sleeve. Not least of these might be Bush’s own father and his top advisers, notably James Baker, former secretary of state, and Brent Scowcroft, who was national security adviser. —Dawn/InterPress Service.