After bin Laden, We Must Target Saddam
By Joe Lieberman, a Democratic senator from Connecticut.
In his historic address to Congress on Sept. 20, President Bush declared war on terrorism and clearly defined the purpose of that war. "Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them," he said. "Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. . . . Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."
In the days since that speech, concerns have been expressed that fully implementing the Bush Doctrine will cause some in this country and others in our international coalition to lose their nerve and loosen their support. But there is a far greater price to pay if we blur the bright moral line the president has laid down. Our international credibility as well as our national and personal security are on that line.
The immediate priority must be to obliterate Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, because they have brutally attacked us and we, in self-defense, must respond. But as Mr. Bush made clear, eliminating bin Laden will not eliminate the terrorist threat. We are confronted by other dangerous terrorists who possess powerful weapons -- ballistic missiles, lethal chemicals and virulent biological agents -- and who are publicly committed to destroying us. Sept. 11 has shown that we ignore their threats at our peril.
We are at war, and it is always better to go into battle with allies. The administration is right to have worked at building a broad-based coalition, but that coalition cannot become more important than our mission. The coalition is a means to an end -- defending our values and defeating terrorism. If in pursuing those means we compromise those values and leave terrorists or their supporters untouched, then in all likelihood many more innocent Americans will die.
Throughout this war, we should remember three things: America is very strong; more than 3,000 Americans have been killed by terrorists; and, in the end, we -- not our coalition partners -- have the moral obligation to determine our response to terrorism.
That is why it is imperative that we hold firm to the Bush Doctrine: to be unshakable in our support for allies who are steadfast, and unyielding in our challenges to those who are not; to be uncompromising in our demands that countries like Syria and Iran end their support of terrorism before we open our diplomatic and economic doors to them; and to be unflinching in our determination to remove a uniquely implacable enemy and terrorist, Saddam Hussein, from power before he strikes at us with weapons of mass destruction.
We should focus on Iraq after we have dealt with bin Laden. We must, because Saddam has a special hatred for America and the capacity to do something terrible about it.
His record is there for all to see. He established a brutal and corrupt dictatorship at home. He led his nation to war twice to conquer his neighbors, with disastrous consequences for them and the Iraqi people. He developed weapons of mass destruction and used them, firing missiles at American soldiers and Israeli cities, using poison gas on Iranians, and employing chemical warfare against his own citizens.
Saddam's defeat in the Gulf War greatly weakened his military machine and set back his weapons-development programs, but it did not diminish his ambitions or improve his behavior. During the past decade he has continued to oppress and kill his own people, to break agreements he made to end the Gulf War, to deny United Nations inspections of his weapons, to support international terrorism, and to seek ways to achieve revenge against the U.S. -- going so far as to try to kill former President Bush in 1993. He is in a class by himself, different from countries like Mohammad Khatami's Iran or Bashar Assad's Syria, because there is no hope of reconciliation with Saddam's Iraq.
Did Saddam have a direct hand in the attacks on America that began on Sept. 11? The evidence at our disposal is circumstantial but suggestive. We do know that he has not just the motive and malevolence, but the means. And we also know that Iraqi intelligence officials have met at critical times with members of the al Qaeda network.
Richard Butler, the former U.N. chief weapons inspector in Iraq, recently wrote in the New York Times that his rule of thumb for determining Saddam's interest in a particular weapons system was the vigor with which he conspired to hide it. "I concluded that biological weapons are closest to President Hussein's heart because it was in this area that his resistance to our work reached its height," he said. "He seemed to think killing with germs has a lot to recommend it."
Whether or not Saddam is implicated directly in the anthrax attacks or the horrors of Sept. 11, he is, by any common definition, a terrorist who must be removed. A serious effort to end Saddam's rule over Iraq should begin now with a declaration by the administration that it is America's policy to change the Iraqi regime, and with greater financial and tactical support of the broad-based Iraqi opposition. In time, military support will follow.
The goal of the war on terrorism is, as President Bush has said eloquently, to bring our enemies to justice or justice to our enemies. We have now begun to do both. But those 3,000-plus Americans will have died in vain, and even more of our fellow citizens will meet the same fate, if we do not steel ourselves to see this war to the finish by pursuing and defeating all those who target terror at us. After bin Laden and the Taliban, Saddam is at the top of that list.