People's Democracy

AFGHANISTAN is just the beginning of the war against terror," George Bush declared to a roaring crowd of soldiers on November 21. "There are other terrorists who threaten America and our friends, and there are other nations willing to sponsor them. We will not be secure as a nation until all of these threats are defeated. Across the world, and across the years, we will fight these evil ones, and we will win." Mr Bush seemed determined to quash the idea that America would be content to declare victory in Afghanistan, or over al-Qaeda once Osama bin Laden is caught or killed, and then hope that things would return to normal.

But how will America translate this rhetoric into policy? After its victory in the Gulf war in 1991, the first Bush administration plunked down the political capital it won in the Muslim world on an effort to restart the Arab-Israeli peace process. It convened the Madrid conference that, ten years and many convolutions later, collapsed last year at Camp David.

With victory at hand against the Taliban (though not quite yet, it seems, against al-Qaeda), the second Bush administration also finds itself with capital to spend in the region-capital that comes from the display of American military might and impressive political resolution. And Bush II seems, on the face of it, to be trying to repeat the history of Bush I.

On November 19, Colin Powell, the secretary of state, committed America to restarting the peace process yet again. He appointed a new envoy to negotiate a ceasefire, Anthony Zinni, a former general (like Mr Powell). And he restated America’s backing for final-status talks on a Palestinian state.

So "phase two" of Mr Bush’s war is the Middle-Eastern peace process? Not if the so-called neo-conservatives have anything to do with it. "Phase two," writes Tom Donnelly, in the Weekly Standard, "is a euphemism for Iraq. As the campaign in Afghanistan has progressed, a consensus has emerged that it is high time to remove Saddam Hussein from power."

That may be a slight exaggeration. Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence and the man who in the past has argued most forcibly for Saddam’s overthrow, has been cautious, arguing that "Saddam Hussein is one of [a number of leaders supporting terrorism] but not the only one." At a conference in Geneva, John Bolton, the under-secretary of state for arms control, took the unusual step of naming Iraq for illegally building biological weapons-but he named five other countries, too.

This more guarded language is very similar to that used by some Democrats. For example, Senator Joseph Lieberman has argued that "[Saddam] has got the means-chemical, biological, working on nuclear-and the motive. He will do us terrible damage unless we do him out of power."

The idea that Iraq is the logical phase two is usually associated with the Pentagon; and supposed to be anathema at the State Department. But that view may be wrong. On November 7, Mr Powell said this: "Nations such as Iraq, which have tried to possess weapons of mass destruction, should not think that we will not be concerned about those activities and will not turn our attention to them." The State Department has also been quietly forging closer political ties with exiled Iraqi military officers.

Encouraging the peace process between Israelis and Palestinians and attacking Iraq are not necessarily alternatives. Arguably, they could complement one another: Arab support for the peace process could mitigate the regimes’ likely (public) hostility to an attack on an Arab state. But the chances are surely that most Arab leaders would shun any American-led peace effort, at least while war was being waged. So the administration would have to assume that attacking Iraq would hamper efforts to find a settlement between Israel and Palestine.

The real question, then, is should America try to overthrow Saddam Hussein? The political dynamic appears to be in favour. Politicians of all stripes support the idea. Almost all the pressure in America during the war on Afghanistan was for more force, not less. One poll, for example, found that nearly as many people thought the attacks on the Taliban were not strong enough (41 per cent) as thought they were about right (47 per cent). That suggests the public could be receptive to arguments in favour of a second front. And there is a political consensus that Saddam is not merely, in the words of Condoleezza Rice, "a bad actor", but a possible threat to national security.

Yet those who have to think about how in practice to remove the beast from Baghdad are much more sceptical. Career diplomats might be thought congenitally incapable of planning a war against anyone. But both the CIA and the generals (including Mr Zinni, Mr Powell’s envoy) are also notably unenthusiastic desert warriors. The reason for this divide is that the two groups, politicians on the one hand, planners and diplomats on the other, have drawn different conclusions from the war in Afghanistan.

For the "remove Saddam" crowd, the lesson is that a repressive power, however strong it may look, will crumble under American bombing and popular resentment. American military backing transformed a rabble on horseback into an effective fighting force. And the lesson from the attacks on September 11 is also clear. If your sworn enemy can launch massive strikes against you, he will. As Richard Perle, the chairman of the Pentagon’s defence policy board, puts it, "I would hate to see us having this debate after another terrible attack on America."

The diplomats and planners, on the other hand, argue that the Iraqi opposition, especially the main organisation, the Iraqi National Congress, cannot be compared to the Northern Alliance. They have no military bases to operate from. They are not supported by any neighbouring power. And they are likely to be no more successful at gaining support from the dominant Sunnis than the Northern Alliance was in winning Pushtun support.

And the pragmatists also dispute the lesson from September 11. Unlike Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein has a return address and can be deterred from using weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, the planners and generals fear that an attack on Iraq would increase the chance that these weapons might be used-by Saddam himself or by al-Qaeda, if he gave them the arms as a last resort.

Mr Bush is the only person who can resolve this disagreement. For the moment he is focused on the unfinished business in Afghanistan. The fact that no decision has yet been made may even explain why some people in the administration feel comfortable about making general warning noises to Saddam.

One possible next step might be to demand the immediate return of United Nations weapons inspectors to Iraq, with far more intrusive powers, in return for a change in the sanctions regime. This would have the advantage of mollifying some of America’s European allies, notably Britain, which proposed this idea and which is opposed to attacking Iraq. But what if Saddam rejected the demand? Or accepted it and sought to hoodwink the inspectors? In so far as Mr Bush’s views can be discerned, they would appear to lean slightly towards trying to remove Saddam. This week Ms Rice, his national security adviser and weathervane of presidential opinion, said: "The world would clearly be better off, and the Iraqi people would be better off, if Saddam Hussein were not in power in Iraq. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that." But there is plenty of doubt about how to do it, and what the risks are.

And the time for deciding whether to run those risks cannot be far off.

(Through Miroslav Antic from www.kominf.pp.fi)