Last Thursday, the President finally went back to his basic
playbook, and made the Iraqis and the U.N. offers he knows they
must refuse. He told the U.N. it could either act or face its own
irrelevance, and that the deadline for action will be measured in
“days or weeks, not months or years.” It is a great shame that U.N.
proceedings are becoming as useless as barroom debates, but asking
that body to enforce its own resolutions and to “show some
backbone” is almost certainly asking more than the Russians,
Chinese, and Third World members will permit.
All through the Clinton years, America failed to act to enforce
the 1991 U.N. resolutions requiring Saddam to give up his weapons
of mass destruction and establishing international supervision of
Iraq’s disarmament. The world has refused to recognize the fact
that Saddam’s power — as he sees it, and as other Arabs see it —
depends on his producing and being able to use those weapons. He
cannot give them up and remain able to pursue his ambitions for
power beyond the borders of Iraq. Since the President’s speech to
the General Assembly, the diplomatic games began anew. On one team
we have Dubya, Dick and Don trying to get the U.N. and Congress to
act. On the other, we have Hosni Mubarak, Tariq Aziz, a gaggle of
Saudi princes and Tom Daschle all trying to stall. Fortunately, the
President’s principled stance will allow him to ignore the result
if it goes the wrong way.
The President’s speech to the U.N. had barely ended when Iraqi
foreign minister Aziz was on television rejecting the whole idea of
resuming inspections. True to form, Aziz was busy strewing lies
across the airwaves while accusing the President of doing the same.
Aziz said that America was trying to impose conditions on any
renewed inspections. What the President demanded — unlimited,
no-notice inspections of any site in Iraq — is exactly what the
1991 cease-fire agreements and U.N. resolutions require. What Aziz
demanded was a deal lifting economic sanctions and blocking U.S.
military action as the price for resumed inspections.
When that didn’t fly, the Iraqis went to their first fallback
position. There could be inspections, but only if they were done in
a manner that allowed Iraq to retain its “sovereignty, dignity and
legitimate rights.” This is precisely the framework of the earlier
failed inspections, which let Iraq declare off-limits to inspectors
its “sovereign” presidential palaces where much of the illegal
weapons of mass destruction are researched, produced, and
stockpiled. That one didn’t get its landing gear into the wheel
wells before it was shot down.
But the diplo-games are far from over, and the players are hard
at work. The Saudi and Egyptian foreign ministers said on Sunday
that their nations would cooperate with a U.S.-led attack on Iraq
if it were backed by the U.N. Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign
minister, told CNN that the Saudis would be “obliged to follow
through” on U.N. resolutions. Saud held out a second carrot, saying
that his nation would do everything it could to stabilize the price
of oil in the event of such a war.
But the price for all this future cooperation is our waiting for
and accepting U.N. authority and limits on military action. In this
rather transparent move, the Saudis are trying to set Dubya up for
the same play they pulled on Dad in ‘91 so that we will have to
stop short of removing Saddam. It’s a sucker play, and I’m betting
that our guy won’t touch it.
The President said that he wanted U.N. action on the resolutions
authorizing action — notice the plural — within a week. The
French are advocating a two-resolution process. The first one would
give the Iraqis time to allow the inspections required by the 1991
resolutions. This would take a few weeks. If the Iraqis allow the
inspections, it would take months to organize them, and then more
months for the Iraqis to thwart them thoroughly enough for anyone
but us to complain. If the Iraqis don’t allow the inspections, then
under the French plan the U.N. would debate a second resolution on
the consequences. President Chirac was very unclear on what the
second resolution would say. We haven’t even heard how the Chinese,
Russians and others will try to vague-up any resolutions we
propose. All of this fits perfectly with Tom Daschle’s plan to
avoid a vote before the election.
The Democratic leadership, which nearly shouted itself hoarse
over the past six months demanding a public debate on Iraq, is now
doing everything it can to prevent the debate and any vote on
action before the November elections. Senator Daschle has said that
the Senate shouldn’t vote before the U.N. does. On “Meet the Press”
last Sunday, Miz Hillary whined to Tim Russert that America is big
enough to do more than one thing at a time, and we should be
focusing on the economy now, not war. But it’s not the economy,
stupid. We are at war, even if the Democrats won’t admit it.
The real reason for all the senatorial bloviating is that there
are so many Senate Dems thinking about running for President in ‘04
that they are really worried about this. Almost none of them —
probably not even Hillary — will vote against the President on a
war resolution. But those such as John Edwards of North Carolina
and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota want to keep faith with the most
liberal fringes of the Democratic Party, which means voting against
action on Iraq. Much as they try to hide it, there’s a lot of the
Jane Fonda/Bill Clinton 1960s left in these “new” Democrats. The
President should force their hand.
The President should send to Congress a resolution supporting
military action against Saddam Hussein at any time the President
determines it essential to American national security. We may need
to take action next month or next year, but it should be on our
timetable, not the U.N.’s. Send up a resolution this week, Mr.
President, and tell Congress to stay right here until they have
voted on it. Saddam delendus est.
