"It's hammer time," exclaimed Vice Admiral Keating, the commander
of the 5th Fleet in the Persian Gulf, when the President ordered the
armed forces to invade Iraq. It would be very much in America's best
interest if the war that Mr. Bush chose to launch, albeit with Congressional
consent, proceeded as fast and bloodless as possible. The fewer Arab
lives are harmed and the less property is devastated, the less disapproval
the campaign is likely to encounter in the international community.
It will certainly be a relief for the whole world to see Saddam 's regime
end. Nothing could have demonstrated his irrational state of mind more
than his decision to expose the Iraqi people to yet another war, and
himself to certain doom. His mad defiance of his odds is eerily reminiscent
of Hitler's delusions in prolonging an unwinnable war for years at the
cost of many millions of lives.
Many people around the world continue to ask why Saddam could not have
been contained without war, just as the much more powerful Soviet Union
and its weapons of mass destruction were held in check for 45 years.
United Nations chief weapons inspector Hans Blix asserted that it was
not necessary to end the inspections just when Iraqi cooperation improved.
Why rush into a war, the critics keep asking, that is likely to increase
the threat of terrorism, particularly against Americans?
Perhaps the most deplorable setback for the Bush administration was
its loss of credibility with its vague and disputed claims about Saddam's
possession of weapons of mass destruction and his alleged collaboration
with Al Qaida. The occupation of Iraq, however, should enable the White
House to provide indisputable evidence to show the veracity of its claims
for all the doubters.
Once that is done, it will be substantially easier to repair the damage
done by the Administration's clumsy diplomacy. Why clumsy? In international
as in personal relations, it is always counterproductive to tell one's
discussion partner that, if he is not with me, he is against me, and
that he is irresponsible, poisons the dialogue, and becomes irrelevant
if he does not agree with one's arguments. More than once did Mr. Bush,
Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, and Ms. Rice use this kind of insulting rhetoric
in their responses to critics. It would serve the President well if
he found himself a speech writer who would make him sound less arrogant
and bellicose. Whoever coined the sophomoric phrase "axis of evil"
exposed Mr. Bush to ridicule worldwide.
Among the foreign leaders who objected to American military intervention
in Iraq, French President Chirac and German Chancellor Schröder
also bungled badly. Instead of taking their objections directly to Mr.
Bush, they aired them in public pronouncements that caught him by surprise.
Seasoned diplomats know that complex diplomacy rarely succeeds in the
public forum.
Once Saddam's regime is gone, it will be very much in the interest of
the American taxpayer if the President invited all NATO partners and
Iraq's neighbors to participate in the rebuilding of Iraq and the continuing
prevention of terrorism. Holding a grudge against those who opted against
war would not serve America's national interest.
The biggest problem pitting the U.S. not only against the Muslim world
but also against the Europeans is the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian
territories. Prime Minister Blair made that clear to President Bush
and apparently nudged him last week into offering a vague "road
map" for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement within the next two
years.
As might have been expected, however, Prime Minister Sharon immediately
threw a monkey wrench into the President's proposal by demanding the
elimination of all references to an "independent" Palestinian
state. Thus, our Likud friends in Israel remain bent on keeping the
Middle East in turmoil and the terrorists' main cause alive - long after
the diplomatic feud over Saddam may become a footnote in history.