President Bush is still capable of talking a good game on the need for aggressive pre-emptive action against Iraq, but I have to say that at this point I'll believe it when I see it and not before. Wars are not won by saber-rattling commencement addresses alone. Most of the signals coming from the administration in recent months seem to indicate a lack of seriousness and determination on the matter, if not utter confusion. Yesterday's address follows the usual pattern of tough words at the podium accompanied by simultaneous, furious back-pedaling by nameless "administration officials."
The logic supporting the necessity of taking on Saddam Hussein is unassailable, for doves as well as hawks. The dangers of allowing him to remain in power outweigh the risks of launching such an attack. There can be no doubt that the administration, like any sane person, has reached this unavoidable conclusion. There can also be little doubt that some sort of action will indeed be taken, if only because failure to act would pretty much automatically rule out a second Bush term (and quite rightly so.) What is missing is a decision on what Henry James called "the dear little deadly question of how to do it." Contrary to the assurances of "administration officials," this business about there being "no plan" is clearly nonsense. They've been working up plans and counter-plans and contingency plans and scenarios and counter-scenarios for attacks on Iraq for years: the shelves of innumerable Pentagon offices are, I imagine, stuffed to overflowing with row upon row of thick black binders devoted to the subject, in effect anyway. Opinion in the administration is divided on how to proceed. There's probably something in the idea that the traditionally risk-averse military brass may be exaggerating the risks and the amount of force that would be sufficiently "overwhelming" in order to discourage such a campaign: they appear to have opposed every major military action in recent memory and their pessimism has often proven unjustified. But that doesn't automatically mean that the neo-cons are right when they assert that it would be a snap, even though, as Joshua Micah Marshall observed, "the last few times, the ideologues have turned out to be right." Even in the face of such division, the decision to act appears to have been taken. The questions of "how" and "when" remain, and they're not easy ones.
My hunch has always been that the mixed messages on Iraq have been deliberate: not, as the "rope-a-dopers" would have it, to disguise an agreed-upon, secret, perfect, yet-to-be-revealed strategy of dazzling brilliance, but rather to allow them to appear busy while putting off the decision for just a little longer, hoping, perhaps, to take advantage of whatever lucky opportunities may arise in the meantime. The dithering cannot continue forever. Tough decisions will have to be made, and the President will have to make them. It's too early to say definitively that Bush has failed in this test of leadership, but the signs aren't encouraging, aggressive commencement addresses notwithstanding.
Posted by Dr. Frank at June 3, 2002 09:26 AM | TrackBack