New York Post - July 16, 2002
OCT. SURPRISE, PLEASE
GO on, Mr. President: Wag the dog.
It would be good for the world, it would be good for America and it would be good politics as well.
You've made it clear for 10 months now that you want to rid the world of Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq. It is vitally important that the rogue states seeking to blackmail the world by acquiring weapons of mass destruction be taught a dramatic lesson.
There are all kinds of signs that the military is actually ready to go, or close to it.
But conventional wisdom has said you'd wait until after the November elections to start the war. After all, how can members of Congress be expected to do any political campaigning with troops in foreign lands?
If the conventional wisdom is right, then the decision on when to go to war is already being made with domestic political considerations in mind. That's a practical, Machiavellian calculation.
So be even more Machiavellian, Mr. President.
Why would it be acceptable to delay a war to make it easy on Congress - which is what you're planning on doing, according to the conventional wisdom - but unacceptable to begin a war to make it easy on yourself and the Republican Party?
I am assuming for the sake of this argument that the military is ready - that we have enough weaponry to fight with and that the call- up and deployment plans are in place.
Mr. President, if that's so, then: Go.
You're in some domestic political trouble, Mr. President. You need to change the subject. You have the biggest subject-changer of all at your disposal. Use it.
I can hear the screaming already from certain quarters. How would such a thing be different from what Bill Clinton did in 1998, when he used cruise missiles twice in response to Osama bin Laden at crucial moments during the Lewinsky scandals?
Here's how it would be different, Mr. President: You'd get the job done.
Think of how the world would have been different, and better, had Bill Clinton made a serious effort against al Qaeda in 1998. Imagine that he'd actually gotten bin Laden and disabled the world's worst terrorist organization.
He would have done the world a profound service, even though he was doing it to save his own skin.
Instead, Clinton made a half-hearted effort that involved blowing up a factory in the Sudan with no connection to bin Laden. His lack of seriousness in challenging the 1998 attacks on the US embassies in Africa emboldened al Qaeda and led inadvertently to the events of Sept. 11.
But you, Mr. President, know you have no option but to end the war with Saddam Hussein out of office, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction safely in American hands and a new type of government in Baghdad. If you fail at that, it won't matter when you start the war - you're toast anyway, like your father was.
There's a luscious double trap in starting the war as soon as possible, Mr. President. Your enemies are delirious with excitement about the corporate-greed scandals and the effect they might have on your popularity and the GOP's standing in November.
If you get troops on the ground quickly, they will go berserk. Incautious Democrats and liberal pundits will shriek that you've gone to war solely to protect yourself from the corporate-greed scandal. They will forget the lesson they so quickly learned after Sept. 11, which is that at a time of war the American people want their political leaders to stand together.
Your enemies will hurl ugly accusations at you, Mr. President. And at least one of them will be true - the accusation that you began the war when you did for political reasons.
But that won't matter. It won't matter to the American people, and it won't matter as far as history is concerned. History will record that you and the U.S. military brought an end to a barbaric regime on its way to threatening the world.
And as for the American people in 2002: They will rear in horror if you are criticized for beginning the war. The Republican Party will be able to marshal that horror, to use the liberal response to the war in Iraq to its great advantage. Rather than the GOP being on the defensive when it comes to its Achilles' heel, corporate greed, Democrats will be on the defensive when it comes to a key question about national security - their Achilles' heel.
The scenario I've painted is exactly what sober and clever Democrats like Tom Daschle are afraid of.
You can make them live their nightmare and save the world from Saddam Hussein at the same time.
Delicious, isn't it?
E-mail: <mailto:podhoretz at nypost.com>
[Illustration] Saddam: Worth taking out before Election Day.