By Jed Babbin on 2.11.03 @ 12:04AM
The opening shots of military action that will remove Saddam Hussein are only weeks away.
Almost every day, the President says that time is running out
for Saddam, and for the U.N. to take steps to deal with him. The
opening shots of military action that will remove Saddam Hussein
are only weeks away. Orders have been issued to the final group of
military units Gen. Tommy Franks will use. The Civilian Reserve Air
Fleet -- CRAF -- has been activated to help move them. Messrs.
Powell and Rumsfeld have thrown the gauntlet down before the U.N.
and NATO, and our Saudi pals are saying they'll throw the U.S.
military out of their country after the campaign is over.
Last week, both the 101st Airborne Division and the USS
Kitty Hawk were ordered to the Persian Gulf. CRAF --
civilian airliners and cargo aircraft -- will be flying hundreds of
missions in the next few weeks, moving troops and materials to join
the thousands of men and masses of equipment already there. The
Navy will soon have four carrier battle groups in the area. If they
hadn't already run out of water, there'd be a fifth on the way.
The 101st will join the other Army and Marine units to bring the
deployed ground forces to a strength considerably larger than
necessary to do the job. General Franks, apparently having won the
internal Pentagon battle to go heavy instead of light, will have a
total force of about 200,000 troops under his command. There is a
near-total deployment of special operations forces from the U.S.,
Britain and Australia. These troops will move, in the first hours
of the campaign, to destroy or capture the missiles and aircraft
that Saddam may try to use to deliver weapons of mass destruction
against our troop concentrations, and against Israeli cities.
The spec ops guys will have an even tougher job in trying to
stop Saddam from setting Iraq's oil fields on fire. Saddam has
already positioned his troops to do that, and will threaten to set
the fires -- or even light a few -- in a last gasp to pressure our
"allies" to stop us. Even then, he is more likely to believe that
our "allies" will stop us short of Baghdad like they did in 1991.
Which means he'll stay and try to ride out the Second Gulf War. If
we don't kill him, his own troops will.
On Friday, Hans Blix and Mohamed El-Baradei will give another
report to the U.N. Security Council, and again ask that inspections
be given more time. Last weekend, in their talk with the Iraqis,
they received more documents and were encouraged to believe the
Iraqis will cooperate. Kofi Annan warned us against squandering
"the legitimacy" of our cause if we move without U.N. permission,
as if the U.N. could change the facts and deal with the threats
posed by Saddam Hussein's regime merely by talking about them. And
Hans baby -- who must be reading from a script written by Franz
Kafka -- told the Iraqis that they should pass a law prohibiting
WMD.
If only that were the worst of it. After Blix presents his
report of Friday, the French-German Axis of Weasels plans to offer
a new U.N. resolution to triple the number of inspectors and send
U.N. "peacekeeping" troops to accompany them. Yesterday, the French
and the Germans -- standing skirt-to-skirt with the Belgians --
blocked our request for NATO AWACS aircraft and Patriot
anti-missile batteries to deploy to protect Turkey from Saddam's
aircraft and missiles. (The Belgians are a nation of French
wannabes. Last year, they were terribly angry when press photos
revealed that their army was routinely parading with toy guns. Toy
country, toy army, toy guns.) Turkey is a reliable, valuable NATO
member, and deserves the protection. Preventing NATO from moving
key assets to defend Turkey is indefensible, despicable, craven,
French.
If only Rudyard Kipling were here to write of these times. The
irony is delicious. Two of the most troublesome and least valuable
members of the Western community of nations are about to cause the
demise of both NATO and the U.N. only to preserve the flow of
shekels from their Iraq trade. France and Germany will bear a very
heavy responsibility to the world for what they do this week.
Chirac and Schroeder will go down in history on the same page with
Vidkun Quisling. Neville Chamberlain was a far better man. Mistaken
and naïve, but not corrupt. Without these quisling nations, we
will go about implementing our war plan and by St. Patty's Day,
Iraq will be free.
From now on, our actions need to create confusion about
intentions and timing. We can still achieve tactical surprise, and
should pull out all the stops to do so. Forget the Boy Scout code.
Dubya shouldn't lie, but he can avoid the truth. And there are many
others who should do it for him. Some low-level Defense or State
Department official should announce that military action will be
taken, and that all civilians -- including Hans and his Blixies --
should get out of the way. We can then wait for days or weeks
before we attack, sending out false messages all the while. The
President should go on television to announce the beginning of the
action hours after it starts.
Because we cannot now avoid war, we can and will succeed
quickly. Mr. Bush must define success in the war, or others will do
so in terms that ensure failure. Madeleine the Short proclaimed
that if we don't capture Saddam or have proof of his death, we will
not have succeeded. Nonsense. Ending the WMD threat by disarming
Iraq, liberating the Iraqi people, and maintaining Iraq as a whole,
free and independent nation are our immediate goals. Success means
that, and nothing else. But success in Iraq is only the
beginning.
The Saudi problem is ripening for solution. The Saudis are the
bankers and mentors of terror. If they demand that our military
leave, so be it. They will try to sugar-coat it by saying that our
departure is necessary so that they can then take on the radical
Islamists who threaten their fragile regime. But that, like so much
else the Saudis say, will be a lie. They will never oppose the
radical Islamists because they themselves -- the House of Saud and
its retainers -- are some of the radical Islamists who they would
have us believe are their adversaries.
After the Iraq campaign, when freedom and democracy have taken
root there, the Saudis will fear the spread of freedom across their
own borders. We must encourage just that. The Saudis are no more
likely to stop supporting terror than Saddam is to peacefully give
up his WMD. They will have to be dealt with as the enemy they are.
The sooner we face that fact, the safer the lives of our children
and grandchildren will be. Saddam delendus est.
topics:
Trade, Television, Islam, Law, Military, Iraq, Israel, NATO, Oil
