The best available evidence suggests that George W. Bush decided in the spring of 2002, along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to carry out a military assault on Iraq.
Prior to taking that decision, the Bush administration was embroiled in a debate about how best to secure America’s strategic interests in the Persian Gulf, while preventing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from undermining America’s position throughout the region. There were two basic options under consideration, one traditional, the other radical.
Pursuing the traditional option would have involved a U.S. effort to shore up its alliance with Saudi Arabia, while trying to keep the lid on excessive Israeli military intervention in the West Bank and Gaza. That option rested on the American conviction that with its massive reserves of cheap conventional oil, Saudi Arabia holds the key to a stable global supply of petroleum. To keep Saudi Arabia securely in the U.S. orbit, the approach of important members of George Bush senior’s administration, such as Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleberger and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, was to avoid a posture that was so pro Israel that it shut out the Arabs. The mantra of these Republicans was that settling the Palestinian question had to precede the strengthening of the U.S. position throughout the Middle East.
The fact that most of the September 11 terrorist hijackers were Saudis, and the increasing evidence of the role of Saudis in financing Al Qaeda, has undermined U.S. faith in the soundness of the Saudi link. Concern about Saudi Arabia has opened the door to the radical option that is now favoured by most of the key players in the Bush administration.
The centrepiece of the radical option is a U.S. invasion of Iraq. With Saddam’s regime overthrown and the U.S. military installed in its place, Washington stands to gain multiple benefits. The Americans can establish a military base in Iraq from which to keep a wary eye on Saudi Arabia, as well as on both Iran and Syria, two countries that also border on Iraq. From a secure base in Iraq, with its own ample oil reserves, the United States will be much more able to sustain its strategic position in the region than it can ever hope to do by depending on the unreliable Saudis.
The proponents of the radical option, key among them Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, contend that Iraq is the ideal Arab country in which to establish a new democratic Islamic regime. Wolfowitz is a believer in the proposition that a moderate strain of Islam that is in harmony with democracy can develop. "There can be a separation of religion from the state that is completely compatible with personal piety," he said recently. Under an American tutelage, that is sometimes compared with the U.S. role in post war Japan, people like Wolfowitz think that a democratic Iraq could become a governing model that could be exported to other Arab countries. According to this highly utopian theory, the Iraqis are the equivalent of a tabula rasa, a blank slate, on which the Jeffersonian Americans can etch a new political culture.
The final benefit of the radical option is that once the Americans are installed in Baghdad, they will be in an ideal position to dictate peace terms to the Palestinians. Following victory against Saddam, Washington can make it very clear that a moderate Palestinian leader who can work with the Israelis must replace Yasser Arafat. The unpalatable alternative, the Americans can then say to the Palestinians, is that the Israeli hard liners will expand the settlements in the West Bank with the ultimate goal of making the whole of it a part of Israel.
Since his meeting with Tony Blair at his ranch in Crawford, Texas last April, President George W. Bush has repeatedly said that his goal in Iraq is regime change. Under pressure from Secretary of State, Colin Powell, Bush backed off this line in recent weeks to win the support of the United Nations Security Council for a new round of inspections to ferret out Saddam’s much-touted Weapons of Mass Destruction. This was a change of tactics, not strategy.
Stipulating that a false declaration by Iraq on its weapons programs would constitute a "material breach", the UN resolution gives Bush the opening he requires to launch a war.
Here’s where things are likely to go from here. At some point in the next few weeks, the United States will make a dramatic presentation to the UN Security Council alleging that it has proof that Iraq’s 12,000 page document---handed over to the Security Council last weekend---is not a true and full account of the country’s weapons programs.
In a scene drawn from Adlai Stevenson’s famous disclosure of photos of Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, the world will hear a dramatic story about Iraq----with or without photos. The U.S. and the British will insist that the Security Council take action. From there war will ensue, under the banner of the UN, if France, Russia and China go along, or under unilateral Anglo-American direction, if they do not.
People close to the White House such as neo-conservative guru Richard Perle, the chairman of the Pentagon’s Defence Policy Board, are saying that Bush has little choice. He has already staked his presidency on removing Saddam. And there is no way he can keep the pressure up for another year. It’s invade now or lose office in 2004.
We know that the Pentagon wants the land war over with by the end of February, because after that it will be too hot to fight. It will take another month or so, for the U.S. to move the forces it needs into place to undertake the assault. This time the experts say that the bombing phase of the campaign will be much shorter than the forty days that preceded the ground attack in 1991.
The window for war opens in mid January and it closes about a month later. The odds favour war, not to eliminate Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction but to open the door to a grand American scheme to remake the Middle East in its own image.
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