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Sun. Feb 17, 2002

Homework: Iraq FAQ

Homework: Iraq FAQ – You didn’t ask for it, and it wasn’t intentional, but this is what’s great about the web, and weblogs in particular. A ”few schmoes out in Internetland” (so sayeth the Sarge) have put together what Steven refers to as an ”armchair analysis” on the problem of Iraq. I’d say, collectively, these constitute a fairly decent primer. It’s time to do your homework.

First of all, in ”The Politics of Dead Children,” Matt Welch takes an in depth look at the claims ”that sanctions in Iraq have killed half a million children (or 1 million, or 1.5 million, depending on the hysteria of the source)” over the past decade. It’s a detailed even handed look, and you should read the Chapter and Verse, but here’s the sound byte: ”Anyone who tells you more children will perish in Iraq this month than Americans died on September 11 is cutting and pasting inflated mid-1990s statistics onto a country that has changed significantly since then.” Matt’s apparently been working on this since late September. It shows.

Meanwhile, Steven Den Beste has placed online a 5 part examination of the potential military campaign against Iraq, and Sgt. Stryker has added some revealing comments along the way (linked below), in addition to his earlier assertion that beating Iraq will be No Cake Walk, and his current assessment of what might happen. For your surfing pleasure:

[1] Iranian Intervention

[2] The problem of air supremacy and general Iraqi tactics

[3] Axis of attack | Sgt. Stryker’s comments

[4] Development of the battlefield | Sgt. Stryker’s comments

[5] Why not like in Afghanistan?

All three of these people provide much more expertise and research than I can pretend to offer on the subject, but I’ll give you my take on it.

To my knowledge, Saddam is the only ruler in power to have used chemical weapons, not just on another nation, but on his own people. He is responsible for the deaths of more Muslims than any other human in the past 25 years; over a million, including Iranians, Kuwaiti’s, Kurds, and other Iraqi’s, a fact we should be bellowing frequently. In his mind, he is still at war with us, and has never stopped trying to acquire and improve his weapons of mass destruction. He runs terrorist training camps in his country, including one outside Baghdad complete with a Boeing 707 to practice hijackings. He’s massed his remaining forces to threaten Kuwait before (until we sent in reinforcements), and plotted to kill former President Bush on a trip to that country. I don’t think ignoring Saddam is an option (I don’t think he’ll let us), nor is maintaining the status quo, especially one in which the only country that has regularly used chemical weapons also trains terrorists to send out into the world.

The math on that one is too ugly to ignore.

So what to do? A substantial case can be made for a restructuring of the sanctions in combination with forcing Saddam to allow a strict inspections regime. This will likely be the initial diplomatic push of any coalition based solution. It sounds good, but I think it will just allow Saddam to stall and play the shell game he was prior to the inspections ending in 1998. I would only support them as a solution if they are serious in their form: ”Either you allow our inspectors in that building within two hours, or that building will blow up in two hours and one minute.” Saddam will never agree to that kind of inspections regime. Nor, likely, would our ”international partners.”

But we’ll probably dance around that sanctions/inspections option with our ”international partners” and Saddam until, oh, say, June or July before most involved realize, ”this dog won’t hunt.” I think military action is inevitable. In fact, it’s my personal opinion this is a puddle we never mopped up properly in 1991, when it would have been easy. We didn’t have to go to Baghdad to topple Saddam, just cut off the remaining three Republican Guard divisions in the Basra pocket. The 24th Mech. was about to do just that, and had in fact begun their preparatory artillery barrage, when the cease fire went into effect at the semantically chosen 100 hour point. A more military choice would have been 124, or maybe even 112 hours. That would have been enough to stop those three divisions, and they went on to suppress uprisings in the following month by the Kurds in the north, and the Shiites in the south, uprisings that would have likely succeeded with no shock troops to put them down (read the book ”Crusade” by Rick Atkinson for more on this)

So it should have happened then, and has therefore been somewhat inevitable ever since. Now, it’s just a matter of time. A time of our choosing, or one precipitated by a new event or finding.

As Steven and the Sarge mention, if we go the military route, it won’t be soon. This type of planning and attack is largely about logistics and resources. We’ve still got quite a bit of both tied up in Afghanistan, and it may take some time to wind that down and hand it over to the peacekeeping force. But it’s more than that.

We dropped about 18,000 ”weapons” on Afghanistan. Many of them (12,000, if I recall) were smart munitions. JDAMS, laser guided bombs, Tomahawks, etc. Things that don’t grow on trees. I’m no munitions expert, but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t 6 months before our military was happy with their resupply in that area. Especially in preparation for going into a more ”target rich” environment like Iraq, and one in which the first strike will be vital.

While we were able to poke at Afghanistan with individual fingers at first, we’ll need to hit Iraq with a closed fist. Action will have to be quick and overpowering, and such an operation will take time to plan and set up. As the Sarge says, time is the big factor. On the front end, time is on our side; we can wait to strike at the time of our choosing, when we’ve maximized our odds. Once action begins, time will be on Saddam’s side; the longer the engagement, the more difficult our eventual success will become. Sarge, being a military man, thinks if military action is the choice, it won’t happen this year. Me, being a cynical curmudgeon, I think it will happen maybe in the fall; September or October.

It’s an election year.