While impeachment bombs explode in the Senate this week, expect more
fireworks over the skies of Iraq.
One day the impeachment spectacle will go away. Eventually, Starr
could
become a California surfer and Monica and Bill a Sonny and Cher-type Las
Vegas act managed by Roger Clinton, but the way our national security
fumblers are performing, Saddam Hussein ain’t never going to change
careers.
Also, the way the body count in Iraq is growing, no one else may be
left.
Saddam’s clan has pretty much eliminated anyone who can even spell
opposition. That plus the deaths caused from the economic sanctions and
the seemingly never-ending U.S. directed military campaign should finish
the job.
This week will probably bring more of the “Saddam Show” as he
continues to stir
up trouble trying to bring down our aircraft over the two no-fly zones
and
then declaring it, “The mother of all air battles.”
I well remember the 31 January 1991 Battle of Khafji that I witnessed
so
closely I could smell the cordite, see the gun flashes and experience
the
pucker factor. When it was over, burning tanks littered the field and
more than
300 Iraqi prisoners ended up in the POW cage. Iraqi columns beat feet
back
across the Saudi border, and then Saddam, emulating General William
Westmoreland of Vietnam, declared victory. “We won the mother of all
battles,” he exclaimed from the bottom of his bunker.
Eight years later he’s still declaring victory while here we are,
readying
our missiles and bombs for another serious go at the ever-more-defiant
monster of Baghdad with yet another no-win plan.
Our warriors are weary of being players in a game where the ground
rules
are counterproductive and don’t allow them to win. A source in General
Anthony Zinni’s Tampa, Fla.-based Central Command Headquarters says the
December
bombing campaign was designed by Zinni to be much more than just another
pinprick. But Bill Clinton and advisers cut it way back “on a scale not
seen since LBJ and the Vietnam bombing campaign.”
Perhaps a Clinton spinmeister suggested that 70 hours would play
better in the polls and kick Bill’s ever increasing popularity up to
still
loftier levels. Until Desert Fox, George Bush held the record for the
shortest war in our history with Desert Storm weighing in at 100 hours.
After seven years of observing Clinton’s strategic schemes or rather
lack
of them, I’m convinced that playing the polls is given far more weight
than
mere principles of war.
For sure, more bombing alone won’t do the job. Bombing coupled
with U.S. troops on the ground could oust Saddam. But that would cost a
price Clinton and pollster refuse to pay — American casualties.
Economic sanctions can’t win either. They only hurt the innocent and
accomplish nothing but bad karma and bad P.R. Remember, tens of
thousands
of Iraqi children have already died because of medicine and food
shortages.
So where do we go from here?
Besides wearing out our military, we’ve spent enough dough battling
Saddam
since 1990 to give every American a new four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee,
a high-
definition TV and a desktop computer. Yet we’re still on first base
with Saddam
totally in control of the pitcher’s mound.
In 1921, a British statesman took out his ruler, laid it on a map of
Mesopotamia and with a few quick strokes of a pencil created Iraq.
Next, the British proclaimed Syria’s Emir Faisal the King of Iraq, but,
of
course, they retained control of their future gas station with military
muscle.
Why not declare all of Iraq a no-fly zone and then borrow that
British
ruler and pencil. We could split off the oil-rich north and south,
making
two separate countries with the Kurds in charge of the north and the
Shiite
Muslims in the south. This would leave Saddam with his due – – a desert
rump state in the center and not much else but sand and statues to his
greatness. We could secure the peace as we have in Bosnia with troops
on
the ground and aircraft in the sky while the two new states went about
preparing their own defenses.
Sure, it would be costly. But at least there’d be an end in sight.
