By Jed Babbin on 1.21.03 @ 12:04AM
We'd better tackle 2003 before it tackles us. That includes not only Iraq and North Korea, but Colombia and the investigation of two F-16 pilots.
We'd better tackle 2003 before it tackles us. There's a lot of
what my pal Al Clark would call "SGO" -- S*^t goin' on -- that we
should be doing something about, not just thinking about.
Right now, American troops are becoming directly involved in
Colombia's battle against narco-terrorists that pass as
revolutionaries. Some seventy American advisers are going beyond
the training mission they were sent for, and accompanying Colombian
forces in operations. This is a big step. This is a potentially
dangerous "mission creep" environment, and the President should not
let his intentions be mistaken. If we're going to do this, Boss,
let's do it up right. We may not have enough to deal with Iraq and
North Korea at the same time, but we can take care of Colombia, if
we really need to. But not by taking baby steps.
The past month of Demo dithering about North Korea should teach
us an important lesson. North Korea, less than ten years ago, was
in something like the position Saddam Hussein is now. When Lil'
Billy decided to appease them, and buy them out of their nuclear
weapons program with food and oil, he blew the chance to prevent
them from becoming a nuclear power. Now we really don't have any
means of containing or disarming North Korea without risking a
nuclear exchange.
The fact that North Korea's only cash export crop is Scud
missiles -- about $800-million-a-year worth -- means we aren't
about to stop Kim Jong Il, North Korea's "Dear Leader," from
selling them. He sells his missiles to anyone with cash, and is
quite capable of selling nuclear weapons the same way. The danger
North Korea's nuclear and missile industry poses is enormous. It
should be teaching everyone -- even Tom Daschle -- the lesson that
if we don't deal with Saddam now, while we can, we won't be able to
in a year or two when he has nuclear weapons. It's like Germany in
the mid-1930s. If England and France had attacked Hitler then all
of Europe could have been saved from the most destructive war in
history. Now is the time to deal with Saddam. Well, almost
time.
The Muslim haj -- the religious pilgrimage -- ends on 19
February. If you were thinking about a short vacation in Baghdad in
late February, you may want to change your reservations. It will
not be a great place to be at about 0300 on the 28th , when the
moon is again dark. Unless you're in an F-16, in which case it's
gonna be the only place to be.
Two F-16 pilots who won't be there are Majors William Umbach and
Harry Schmidt. The two are the subject of an Article 32
investigation (the military equivalent of a grand jury) to decide
whether they will be court-martialed for the accidental deaths of
four Canadian soldiers in an incident near Kandahar, Afghanistan,
last April. Umbach, as flight leader, is charged along with
Schmidt, who dropped a 500-pound laser-guided bomb on the
Canadians. The pilots' defense is that they were never briefed that
the Canadians were there.
The only comforting aspect of this case is the fact that the
Article 32 investigation is being run by one of the Air Force's
best, JAG Col. Pat Rosenow, an experienced military judge. It is a
mistake to prejudge what will happen. The only thing we can be sure
of is that Pat Rosenow will run a fair and tight investigation.
The bigger issue in that case is whether the Air Force will
investigate and fix the failures of the Coalition Air Operations
Center -- "CAOC" -- commanders who may also have been derelict in
their duties. Col. David Nichols, Schmidt and Umbach's boss, had
complained before the incident about the CAOC's procedures and its
communications shortcomings. Sources say Nichols -- whose normal
function, like Schmidt and Umbach's -- in peacetime, an Illinois
Air National Guard pilot, as were Schmidt and Umbach -- was too
buddy-buddy with his men and didn't maintain a proper command
environment. This is only a small part of the evident problem.
Nichols' complaints about the CAOC need to be investigated. Gen.
John Jumper, Air Force boss, should get involved personally to make
sure that the CAOC for the Iraq campaign not only has the right
information, but is receiving the right information from the other
services to do its job. Otherwise, we will have more casualties
than we should in the coming campaign, and some will be from
friendly fire.
The Iraqis continue to play the U.N. like a fiddle. After months
of willful futility, the Blixies were allowed to find some empty
chemical missile warheads. Now, the U.N. types, and most of our
faux-allies, are saying that a dozen ain't enough to go to war
over. The sad truth is that if Blix & Co. discovered a dozen
nukes in Baghdad, the U.N. would say that was only evidence of
Iraqi cooperation. All that remains is for Mr. Bush to end this
charade. Which he will do around mid-February unless Saddam takes a
powder.
Mr. Rumsfeld ended the week with the suggestion that Saddam and
any of his generals who cut and run now may get immunity from war
crimes prosecutions. Maybe we ought to give them professorships at
U.C. Berkeley. With tenure. If we can avoid the war by doing that,
we should. The curriculum at Berserkeley wouldn't change
noticeably. But there's one reason to prevent this from happening:
Captain Scott Speicher, USN. Speicher has been MIA since the First
Gulf War in 1991. If Saddam -- or any of his higher-ups -- killed
Speicher after he was captured, they must suffer capital punishment
for it. If we find Speicher alive -- and there's no reason to think
we will -- his testimony against his captors in a war crimes trial
would have to be conclusive. Any American held that long would
deserve the opportunity to make that case. Saddam delendus
est.
topics:
Environment, Military, Iraq, North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, Oil
