by Robert Zelnick
Knight Ridder-Tribune
Eleven years ago, 45 Senate Democrats and two Republicans voted against granting President George H.W. Bush authority to wage war against Iraq. For months, as Iraq cemented its stranglehold on Kuwait, witnesses before Sen. Sam Nunn's Armed Services Committee had urged caution. Engage Iraq's desert-bred, battle-tested army, and the United States would suffer 20,000 casualties or more. Israel would get drawn into the conflict, and the alliance would come apart. Better to let the embargo bring Saddam to his knees. Time rewards the patient.
Had that advice convinced four more senators - assuming the president decided to avert a constitutional crisis and comply - Iraq would today dominate the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and the other gulf states would be mere vassals; Kuwait, a wholly owned subsidiary. Iraq's arsenal would include nuclear weapons. The threat of a terrorist-inspired catastrophe dwarfing Sept. 11 would be terribly real.
That the critics were wrong a decade ago does not automatically make them wrong today.
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Those who demand proof that Saddam's threat is real would not see it if it bit them. Weapons of mass destruction have been central to Iraqi military doctrine since the mid-1970s. Saddam lied to U.N. inspectors about his nuclear, chemical and biological programs and then kicked them out when their trail got hot. What did Saddam do with those materials, eat them?
The same critics, who see no imminent threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, purport to see a Stalingrad-type threat from its shrunken, suspect army. Now the Republican Guards have a new tactic, urban warfare: Street to street they will fight to save Saddam. Pure nonsense.
We hear other arguments. Saddam need not be pre-empted; he can be deterred. Or we must not act without Security Council approval. As for deterrence, it might possibly work, assuming Saddam correctly (for once) interprets U.S. intentions, and assuming further he chooses not to deliver his weapons of mass destruction through clandestine agents who may be hard to trace.
As for Security Council approval, it would be nice to have the Russians, Chinese and French endorse U.S. action.
Almost as nice as it will be to see democracy begin to transform the Arab world, as those who cherish freedom fervently hope.
Robert Zelnick, an Emmy Award-winning journalist, is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution (www.hoover.org) and chairman of the Department of Journalism at Boston University.
