Monday, December 21, 1998

Long-range Iraqi strategy needed now

The Iraq impasse is filled with "should haves." In retrospect, the Clinton administration should have launched an air attack on Nov. 14 instead of accepting Saddam Hussein’s worthless promises, just as the Bush administration should have sustained the Gulf War until Saddam was out of power.

Last week, though, President Clinton did the right thing. It's well he did. Saddam’s is not the only anti-American regime that might try to exploit a U.S. administration perceived as too enfeebled to act.

The air and missile strikes have succeeded, as the president said, in "degrading" Saddam's security apparatus and military capability. That's no small favor to the world. Just three years after the Gulf War, only the threat of U.S. force stopped him from a second invasion of Kuwait. An unfettered Saddam would almost certainly attack his neighbors again. If he had weapons of mass destruction, he would use them.

The problem for the Clinton administration now is to come up with an Iraq policy that credibly answers the question: What next? It should be a policy that can function independently of the president’s impeachment problems, in fact, a policy that can pass seamlessly into the hands of his successor if he leaves office. He has in place a quartet of advisers — the secretaries of State and Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, his national security adviser — capable of putting such a plan together.

The immediate questions are what happens next with the arms inspections and what kind of successor regime is acceptable.

None of this is easy. As Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said, "It would be very nice if those who do not support our approach had an approach that worked."

Unfortunately, they do: Give up and lift the embargo. When Saddam starts his next war, which he surely will if given such a chance, those who advise this approach will count on the United States to fight it for them.