A rchive Date
[ 19-11-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/leishman.html
It's naive to support soft line on Iraq
By RORY LEISHMAN - London Free Press
November 19, 2002
Following a meeting last week with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham lauded the resolution adopted by the United Nations Security Council that subjects Iraq to rigorous inspections for weapons of mass destruction. By this means, opined Graham, the Security Council has given the international community a way, "to deal with Iraq without having to go to conflict."
That judgment is dead wrong. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has made clear his evil regime will remain a threat to world peace so long as he retains power.
Granted, Saddam might well comply with the latest UN resolution governing Iraq. He would be crazy not to, so long as the United States and Britain are mobilizing 265,000 troops to invade his country with overwhelming force.
However, time is on Saddam's side. In a well-informed book The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, Kenneth Pollack, a former director for (Persian) Gulf affairs at the National Security Council during the administration of former U.S. president Bill Clinton, points out the deployment of a quarter-million U.S. troops along the borders of Iraq would require "huge call-ups" from the reserves and compel all of services to, "postpone normal leaves, retirements, training, maintenance and replacements." He estimates the U.S. could not afford to maintain such a massive force in place in the Gulf region for more than six months to a year at most.
Saddam is no fool. He understands this point well. Just as he did in 1991, he can be counted on to bide his time over the next six months to a year, waiting for the U.S. to scale back deployment in the gulf, before openly flouting again his disarmament and inspections commitments.
While other dictators have acquired weapons of mass destruction, Saddam is unique: He alone has demonstrated no compunction about using these weapons on his own people. On March 15, 1988, he authorized an attack with a variety of chemical weapons on the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq, killing at least 5,000 men, women and children.
The most lethal chemical and biological weapons are far less devastating than even primitive nuclear bombs. Pollack explains: "A successful attack with VX (a nerve gas) could kill thousands; with a BW (biological warfare) agent, tens of thousands; and with a nuclear weapon, hundreds of thousands or even millions."
Proponents of deterrence argue Saddam would not dare to launch a nuclear missile at Tehran or Tel Aviv, because he would know he would be killed in return. But who can say that a megalomaniac such as Saddam would not order a nuclear attack on his enemies as a suicidal last act of vengeance?
In addition, there are the risks of a nuclear war by miscalculation in the Middle East. Judging from Saddam's reckless past behaviour, Pollack projects that if Iraq were to acquire just one or two primitive nuclear bombs, Saddam might well gamble that he could get away with seizing the oil fields of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the entire gulf, because the United States would no longer dare to intervene for fear of becoming embroiled in a nuclear conflict.
As it is, more than one million Arabs, Kurds and Persians have already died in the various internal and external wars initiated by Saddam. Pollack warns that millions more could die, if this evil tyrant succeeds in his plans to obtain nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Opponents of a preventive war of liberation in Iraq insist Saddam poses no imminent threat to world peace. Perhaps so, but as Pollack observes: "It is the relative weakness of Iraq's current weapons of mass destruction that makes an invasion feasible. Given that Saddam's motives are well established . . . it would be madness to wait until he has developed the capabilities to cause grievous damage to us and to the region before we decided to take action against him."
Write Rory at The London Free Press, P.O. Box 2280, London, Ont. N6A 4G1 or fax 519-667-4528 or E-mail.
Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@lfpress.com.
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