Friday, November 20, 1998

Saddam will determine Clinton legacy

By George Will

WASHINGTON - America nearly went to war last weekend in defense of weapons inspections in Iraq that U.S. diplomacy surreptitiously subverted last summer. That subversion provoked an American rarity, a resignation on principle, by inspector Scott Ritter, who never learned in the Marine Corps the delicacies of surrender.

The surrealism of U.S. policy - suddenly threatening war to support an inspection regime that an anonymous administration official admits has been "moribund" for three months - was compounded by proof that the pen can indeed be mightier than the sword. A letter, reiterating the broken promises of a recidivist liar, turned back airborne B-52s and prevented launchings of cruise missiles and other aircraft.

Which is good, there being no evidence President Clinton has suddenly developed the requisite seriousness for dealing with Saddam Hussein. Clinton is seriously committed to an unserious policy, the flaws of which derive, as the entire post-Gulf War debacle does, from the subcontracting of U.S. policy, and the consequent subordination of U.S. interests, to the United Nations.

Saddam remains in power because President Bush felt constrained that the U.N. mandate for military action extended only to expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Perhaps that mandate was a price worth paying for the breadth of the Gulf War coalition Bush so brilliantly constructed.

However, Sen. John McCain, sounding more presidential than the current president, says it was a "terrible abdication of our responsibilities" when we allowed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to broker the February deal that deterred U.S. military action by producing more absurd Saddam promises.

Clinton enters the last quarter of his presidency still searching for a "legacy." Removal of Saddam would suffice, and Clinton is now committed, sort of, to trying to overthrow Saddam.

That is the formal meaning of Clinton's Sunday promise to "intensify" U.S. "engagement with the forces of change in Iraq" under provisions of the Iraq Liberation Act, which provides $97 million for aid to Iraqi insurgents. In the highly unlikely event that Clinton really tries to topple Saddam, the two most important legislative acts of his presidency (the other was welfare reform) will have been forced upon him by Congress.

But Saddam will not be removed by radio broadcasts, or by Kurdish, Shiite and other resistance groups supported only by money and air power from the United States and others. Surely we have now written a new chapter in the story of this century's overestimation of air power. Arms control and disarmament - enforcing nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction - cannot be administered from the air. Neither can insurgencies be protected from the air against a ruthless tyrant's military and security apparatus.

The mass graves of Srebenica, scene of Europe's worst atrocity since the Second World War, contain the bones of those who trusted international assurances that Srebenica was a guaranteed "safe area." For any Iraqi insurgency to succeed, it will require, sooner or later, help from international forces on the ground.

Air power can do what McCain, the former Naval aviator, suggests should be avowed U.S. policy: U.S. forces should quickly destroy any site, such as a presidential compound, that inspectors are prevented from examining. There should be no time-consuming "consensus-building" with that fiction, the "international community," no "Mother, may we?" permission-seeking from the U.N.

But such vigor is not to be expected from Clinton, who displays the constricted imagination of liberalism regarding human complexity and menace. In his Sunday morning appearance in the White House press room, he hoped keeping the U.N. inspectors in Iraq would give Saddam "a chance to become honorably reconciled" to U.N. resolutions.

Someone should acquaint Clinton with Alan Bullock's epigraph for his biography of Hitler. It is Aristotle's statement, "Men do not become tyrants in order to keep out the cold." That is, tyrants are not banal utilitarians; they have unusual passions and aspirations.

Saddam plays with Clinton as Heifetz played a Stradivarius, with subtle virtuosity. But, says McCain, Saddam's ruthless and occasionally reckless boldness in pursuit of megalomaniacal aims - Iraq as regional hegemonist and then world power - makes it intolerably risky to count on simply deterring him, as the Soviet Union was deterred, by threats of destructive retaliation.

Perhaps last weekend clarified this much: Clinton's foremost legacy will be Saddam - overthrown, or more secure and threatening than ever.

George Will's column regularly runs on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Washington Post Writers Group