Time To Off Saddam?

Think back to those first weeks of January 1991. For 16 days, the U.S. and Iraq played diplomatic cat-and-mouse as Saddam Hussein tested what he would have to concede to forestall military attack. The American President exhausted every diplomatic option before unleashing the allied assault. Saddam's ultimate objective was to hold on to a prize he deemed essential to his power. Then it was Kuwait. Now in the first weeks of February 1998, the stakes are weapons of mass destruction, but the game is distinctly the same. And the question is whether the result will be the same: vast destruction in Iraq but the continued reign of Saddam.

To alter that outcome, leading congressional Republicans have been advising President Bill Clinton to get rid of Saddam once and for all. Depose him, capture him, kill him if necessary. That's the only sure way to terminate the seven-year-old practice of "cheat and retreat" that has let Iraq squirrel away warheads capable of carrying enough biological weapons to threaten its neighbors. It is a simple solution--in theory.

Reality is different. The U.S. must make its choices from risky, less conclusive options. As the diplomatic game is played out in search of a nonviolent end to this standoff, Clinton and the American public need to think hard about what, realistically, can and cannot be done.

Few Americans dispute that there is a valid case for taking out Saddam. The Iraqi leader even more than his suspected arsenal menaces his neighborhood. He has, in a galling way, been able to fashion a kind of victory out of defeat: the embargo blockading his country has enabled Saddam to blame the U.S. for his country's problems. He continues to frustrate U.N. resolutions designed to neuter his military might.

The bombing campaign the Clinton Administration has in mind, critics contend, would neither bring compliance with the U.N. nor remove Saddam. The bombs would demolish all hope of more inspections but would not stop Saddam from rebuilding his germ factories, and that would just provoke another military confrontation later.

Even the most ardent Saddam hunters have to admit that taking him out would entail a huge, high-risk military operation: months of preparation to deploy thousands of ground troops to fight their way to the Iraqi capital while courting substantial casualties, then arrest or kill him. The U.S. would be pitched into an open-ended occupation and saddled with rescuing a devastated economy.

And then what? Advocates suggest there is a palatable alternative to Saddam just waiting to step in. In fact, all efforts to organize an effective Iraqi opposition have failed. There is a good chance Saddam would be replaced by Saddam II, another Baathist general ready to continue the military dictatorship. More likely still, a headless Iraq would go the way of Lebanon, fractured among Kurds in the north, Shi'ites in the south and Sunnis in the center egged on by meddling neighbor states pursuing oil and ethnic interests.