The talking heads on television have run out of gas. There’s not
much they can say they haven’t said already. Enthusiasm for the war
may vary, but everyone agrees war is inevitable, and that the only
question now is when it begins. Presumably we won’t bomb while the
U.N. inspectors are still on the ground, or there is still a chance
the Security Council will support us, but who knows? The Iraqi
operation goes forward in murky ways, and things are not always
what they seem.
Iraq said last week that the inspection team harbored American
spies, while the U.S. said Iraq was lying about its weapons. It may
be both sides were right. Certainly one hopes the CIA has planted a
spook or an asset among the inspectors. The inspectors are a
valuable source of information.
At the same time no one other than the usual hate-America people
believe the Iraqis. As a subdued Tom Daschle told Wolf Blitzer over
the weekend, the day before the White House got copies of the
12,000-page Iraqi weapons declaration, Iraq has always lied in the
past, and there is no reason to believe it now. Indeed even the
New York Times seems to have lost all hope. A Sunday
magazine piece argued, tortuously, that because liberals had
favored the bombing of Kosovo, they were reluctant to oppose a war
with Iraq. In fact, the piece concluded by saying that maybe war
wasn’t a bad idea.
So there you were, virtual unanimity: the Iraqis lie, so let’s
get on with it. On the other hand, White House spokesman Ari
Fleischer said on Monday, “We have not made any conclusions about
the [Iraqi] declaration.”
But no one quite believed that. Fleischer was only trying, very
sensibly, to project an image of a judicious White House. The war
would be deadly serious, but it is preceded by PR-political
maneuvers from all sides. Saddam Hussein issued his weird apology
to Kuwait. Tariq Azis, Iraq’s creepy deputy foreign minister, told
Ted Koppel that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. An Iraqi
general told Peter Arnett (yes, he’s back there again) the
same.
That was all nonsense, of course. But don’t forget George Bush’s
wacky speech in Cincinnati last October. He said Iraq wanted to
send a fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles filled with chemical and
biological weapons against American cities. Bush does not seem to
have repeated the charge since then, however, so it may be that
some military man broke through the civilian hawks at the White
House and got to him. Aerial vehicles with chemical and biological
weapons are way beyond Iraqi capabilities. The real threat is that
Iraq will develop nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile there seems to be an internal war of sorts at the
Pentagon. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is a big proponent
of “effects-based” operations. Apparently, though, the Army and
Marine Corps are skeptical. An effects-based war would rely on
laser and satellite-guided bombs, unmanned surveillance planes, and
other technological marvels. The Iraqis would be hit early and
often; resistance would crumble before the arrival of U.S. ground
troops. But we tried that in Afghanistan, some Army and Marine
generals say, and it really didn’t work; we still needed ground
troops to do the job.
The consensus figure, meanwhile, on just how many troops would
be needed seems to be 250,000, about half the number of those who
fought in the Gulf War, but still a considerable force. In an
interview in the National Journal, retired Army Lieut.
Gen. Gus Pagonis, the Gulf War supply chief, said that of those
250,000, some 50,000 would be logistical personnel, whose concern
would be food, fuel, ammunition and other supplies.
Pagonis also spoke about the need for deep-water ports, where
supply ships could be unloaded. Without the ports, the military
operation could founder. But the only effective deep-water port we
seem to be sure of now is in Kuwait. Turkey and Saudi Arabia are
reluctant to make their ports available for a U.S. invasion.
Whether the Turks and Saudis will come around is still
uncertain, but it should be clear by now that it would be better
for the U.S. to have allies in the war than to try to go it alone
or with just the Brits. The civilian hawks both in and out of the
White House who seem to think it is somehow unmanly to seek the
approval of the Security Council would best serve their country now
by just shutting up. The war should be led by the generals, and not
by them.
