Lacy WrightDESPITE WEEKS of argument on whether the United States should disarm Iraq by force, I had until this past Wednesday been stuck firmly on the fence, and feeling guiltier about it as the days passed. I felt that I ought to have a strong view on such a grave matter. In fact, I had a lot of views; unfortunately, they conflicted with one another.
I thought, on the one hand, that wars should be avoided at almost any cost. That, despite the smart-bomb technology and the care that I believed our military would take to avoid civilian casualties, a number would surely die. That Saddam himself would put as many civilians as possible in harm's way to reap the propaganda benefits that their deaths would provide. That an attack risked radicalising even more young Moslems and swelling the thin but deadly ranks of those dedicated to terrorism against the West.
On the other hand, I was well aware that Saddam was a proven menace to his own people and to his neighbours. I knew that his behaviour and current aims threatened regional, and perhaps world, peace. If the US did not confront and remove him, I asked myself, could we have any confidence that he could be "contained". What if those who believed in such containment were wrong, and he unleashed a horrible weapon, or slipped such a weapon into the hands of terrorists?
There seemed to be strong arguments on both sides. But Secretary of State Colin Powell's indictment of Iraq and its leader before the United Nations Security Council earlier this week seems to me to have changed the balance.
To me and to most Americans (many of whom had also been undecided), the Secretary presented damning evidence that Saddam Hussein had never had any intention of complying with UN directives to destroy Iraq's biological and chemical weapons and forswear efforts to create nuclear weapons. The combination of voice intercepts, aerial photographs, and human intelligence reports has now convinced us that Saddam is simply too dangerous to be allowed to continue indefinitely.
The debate, it seems to me, has been altered substantially. Until Powell spoke, the opponents of the US/British hard line against Saddam had been able to argue that it was far too early to give up on the current inspections. Moreover, since the arms inspectors, despite seeming to enjoy more Iraqi compliance than ever before, had so far found no "smoking gun", there were accusations in some quarters that the American allegations were fabrications designed to justify a war that the United States wanted for other reasons.
All that is past. Even minutes after Powell finished, the French and Russian Foreign Ministers, speaking in the same UN Security Council meeting, moved to a harder stance. While persisting in their view that inspections should be given more time, the two suggested that they should be toughened considerably: U-2 surveillance flights should be insisted upon, the number of inspectors multiplied, demands made to interview Iraqi scientists outside Iraq, and so on.
Despite having moved their critics closer to their position, the American dilemma remains. One likely development now is that the Iraqis, when chief inspector Hans Blix goes back to see them next week, will surrender a few more chips (say, acquiescence in U-2 flights), which will cause the French and others to claim that their approach is bearing fruit, and that more time for inspections now is surely justified. But it seems to me highly unlikely that Saddam, who has so far deceived and misled the inspectors egregiously, will change his aims or his behaviour. If that is so, a decision on war will still be required.
I still hope war can be avoided, but perhaps the only chance now is for the French, Germans and other softer-liners to put their energies into bringing about pressure on Saddam Hussein that he will find intolerable, rather than counting on the efficacy of inspections that the Iraqi leader has so far proved so successful in thwarting.
Lacy Wright was Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Kingston and acted as Ambassador in 1993-1994. He can be reached at LacyWright@cox.net.
