By Jed Babbin on 3.18.03 @ 12:05AM
This is not your father's George Bush.
This is not your father's George Bush. As he prepared to throw
the most-telegraphed punch in American military history, George W.
was calm and determined. Unlike his father, this president will not
be deterred by Saudi blandishments or U.N. pleas to stop short of
removing Saddam once and for all. Dubya is going downtown. Decisive
action is what is required to win the war against terror. Thank
heaven we have a president who understands this.
Monday will be remembered as the day the French killed the
United Nations. The U.N. had been dying since it was born, its
basic premise a false one. Any organization that makes Burkina Faso
the equal of the United Kingdom is, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan once
said, a theater of the absurd.
As Monday dawned, Libya took over as chairman of the U.N.'s
Human Rights Commission and Wacky Jacky Chirac -- thinking hard
about the President's Monday deadline for the U.N. to act -- called
for a meeting on Tuesday to talk about continuing the absurd U.N.
inspections. The Human Rights Commission began its session by
considering sanctions against the U.S. for our treatment of Taliban
prisoners held at Camp X-Ray in Cuba. At about 10 a.m., Colin
Powell announced that the time for diplomacy had passed, and that
we wouldn't even seek a U.N. vote on the 18th U.N. "disarm Saddam"
resolution. We will speak no more of the French, except to exclude
them from the global conversation, or to boycott their goods. Their
day has passed.
The President gave Saddam and his sons, Qusay and Uday, 48 hours
to get out of Dodge. By the time you read this, the clock will have
run down to about 36. No one really expects them to go. It is
possible that Saddam will, as my Brit pals would say, "cop a
runner." But to go anywhere, he'd have to get immunity from war
crimes prosecution, which just can't be given. Milosevic is on
trial for the war crimes equivalent of petty larceny compared to
Saddam's record of torture and murder. His sons' records are about
the same, less only in numbers of victims. We'll have to kill
Saddam and his boys or dig them out of some bunker. One MOAB -- the
new "massive ordnance air burst" weapon -- on each of his 100
palaces should be enough. If it isn't, one or more will be captured
and suffer the same fate as Ugarte. No matter.
By the time this column appears again next Tuesday, the war will
have begun, and may even be over. The President's direct call to
Iraq's military to surrender will be heeded by many. Our Commando
Solo aircraft -- an airliner stuffed with more electronics than
NASA had when it put a man on the moon -- will be dialing the cell
phones and ground lines of individual Iraqi officers, telling them
when and how to surrender. Those who do may find a bright future,
provided they are not guilty of crimes against the Iraqi people.
Those who don't accept the offer will face the most intense
application of military power the world has yet seen. And the most
humane.
Our fly-guys have spent the past two months or more planning the
use of precision munitions against Iraqi military targets. They
figure the power needed to knock out each target, the blast radius
of each weapon, and the method of delivery. From that, they have
tailored the most organized air war in history, and can carry it
out. Not without error, but pretty close. The "collateral damage"
should be very small, unless Saddam fills the military targets with
civilian hostages. That is very possible, and can result in
thousands of innocent deaths. Prepare to see the carnage on Al
Jazeera TV as part of Saddam's never-ending campaign to get fellow
Arabs to fight for him. And be prepared for John Kerry, Martin
Sheen, and Yassir Arafat to blame it all on Dubya. The air battle
will be only a part of the action.
At about the same time as the first Buffs, B-1s and B-2s are
wheels-up, the special forces guys will be attacking in dozens of
small actions, trying to take out Saddam's missiles in the "Scud
Box." This area, in western Iraq, is the only place from which
Saddam can launch missiles at Israel in relative safety from
Israeli air attack. By now, the area is crawling with Brit,
American, Aussie and Israeli spec ops guys. They will do their
damnedest -- which oughta be good enough -- to knock out those
missiles before they can be launched. If it isn't good enough,
Israel may suffer huge numbers of casualties.
It's less than even money that Tommy Franks can slow the First
Marine Division sufficiently for the Army to get to Baghdad before
Chesty Puller's old outfit does. In the 1991 Gulf War, the Marines
were supposed to run an elaborate decoy operation while the Army
threw the big punch to dislodge the Iraqis from Kuwait City. The
concession stands in the Kuwait City Zoo were out of popcorn by the
time the Army caught up with the gyrenes. Look for a repeat
performance. There are 35,000 Marines in staging areas around Iraq,
probably enough to do the job alone. But they are far from alone,
part of a force of about 250,000 poised to take on whatever Iraq
puts in the field.
It's a sobering thought: we have been talking about war in Iraq
so long, commencement of the final campaign will seem anticlimactic
to those of us not on the job. But now the real fighting -- and
dying -- are about to begin. We should all take a moment to say a
prayer for our warriors, in the hope God's grace will grant that
few of ours and our allies will pay the full price for Iraq's
liberation. It will be up to the free Iraqis to make their
sacrifice worthwhile. We will destroy all the weapons of mass
destruction in the country. But there is more, far more, necessary
to make this war a real success.
The Iraqi opposition is ready to take over the civil government
of a free Iraq. They promise much, and probably can deliver. My
friend, Entifadh Qanbar of the Iraqi National Congress, came on the
air yesterday in my broadcast of the Oliver North "Common Sense
Radio" show. Entifadh praised Mr. Bush in almost embarrassing
terms. This, from one of the men who have fought for years -- not
with guns, but ideas and words -- for Iraq's freedom. It has been a
brave fight, with threats of real violence against them from
Saddam. A committee on which Entifadh serves will draft a
constitution for a new, free Iraqi nation. They can and will act
quickly to establish a free and democratic state. As the President
told them last night, Iraq can set an example for all the Middle
East. And so they must if our sacrifice for their freedom is to be
worthwhile. Because on that freedom we can build the demise of
Islamic terrorism. Saddam delendus est. Soon. Very
soon.
topics:
Islam, Constitution, Military, Iraq, Israel, United Nations
