Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[goodluck]

The Next War, Part 2

LESLIE GELB: I think we're about to cross a Rubicon, and in modern times it's every bit as fateful as
Caesar's crossing. I believe we should cross it, for all the reasons Jeff has been writing about. This guy
really is a serious threat, and a danger. And it's important for us to go after him, to get rid of him. But I
shudder at my beliefs and my conviction that we should do this, because I think this act of war will set off
momentous events. This is a war maybe beyond anything we've done since the end of the Second World
War, in its potential overflow into our lives here and abroad. I think it has the potential to do more to the
world and to us than Korea, than the first Gulf War, and maybe even Vietnam. I think the war as a
military battle will probably be over quite quickly. U.S. military might, at this point, to fight a straight-up
conventional war, is awesome. And Saddam is weaker. Whatever his tactics will be, the shock of
American military power in a straight-up military battle will be fearsome. I think it's what happens after
the victory that engages us and worries me. Good things can come of it, and I hope they will, particularly
in that region of the world, because Iraq and Iran really have a chance, and deserve a chance for the next
stage in their history, for the kind of potentially middle-class societies where you can build more rule of
law and have a good preoccupation with economic development. And that could set a good example for
the rest of the Arab and Islamic world. And it would be good to have that kind of example. They need it,
we need it. At the same time, it is a terrible roll of the dice. And it could unleash a terrible
anti-Americanism, and a fanaticism, an active fanaticism, even beyond what we've seen. So I'm in favor of
doing it, for all the reasons you've heard time and again, but this is, I think, potentially the most
momentous decision of our adult lifetime.

J.G.: Now, I just wanted to take issue with one thing that's been brought up, which is that the application
of American strength, or a successful invasion of Iraq, will unleash these terrible forces of
anti-Americanism in the Middle East and elsewhere. It's not that I don't necessarily believe that, but I think
there's a counterargument, which is that in the Middle East—here, too, but especially in the Middle
East—nothing succeeds like success. Strength is respected. One could argue that the situation we're in
today stems directly from President Carter's inability to confront the Iranians in 1979, when they invaded
the American Embassy in Tehran, and we might unleash very positive forces in the Middle East. We don't
know.

L.G.: You know, Dick, I've been on many panels, no one will define for me what I said. That's what I
said. I said it could have beneficial effects, or it could unleash this other thing. This is a roll of the dice, and
if you're prepared to go to war without realizing it is a roll of the dice, then I don't think you've thought it
through any better than the Bush people.

J.G.: Well, I have to say this, that I look at—I shudder at my own beliefs, too, sometimes . . .

L.G.: I hope so.

J.G.: Because—no, no, no, but let me tell you seriously. Let's use an example from recent Middle East
history. In 2000, two years ago, Israel pulled forces out of south Lebanon. The Americans applauded, the
Europeans applauded, most Israelis applauded, and we expected that the Arab world would say, "Good.
We got a compromise. There's a resolution to this conflict." The exact opposite occurred. This move was
seen as an act of terrible Israeli weakness, and it's being exploited today by Palestinian rejectionists, it's
being exploited by Hezbollah, and I think it's being exploited by Iran. And all I'm saying is that, in these
discussions, which I've been in, which we've all been in, the assumption—and I'm not trying to put words
in your mouth, God forbid—is that it's going to go very badly. And I just am not comfortable with that
assumption.

L.G.: But, Jeff, if you're impressed with the power of might, of military might, then our kicking the hell
out of Saddam ten years ago should have changed the politics in that region, and it didn't.

J.G.: No. Because we didn't go all the way. The Arabs saw us as impotent.

L.G.: It wasn't enough power. But we still kicked the devil out of them. We did.

J.G.: But we didn't.

L.G.: We won.

J.G.: But we didn't kill him.

L.G.: We didn't do enough. But we won. And what was the effect?

J.G.: I think the Arabs saw that as a flinch.

L.G.: It should just give you pause.

J.G.: No, I'm full of pauses, believe me. Especially in this room.

L.W.: The Administration and a lot of Americans have hold of one truth, which is: the only thing Arabs
respect is power and the exertion of power. And when I was there the critique that I heard was "You're
always projecting American power, but you're not projecting, at least in our part of the world, American
values. And if you were holding our part of the world to the same standards that you did Asia, for
instance, and built these wonderful capitalistic democracies, or Latin America, or even the efforts that are
trying to be made now in Africa, then our world would be different." It's not just because we didn't beat
the hell out of them enough the first time and the second time and the third time. We simply don't trust
those people to elect their own governments and follow our example. We're afraid of the people. And until
we arrange ourselves in that part of the world in a friendly way and understand what they're after and
explain to them what we stand for and show them that we stand for it by encouraging civil society and
democratic governments in their own countries, we're never going to have friends—real friends—in that
area. We'll only have tyrants that we pay for.

J.G.: Larry, I couldn't agree with you more, which is why I'm wondering why, and this is sincere, I don't
know why you're so worried about the fall of Mubarak, then. The unleashing of all these forces, post-Iraq,
that will topple these . . .

L.G.: Who do you think would take Mubarak's place?

J.G.: Well, this is the question . . .

L.G.: That is the question.

J.G.: One assumes . . .

I.H.: Who will take Saddam Hussein's place?

J.G.: Well, that's a separate issue, because . . .

R.H.: Let's get to that in a minute.

J.G.: There is a moral, compelling reason to that, where there might not be with Mubarak. But I'm asking
Larry, seriously, do you think that fundamentalists will take over?

L.W.: We have a real problem with fundamentalists taking over in a lot of countries, because political
Islam is a political bubble. It's caused by the lack of any kind of democratic alternatives. The only thing
that the governments there fear is the mosque. And so people flee to the mosque. And there are a lot of
people under the same banner that have nothing else in common except their objection to the government
they're living under. What we should be doing over there is creating civil societies, helping them to
encourage political parties; we should be doing those kinds of things now. And then, I think, practically,
we are not really threatened by Saddam Hussein right now. The idea of sending in inspectors and tying
them up for the next couple of years while we did a little political spadework seems to me a good reason to
pause. Keep him on hold, keep his legs crossed, and let him hide his stuff here, hide his stuff there, but if
he's doing that he's not giving us any more problems, and it gives us a chance to restore our integrity in
that part of the world.

I.H.: I absolutely agree that although the values that America proclaims and wishes to project are
admirable, those values as experienced—or American power as experienced on the Arab street and on
many other streets—bear no relationship to them. If you talk to people on what is called the Arab streets,
the vision that they have of the United States—the arbitrary use of power, the support of tyrants, the
anti-Islam as they perceive it, the unwillingness to live with other points of view—are what come up again
and again. And if you're going to go in with massive force against Saddam, even if it is successful, you are
still going to have to deal with that response. In the Cold War, what did people do with the feelings, if
somebody felt that the present world arrangements or their present national arrangements deprived them of
hope or justice or liberty? They tended to turn to revolutionary socialism, or whatever it was, which, for all
its faults and problems, was at least a post-Enlightenment idea. What they turn to now is not a
post-Enlightenment idea. Dialogue with this is extremely difficult, but many people see no alternative. The
result is going to be more enemies of the United States, less tamable, less persuadable, less able to be
talked to. They don't have a project for a future society, so you can't even moderate that project. And that's
very difficult.

R.H.: Let's see where we stand so far. Basically, Les and Jeff have argued in favor of going after Saddam
and disagreed about, or, at least, appear to have disagreed—I think the disagreement is less than meets the
eye—over the risks of it. And Isabel and Larry have argued that we are not in a rush and we should pay
more attention to the consequences in the Arab streets and in the Indian subcontinent. Now, the fact is that
we all can agree that Saddam is a truly terrible chief of state and is in the process of trying to create—and
we don't know how well he's done, because the inspectors have been gone for over three years—weapons
of mass destruction. Now, the Administration's argumentation has been bad and alienating to people who
would support a better rationale. But the argument at its best, at the core, is: if you wait, he'll be stronger.
So if you know he's dangerous now you ought to take him on now, because he'll be more dangerous later.
It's a modern version of the theory that Hitler would've been better to deal with in 1936 than he was by
1939. And that's not a theory; that is an accepted fact. What it really comes down to is the most
unknowable of all things: what will actually happen in the fog of war. And the fact is that history is a
cautionary guide. I'm in much the same position as Les Gelb here. I think Saddam has to be dealt with,
and I would support an international coalition willing to deal with it. But the talk of unilateralism and the
talk of preëmption have gravely weakened our case, and there are many, many other concerns that we
haven't had time to explore here, like the Turkish-Kurdish issue and the effect on a whole slew of other
issues. But I want to underscore this: wars don't go the way people think they will. If the war had gone the
way people thought it would in 1914, it would have been over long before Lenin took his train to Finland
Station. If the war had gone rationally in 1944-45, Hitler would not have destroyed his country in Europe,
the Soviets would never have gotten to Berlin, and the whole Cold War would have either not taken place
or had a different shape. Wars don't go according to plan. And then you can make bad plans. The decision
to end the war after exactly a hundred hours in 1991, which I would submit to you as the single worst
decision any American leader has made since the end of the Vietnam War, is the reason we're sitting here
today. Carter may have mishandled Khomeini, but that's not why we're here today, Jeff. We're here today
because of a catastrophic mistake, and, by the way, followed up by General Schwarzkopf being allowed to
negotiate, without any Washington supervision, the most conciliatory, permissive ceasefire regime, which
then allowed Saddam to gas the Shiites and drive the Kurds out and create appalling humanitarian
consequences. Now, I say that because none of us know what's going to happen in the war. If it's a
protracted war, if the Israelis come in, if the street then rises up the way you predicted, that's one scenario.
If it's a quick war, it still will be hell, because wars are hell, and there will be casualties on our side as well
as massive civilian casualties in Iraq. But if it's a quick war, or if we get very lucky—and right now the
Iraqi generals are sitting around saying, you know, "We're going to get destroyed unless we get a new
leader"—and maybe avoid the war, then it's a different scenario. So I want to underscore, before we move
on to the next issue, which is post-Saddam Iraq, that much will depend on the war itself. The idea that
there's war and then there's diplomacy is wrong. What happens after a war is derived directly from the
way it unfolds. And we don't know that. Now, let's turn to post-Saddam Iraq. Isabel, why don't you go
first.

I.H.: Well, I absolutely take your point that what happens, what post-Saddam Iraq looks like, depends to a
great extent on how we get there. And there does seem to be a fairly clear idea of the strength of Saddam's
forces, or at least the forces that count. Their loyalties in various situations are not clear. Nor is it clear to
me where this war will be fought. The last one was fought in the western desert; will this one be fought in
the cities? If it's fought in population centers, is there a limit to the number of Iraqi civilian casualties that
this war will produce? And on all these questions I think we don't really have an answer. There are, as I'm
sure you know, various projections for how Iraq should or might go in a post-Saddam world. The one that
appears to be favored by the Administration is, as it were, a new version, but a cleaner and more friendly
version, of the strongman: another general. The Iraqi opposition would clearly prefer something else, and
they will lay out for you what that would require. One of them says five hundred thousand American
troops and five years to stabilize, eighteen months before the constitutional convention and the election.
Well, I can't see that happening. If that's the price, I can't see it being paid. If Saddam is to be overthrown
in order for there to be a similar set of arrangements with a different man, then I think that many of the
consequences that we have laid out in our Jeremiah-like way are more likely. If you forget a democratic,
stable Iraq, which we would all clearly like, financed by renewed oil flows and so on and so forth. It's a
question for me still as to whether the American Administration really wants that.

R.H.: Now, Jeff. Iraq was invented eighty years ago, as I'm sure everyone in this room knows, by
Winston Churchill and Gertrude Bell, on a Sunday afternoon in Cairo, and they made a mistake. They
shouldn't have created the country, they should have let it go into the three provinces that it had been under
the Ottomans. Today, that option—letting there be a Kurdish north, a Sunni middle, and a Shiite south—is
not possible. Because, as I understand it, the Saudis will not agree on the south, and the Turks, who I
know very well, have said that is an absolute red line, and we can't do the war without the Turks. The
Turks are going to say, "No autonomy for the Kurds beyond what they have now, or less." So my
question is—starting with the Kurds, who are living in a golden age now, with their de-facto independent
country, which nobody recognizes, supported by the British and the United States intelligence
services—are they going to agree to a post-Saddam future for Iraq in which they once again report to
Baghdad and argue over the oil, or are we setting the stage for a different kind of Iraq, a Yugoslavia-type
Iraq—Yugoslavia in the period of 1991-95 and afterward? What's going to happen? Let us predicate now
that there's been a successful outcome, Saddam is gone. Put yourself in the Kurdish area for a moment
and tell us what's going to happen.

J.G.: Well, the official position of the Kurdish party, the two main parties, is that they want a democratic
federal Iraq.

R.H.: Yes, but that's not the real position.

J.G.: That is their real position. What's in their hearts is, of course, the desire for a greater Kurdistan. They
have a morally compelling case, President Wilson promised them, didn't carry through, they have a good
case, but I think that the Kurds—you know, I'm not going to speculate on that. Because some of their
leaders have been saying things in the last few days that have been pretty intemperate and have made the
Turks extremely angry. So let me put it this way. One very smart Kurdish leader I spoke to in Washington
a couple of weeks ago said this: "If we're smart, we'll march to Baghdad. If we're dumb, we'll march to
Kirkuk." Kirkuk, of course, is the oil center in the north that the Turks are very keen on having. If they
march on Kirkuk, the Turks are going to see that as a signal; the Turks will come in, and then it'll be a
bloodbath.

R.H.: We need to underscore that for all of you. If the Kurds do anything in the line that Jeff's suggesting,
the Turks, and this has not been reported in the papers here, but it's quite clear that the Turks will send
troops into the northern part of Iraq, there's no question about it. So go ahead.

J.G.: So it depends on American pressure. If the Bush Administration can bang Kurdish heads together
and say, "Look, what we're going to get you is access to the revenue that is derived from the oil under your
land. What we're going to give you is autonomy. We're going to give you X, Y, and Z, but if you make a
false move the Turks are going to kill you." So it depends on a couple of leaders in Kurdistan, on whether
they have the sense to take advantage of the situation without bringing catastrophe upon themselves.

R.H.: It's very tough. Any of you who have ever talked to the Kurds would tell you that the No. 1 name in
the English language most distrusted in any Kurdish area is Bush. Because they feel they were totally
betrayed by President Bush, Sr. . . .

J.G.: Kissinger is close.

R.H.: And Kissinger. Kissinger and Nixon are right up there. Les, let us postulate that we're successful
one way or another, and recognizing that the way it happens is critical, and that Saddam is removed at the
end of a military engagement or by his own people. What do you think the U.S. commitment going
forward should be, and what should our goal be? Just to say "a democratic Iraq" is nice, but the odds aren't
very high that that's achievable.

L.G.: I won't say it's going to be a democratic Iraq. I think, you know, that the Bush Administration is
trying to do the right thing. I think they are. And in almost all the wrong ways: doing it the wrong way in
preparing for this war and stripping us of the natural support I think the cause deserves; doing it the wrong
way in terms of not dealing with Isabel's questions. You can't do something like this without thinking
about the aftermath and planning for it before you launch that first missile. And they're not doing the right
thing in terms of preparing this country for the possible cost here as well, in terms of terrorist attacks and
in terms of impact on the economy. Iraq really could turn into a bloodbath. The scenario that the Shiites
could decide to take vengeance against the ruling Sunnis is not at all far-fetched. And, if that happens, that
triggers terrible things throughout that region. That's big business. You've got to think about the deals you
want to try to make with the different factions in Iraq now, and begin to think of how you're going to try to
apportion power, and begin to prepare Americans and other countries for the postwar commitment. It's a
big deal if you want to avoid the most negative kinds of consequences. And this has not been done. Here
at home, we'd have to assume that what we do in Iraq could well trigger more terrorist attacks against us. I
pray it doesn't happen, but responsible policy demands that we plan for it. Nothing has happened on that
front. Our cities aren't much better prepared today than they were a year ago to deal with even more terrible
attacks than the one on the World Trade towers. That really has to be done. Now, I really am more
concerned, as I said, about all the aftermath of war than about the war itself. And here, before the first
blow is struck, the Bush Administration owes us a good accounting for these questions.

R.H.: Larry.

L.W.: Well, the view from the Middle East is that we go in and knock off Saddam—our history is we
bang somebody on the head and then we go home. And the Administration is trying to sell this "Marshall
Plan" idea. Oh, come on. You know, nobody believes it. If you want to do a Marshall Plan, Afghanistan's
waiting there for that kind of help right now. We can set up a model if we really want to do that—there's a
country that's desperate for our help. There are many countries desperate for our help, where we could set
up a democratic, prosperous alternative to the autocracy that we're contending with in the Middle East right
now. Our history gives nobody any confidence that we are going to stay there and clean up the mess that
we're going to create. And we will create a huge mess, because Iraq is a fractious country of five thousand
years of contending ethnic groups.

R.H.: Not really a single country.

L.W.: Right. And somehow we're becoming the guarantor of the status quo all over the world. Change is
happening everywhere. And, especially in this region, we're trying to impose a rigid form of paralysis,
holding people in a framework that is not natural and didn't come from them. They want to change. We
should be able to help them change by providing them some sort of political leadership and assistance,
rather than hammering into them, you know, "You can do this, and you can't do that, and if you cross this
red line we'll take away your leader." Well, I don't think that's a good role for us, and it's going to leave that
whole region in—I think that the Iranians are going to take advantage of the chaos. I think that the Turks
are naturally going to try to protect their interests, and this whole entity will be pulled apart, and there will
be this chaotic vacuum that we will then be responsible for.

R.H.: I want to go back to Afghanistan points before calling on Jeff. The story on Afghanistan since our
military success is really extraordinarily disturbing to me. The Administration itself estimated a
fifteen-billion-dollar reconstruction need. Fifteen billion—of which they themselves pledged two per cent.
Normal order of magnitude ought to be about twenty per cent, if we want the rest of the world to respond.
The Administration offered two hundred and eighty million dollars this fiscal year, but has delivered less
than half of it, and has now pledged eighty million dollars two weeks ago to rebuild the roads. By the way,
these are roads that were built during the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations by the United States.
Afghanistan used to have a great road network, the southern part of which had been built by us and the
northern part by the Soviet Union. It's all a wreck now, and it has to be rebuilt. But the eighty million
dollars the Administration pledged for the road, with big fanfare two weeks ago, it turned out that almost
all of that came out of existing funds for rural education, women's education, health clinics; in other words,
it was just a shuffle of the existing money from one necessary account to another. A very bad precedent.
And nothing actually disturbs me more about this Administration's approach to these issues than the fact
that they think that they can walk away from the post-conflict consequences and say it's a European or a
Japanese problem. That is a pattern, and it is a pattern with extremely serious consequences. And I think
for those of us on this side of the platform who favor an aggressive approach toward Saddam, at least for
me, that's the most disturbing thing. And Les put it very well: if we're not going to deal with the
consequences of our military actions, then it really does give you pause. Jeff?

J.G.: Let me just make two quick points. One is that it's true: Iraq after an American invasion could be a
bloodbath. But what's true now is that it is a bloodbath. If you go to the Web site of Amnesty International
and Human Rights Watch and look at their reports about what's happening in Iraq, this is a man who has
killed massive numbers of his own citizens. And I'm not even talking about the genocide of the Kurds. I'm
talking about his Sunni citizens. So it already is a bloodbath. Let's take that into account when we talk
about the possibilities.

R.H.: Let's talk about post-Saddam Iraq.

J.G.: Well, all right, let me talk about post-Saddam, because this is the second point. Let's assume the
Americans invade Iraq in January. Three years from now, will Iraq be a Jeffersonian democracy?
Probably not. But the Iraqi government that's imposed, if you want to use that word, by the American
government will not do the following things: it will not fire ballistic missiles at Saudi Arabia and Israel; it
will not massacre the Kurds; it will not invade Iran; it will not invade Kuwait; it will not be building
nuclear weapons; it will not be building biological- and chemical-weapons factories—it will not be doing
all of these things. Yes, democracy in Iraq would be a wonderful thing. Maybe the idea would spread to
the Arab world. But I don't want to make this perfect solution the enemy of . . .

R.H.: But do you agree with what Larry and I and Les and Isabel are suggesting—especially in light of
what happened in Afghanistan, and especially in light of their desire to cut our presence in the Balkans to
zero—that, granted that you favor military action on Saddam, and the odds favor success, that what
happens afterward is just as important, Les's point, and that that is an area we ought to focus on?

J.G.: It's true. I mean, we're feckless, and we're cheap, and we have the attention span of fleas when it
comes to rebuilding countries we invade or countries we try to aid. But I don't know the answer to that. I
mean, that's up to Congress, that's up to the Administration, that's up to the people there as well. It is a
tough one. It is a tough one; but it is not a reason to not act for our own national security.