Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review Sept. 19, 2002 / 13 Tishrei, 5763

Robert W. Tracinski

Tracinski
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports

Bush loses the war, again


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | The Bush family has a real talent for losing wars against Iraq, and they seem to be getting more efficient at it. The first President Bush waited until he achieved a crushing victory over Iraq's armies before capitulating to Saddam Hussein. The second President Bush has saved a lot of time and trouble; he has capitulated before the fighting has even begun.

The conventional wisdom is that Bush's speech last week to the UN was a "brilliant" maneuver that galvanized the administration's long-sought international "consensus" against Iraq. A typical op-ed declared, "Over the course of 48 hours last week, the opposition to removal of Saddam Hussein ... collapsed like a house of cards. ... This week, however, it is Bush's diplomatic strategy that is collapsing, as all of the countries that endorsed his UN speech -- from Russia to Saudi Arabia -- now scramble to applaud Saddam Hussein's latest pledge to readmit weapons inspectors. The new "consensus" is the view stated by Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz: "All the reasons for an attack have been eliminated."

Bush can't complain. Everyone is just following the logic he set up in his speech. He sought an international consensus based on the demand that Iraq unconditionally agree, once again, to the weapons inspections it was supposed to unconditionally agree to for the past 11 years. If that was the basis for Bush's international coalition, then it was child's play for Saddam to reach out and, with nothing more than a few words on a scrap of paper, smash that coalition all to pieces.

Iraq said that it will "unconditionally" accept weapons inspectors -- and then invited the UN to discuss under what conditions those unconditional inspections will take place. The Bush administration declared, of course, that it will not play this kind of diplomatic game, that it will demand nothing less than "truly unconditional" inspections. But using inspections as a substitute for war makes diplomatic games inevitable. It changes the issue from the black and white of war vs. peace, to a series of gray areas and debatable details.

Who gets to determine the membership of the inspection teams? What are the procedures the inspectors must follow, and how are those procedures enforced? What kind of delay constitutes a breach of the inspection agreement? Each of these small issues becomes another front on which Iraq can deploy its vast, well-tested arsenal of obstruction and stalling tactics. Yet each of these infractions can be made to seem so inconsequential by itself -- in the eyes of Arab apologists and appeasing Europeans -- that it does not justify war. As one administration official asked, "Are you going to be able to go to war because inspectors were kept in a parking lot for 15 minutes?"

Who is going to answer those questions? In his speech last week, Bush made the case against Iraq purely in terms of its violation of UN demands and its flouting of the supposed authority of the Security Council. That means it will be up to the permanent members of the Security Council -- including Russia, China and France -- to enforce any new inspections agreement. The role of these countries has already been anticipated by Aziz, who announced: "When the inspectors do not act honestly and professionally" -- i.e., when they do not put up with Iraqi obstructionism -- "they (Russia, China, and France) should tell them, 'you have to behave yourself and act according to what the Security Council wants and not what the United States and Britain want.'"

The deepest failure of Bush's UN speech is not his attempt to renew the useless weapons inspections. It is the fact that he felt compelled to give that speech at all. It is the fact that he chose to subordinate America's war-making power to the procedures and dictates of the United Nations.

Eleven years ago, Bush's father allowed the UN to become the arbiter and defender of America's cease-fire with Iraq. Last week, Bush laid out the results: Iraq's blatant, unpunished violation of 16 separate UN resolutions, starting just three months after the Gulf War. This does not just make the case against Saddam; it makes the case against the UN, demonstrating the folly of placing America's national security in the hands of an organization that is hostile or indifferent to America's interests.

Kowtowing to the UN is how America surrendered its victory in the first Gulf War. We must not allow the same policy to prevent us from fighting and winning the Gulf War the second time around.

Enjoy this writer's work? Why not sign-up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.




Comment on JWR contributor Robert W. Tracinski's column by clicking here.

09/11/02: What have we lost?
09/05/02: The case for "destabilization"
08/29/02: "Sustainable" development's unsustainable contradictions
08/22/02: The photographing of public art and architecture has apparently been deemed a threat to the Republic
08/14/02: Talk vs. ideas
08/12/02: Blood for oil
08/06/02: The welfare debate we're not having
07/30/02: Newsflash: Hauling CEOs away in manacles makes market soar!
07/23/02: Clearing the way for real airport security
07/16/02: The war on CEOs
07/09/02: Small-time crooks
06/27/02: Martha and the tall poppies
06/21/02: The post-colonialist famine
06/12/02: America's Maginot Line
06/07/02: Time's up for Pakistan
05/28/02: Freedom's defenders
05/22/02: What they knew and when they knew it
05/16/02: The mixed-economy monster
05/08/02: Conference in Cloud Cuckoo Land
04/25/02: The 'Palestinian" victims?
04/18/02: Why Israel must not withdraw
04/09/02: LIVE FROM RAMALLAH: The Theater of the Absurd
03/26/02: Campaign finance corruption
03/21/02: Who is George Bush?
03/14/02: The prophets of defeatism
02/21/02: The war on terrorism and the war on reality
02/14/02: Multilateralism's one-way street
02/05/02: The Powell Problem
01/29/02: A profligate and irresponsible distortion of congressional priorities
01/22/02: Liberal conspiracy theories
01/15/02: Fading shock and fading resolve
01/08/02: Argentina's intellectual collapse
12/31/02: The real person of the year
12/26/01: With friends like us ...
12/19/01: Ending the "peace process war"
12/11/01: The ruthless grip of logic
12/04/01: War powers without war
11/27/01: An Afghanistan Thanksgiving
11/20/01: The end of the beginning
11/06/01: The phony war
10/30/01: A war against Islam
10/23/01: The economics of war
10/16/01: A culture of death
10/11/01: An empire of ideals
10/01/01: Why they hate us
09/24/01: The lessons of war
09/20/01: What a real war looks like
09/17/01: America's war song
09/12/01: It is worse than Pearl Harbor
09/11/01: Out of the fire and back into the frying pan
09/05/01: The UN Conference of Racists
08/28/01: Waging war on profits and lives
08/20/01: The Bizarro-World War
08/08/01: The death toll of environmentalism
07/31/01: Where does America stand?
07/25/01: Barbarians at the G8
07/17/01: The carrot and the carrot
07/11/01: The real Brave New World
07/03/01: The child-manipulators
06/19/01: The scientist trap
06/11/01: The National Academy of Dubious Science

© 2002, CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.