LG, Generally speaking PBS at times can be a source of somewhat level reporting. As regards Rubin and Perle, I have never had any respect for them and would not trust anything they say. I glanced at their discussion about the Kurds and considered their statements to be such a sick joke that I clicked the link away. Generally speaking I believe that war and violence is wrong and usually leads to undesired consequences. Should we attack Iraq and remove Saddam? I do not know if the risks of that involvement wouldn't be worse than winning. One point I can assure you about is that the more pathetic propaganda that I hear from the administration the more I am against this action.
LG, Thanks for posting the Pearle interview links. Certainly an articulate presentation of the Bush Admin view. Here is another discussion, presenting various points of view. [Part II to follow.]
Several weeks ago, Richard Holbrooke, the former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, moderated a discussion on the possibilities of war after September 11th with the New Yorker writers Jeffrey Goldberg, Isabel Hilton, and Lawrence Wright, and Leslie Gelb, who is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations. The panel was part of the New Yorker Festival; here are some excerpts from the conversation.
RICHARD HOLBROOKE: The subject today is the next war. Where will it be, and how will it be waged? I think we know where it's going to be, so let's talk about various other aspects of it. Is it really going to happen? What kind of war is it going to be? And what will happen afterward? I want to start with Jeffrey Goldberg, because of the impact of his article on the Iraqi gassing of the Kurds, which Vice-President Cheney and many others have cited, and which I think is a great piece of journalism. In light of your recent reporting, how do you see the road ahead?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I see a war ahead of us, probably by January. I think there's no way that Saddam Hussein will comply with the U.N. resolutions. He hasn't complied with U.N. resolutions on this subject for the past ten years, and there's no way that the President is going to abide that, with or without the approval of the United Nations. So I think it's coming. I would like to know when, to book a flight, but I don't know for sure. But it's coming.
R.H.: Where would you most like to be on the first day? Baghdad, or Sulaymaniyah, or . . .
J.G.: I'd like to be near Kirkuk, in northern Iraq. Although you never know with these things.
R.H.: Jeff, assuming there is a war, assuming it can't be avoided, do you share the assumption in Washington that the overwhelming force advantage of the United States would result in a relatively quick success, success being defined as changing the regime in Baghdad?
J.G.: Yes, with one caveat. Saddam has anywhere from fifteen hundred to fifteen thousand troops he could count on for something close to absolute loyalty. The reason he keeps his regular Army far out of Baghdad is that he doesn't trust his regular Army. And then between the regular Army and Baghdad are the Republican Guard units. They're outside of Baghdad as well, because he doesn't fully trust them, either. There's a special Republican Guard surrounding Baghdad, and there's the S.S.O., the Special Security Organization, roughly fifteen hundred men, who are fiercely dedicated to him, although it's important to remember that this is a secular regime—these aren't suicide bombers. They aren't committed to him life or death. Many of these people will be willing to make a deal. That said, getting to Baghdad is one thing, getting Saddam is probably another. The man has bunkers under bunkers. And it might be some time before they actually finish off the remnants of the regime. But, in terms of getting into Baghdad, I think it's a matter of days.
R.H.: Were you in Israel recently, Larry?
LAWRENCE WRIGHT: No, I was in Cairo.
R.H.: Well, why don't we go there next. The Iraqi military is one third of what it was in 1991. Our weapons are much more accurate. Jeff says it's logical that military superiority will tell. But, the last time out, Saddam launched thirty-five or forty Scud missiles against Tel Aviv; the Israelis did not respond, because the elder President Bush begged and convinced them not to. They've said that this time around they will respond. Now, if our military cannot destroy and degrade Iraq's ability to do that at the outset, and the Israelis do respond, what will the Arab states do? Will it metastasize from a U.S.-Iraqi war into an Arab-Israeli war, or will the other Arab countries sit it out? Particularly Egypt, Syria, and Iran—what will they do?
L.W.: Those regimes are having a hard time containing their populations' anger toward the U.S. and Israel already. It's terrifying to think about a massive Israeli response in Iraq in conjunction with us. If we are together with Israel in a war against Iraq—let's say in the best case scenario, if the Arab states sit it out—the alignment against the United States will be solidified for generations, I think. And it would be a terrible catastrophe for that to happen.
R.H.: But do you think that if the U.S. attacks Iraq, and Iraq responds by attacking Israel, and Israel responds by attacking Iraq, is this "The Guns of August," 2002 style? What is the next step? What do the Arabs do? Do they get angry in the street and parade? Or do they take some action against Israel? That's a critical difference.
L.W.: I don't think that the regimes are going to attack Israel. I think that the real danger is that the populations will attack their own regimes. And that's the great danger we're facing in the Middle East, not Mubarak or Syria—which has not near the capacity to wage war on that level—getting involved. But what I could see happening is popular anger resulting in the overthrow of Musharraf, Mubarak, and having those kinds of regimes go down would be a real catastrophe for our interests in that region.
R.H.: You mentioned Musharraf, which is a nice segue to you, Isabel. Several critics of the Administration's policies, including Senator Kennedy and former Vice-President Gore, have said this week that this is a diversion from our efforts on terror, our efforts in Afghanistan. Musharraf himself, who was here in New York two weeks ago, said that he would not want Pakistan to participate in any action against Iraq. He's already (a) the indispensable leader for the American effort in Afghanistan, and (b) on a very tight rope himself. How would a war in Iraq affect the situation in Pakistan, if at all?
ISABEL HILTON: Well, it would obviously make life more difficult for Musharraf, and, as you say, Musharraf is the indispensable leader. But he's an indispensable leader who is now almost friendless in Pakistan, unlike Zia ul-Haq, who was the indispensable leader the last time the United States was militarily engaged in that part of the world, and who at least had the ability to keep certain sectors of his constituency happy. But Musharraf seems to have come this far with most sectors of Pakistani society alienated. He's alienated the civilian political sector because he's rewritten the constitution to entrench the Army. He's facing elections, which he has promised, which the Supreme Court has ordered, having tried and failed to construct political parties that would be congenial to his staying in power. At the same time, he has excluded from the electoral process two parties that do represent Pakistani electoral wishes, insofar as we know them. At the same time, because of the position he took after September 11th, he has a very angry fundamentalist militant sector that doesn't prevail electorally but does have tremendous nuisance value, and the series of terrorist events that you've seen in Pakistan itself and in India, which are designed to provoke a war between Pakistan and India, are likely to continue. And, as though that was not enough, there is a substantial sector of his own armed forces which is sympathetic to the Islamic cause, and which is also rather fed up with him. So it's not easy to see this as a strong position. To see Musharraf as a man now sustained, really, by his friend the United States is to put him in a very weak and nervous position at the point at which his friend the United States attacks another Arab country.
R.H.: We all understand that Musharraf is on the most delicate tightrope. But will Pakistan be affected by events in Iraq or is it driven by its own internal engines, the ones you just listed?
I.H.: Well, I think it's very hard to separate out these narratives. Once the war in Afghanistan began, for instance, Kashmir became much more volatile and tense, and since then we have nearly had the world's first nuclear war twice. Now, those are not separate narratives, nor will this be. You can say, "What does it matter to Pakistan if America invades Iraq?" Well, what matters is that it generates another huge distraction in which more trouble can be made. And there is a great deal of trouble waiting to be made.
R.H.: Some people argue that an American-led attack in Iraq based on the Bush doctrine of preëmptive war—which I think is a nutty thing to have done, but nonetheless he's done it and asserted it, and he thereby muddled the whole Iraq issue—some people say that that, in effect, could be used by New Delhi as a rationale against Kashmir. Do you see that?
I.H.: Well, absolutely. Once the doctrine of preëmptive war is out there, then, first India, clearly, but many other people, could say that this is ideal, thank you. All these conditions are met. And all the conditions that the Administration has listed, as far as Iraq is concerned, can be met in several other situations. These cases can be made.
R.H.: Before I call on Leslie to be the clean-up hitter in this round, I want to go back to preëmptive war. The reason I am so appalled by this doctrine is that it muddied the case against Saddam. Those of you in this room who think that Saddam is dangerous and should be taken on, that argument has been confused by a generic argument about the right to wage a preëmptive war. The Administration should have focussed on Saddam; it weakened its own case. It also, in my view, weakened its own case by assertions about links to Al Qaeda, when no one has yet seen a smoking gun. So that's why I objected. Les, you've heard from the three writers who've been there, and you've been watching this a long time. Give us a sense of where you think we're at.
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