AlterNet: Differences Among Hawks

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Fri Mar 21 21:27:18 PST 2003


Pentagon Strategy Creates Rift Among Hawks

By Jim Lobe, AlterNet

March 21, 2003

An almost audible sigh of relief could be heard from a nondescript

downtown building in Washington, D.C. on Thursday morning when

President Saddam Hussein appeared on Iraqi television some hours after

U.S. warplanes and cruise missiles bombarded a residence in Baghdad.

Media reports quoted U.S. officials as saying that the raid was

directed at a "target of opportunity," possibly Hussein and his two

sons themselves, shortly after the 48-hour ultimatum delivered by

President George Bush had expired. If the raid had succeeded in

killing the three men, U.S. officials told reporters, the Pentagon's

war plans might have shifted dramatically against an all-out war.

But fortunately for the neo-conservative hawks over at the American

Enterprise Institute (AEI) on 19th St., three blocks from the White

House, it appears that Hussein remains alive, and the invasion will

now go forward as planned. "That we appear not to have gotten Saddam

Hussein last night ... may be a blessing in disguise," came the email

message from AEI's press center.

A "decapitation" strategy targeted on Hussein, his sons, and a few

other top Ba'ath officials without a full-scale invasion and

occupation represents a dangerous threat to the neocon vision for the

future of the Middle East. "As in Operation Desert Storm, the measure

of victory in this war against Iraq will not be how big we start but

where and when we stop," said the message from resident fellow Tom

Donnelly. "'Going to Baghdad' means more than physically occupying the

city. It is a metaphor for tearing out Saddamism, root and branch.

There will be many moments - and a quick kill on Saddam would be one -

where some might be tempted to say, as the first Bush administration

did when the television pictures of the famous Highway of Death hit

American airwaves in 1991, that enough has been done".

Perish the thought, cry the AEI hawks led by chairman of the

Pentagon's Defense Policy Board (DPB), Richard Perle. The current

Pentagon strategy has them deeply worried that that their hopes for a

thorough-going purge of ruling Ba'ath Party officials - which they see

as the first step to transforming the entire Arab Middle East - may

yet be frustrated.

The disagreement over military strategy is the first sign of a

disagreement within the powerful alliance that has shaped U.S. foreign

policy since the 9/11 attacks. The coalition consists of three main

components: hard right-wing, or nationalist Republicans like the

Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and vice president Dick Cheney;

neo-conservatives like Perle and most of Rumsfeld's and Cheney's

immediate subordinates, such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul

Wolfowitz; and the Christian Right, whose concerns have been

represented most forcefully within the White House itself,

particularly among Bush's domestic advisers.

Over the past eighteen months, these groups have agreed that the "war

on terrorism" must include the ouster of Saddam Hussein, beating the

war drums against Baghdad moments after the dust settled in lower

Manhattan. While they have been unanimous on key issues of tactics,

such as marginalizing Secretary of State Colin Powell and other

"realist" veterans of the first Bush administration, and strategy,

such as ousting Hussein, they have never agreed on what happens once

Hussein is removed.

"The earliest and most salient rift (in the hawks' coalition) will be

the hard-right nationalists, like Rumsfeld and Cheney, and the

neo-conservatives," according to Charles Kupchan, a foreign-policy

analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations and National Security

Council strategist under former President Bill Clinton. "For the hard

right, this is really about getting Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass

destruction. Once that's done, they're going to say, 'Okay, we've done

our job, now let's get the hell out and go home".

But the neo-conservatives, on the other hand, want to stick around to

use Iraq as a base from which to exert pressure on other presumably

hostile regimes, particularly Syria, Iran, and even Saudi Arabia. The

third wing of the coalition, the Christian Right, is more likely to

side with Rumsfeld and Cheney than the neo-conservatives in Kupchan's

view, creating a split that "will complicate George Bush's life

immensely".

In many ways, these rifts were already apparent in Afghanistan, with

Rumsfeld and Cheney dead-set against serious "nation-building" and the

extension of peacekeeping forces beyond Kabul for fear it would

interfere with U.S. military operations against al Qaeda. The result -

which the neo-conservatives warned against at the time - is that the

authority of the U.S.-installed central government is basically

confined to the capital, while most of the countryside remains in the

hands of warlords. The neocons claim that Washington cannot afford to

leave Iraq in a similar state of disorder.

While Cheney and Rumsfeld have both given lip service to the idea that

Washington's occupation of Iraq will be the first step toward the

democratization of the entire region, they have also been the most

outspoken in insisting that Hussein's self-exile would be one sure way

of avoiding war. This attitude has caused no end of anxiety among the

neo-conservatives both within the administration, in the think tanks

like AEI, and in such media outlets as the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly

Standard (headquartered in the AEI building), Fox News, and on the

editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal.

For them, Iraq must not only be de-Ba'athized, but Washington must

also be accorded the opportunity to show the world, (especially other

Muslim states) just how powerful and determined the United States is

to both wage war and enforce political reform. The neoconservatives

view "Saddamism without Saddam" as the worst possible outcome of the

present crisis. In the past months, they have excoriated the State

Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for encouraging

coups d'etat or enlisting the participation of even former senior

Ba'ath officials in any post-invasion administration.

For the same reasons, they have voiced - albeit, far more tactfully

due to their interest in preserving the strategic alliance - concern

about Cheney's and Rumsfeld's calls for Hussein's exile and

suggestions that U.S.-backed purges of the Iraqi regime will be

carefully targeted and limited. The neo-conservatives have long

favored a far-reaching purge that would bring to power the core of the

exiled Iraqi National Congress (INC) led by Ahmed Chalabi, an old

friend of Perle and Wolfowitz. Chalabi would be ideally suited to

co-operate with U.S. efforts to knock over the other "dominoes" in the

region who are perceived as hostile to the U.S. or Israel.

It is still too early to tell whether the neocons will get the

opportunity to fulfill their vision for the Middle East or whether

their hopes will be rudely shattered by a carefully targeted Cruise

missile.

© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.



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