MARCHING FOR THE ENEMY.

Marching for the Enemy
By Amir Taheri
The Wall Street Journal | February 19, 2003


For almost a year the Don't-Touch-Saddam lobby has been warning that action against the Iraqi tyrant could provoke an explosion in the "Arab street." The promised explosion came on Saturday. But it was on the streets of Western capitals, from Berlin to Washington.

Watching the marchers here one could not help feeling that larger demonstrations could have been organized by the estimated 1.2 million people, mostly Iraqis and Iranians, who have died as a direct result of the tyrant's policy of repression and war in the past 25 years. Others might have joined them: the four million Iraqis driven into exile and the 1.5 million Iraqis and Iranians disabled during eight years of war. If the "Arab street," and the "Muslim street" in general, have refused to "explode" it is because most Arabs and Muslims know what Saddam Hussein has done to his peoples, and to his neighbors.

In this conflict there are only two sides: On the one side stand Saddam and his regime, on the other the peoples of Iraq. When you stand with one you necessarily stand against the other. The "anti-war" label doesn't change that fact. Let us recall that the same label was used, by the same naïve souls misled by the same scoundrels, when the world was debating the use of force to liberate the peoples of Bosnia and Kosovo. And the same trick themes, used then, are used now. "Let's give diplomacy another chance," Francois Mitterrand urged for much of the 1990s. During that time a quarter million Bosnian Muslims were massacred, and a million driven out of their homes. Diplomacy was also given "another chance" while the Rambouillet Treaty was negotiated with Slobodan Milosevic. The price? Up to 10,000 Kosovar Muslims dead.

We were told that military action against Radovan Karadzic and Milosevic would "destabilize the Balkans." That didn't happen. We were warned that Russia might veto a resolution authorizing force to rescue the peoples of the former Yugoslavia. No such thing happened. We were told to allow the U.N. inspection mission in Kosovo to "do its work." It did, indeed, do its work -- visiting mass graves where massacred Muslims were buried, and taking video footage.

Now, too, we are told to give the inspectors time and informed that they are "making progress." It's as if the inspectors had not had enough time during the past 12 years. In any case, the subject of Resolution 1441 is disarmament, not inspection. Inspection was the subject of the 16 previous resolutions, including 1248, which led to the appointment of Hans Blix. The truth is that inspection is working fine. What is not working fine is disarmament. The teams led by Mr. Blix have visited 300 of the 813 sites that Iraq has agreed to let them visit, and have found nothing. Given another six months or so they would visit all the remaining sites and still find nothing, because they are not meant to. The inspectors have interviewed seven of the 3,896 Iraqi scientists listed to have a role in the Iraqi weapons programs. Given another four years, Mr. Blix's men might interview many more of them. And they will find absolutely nothing, because they are not meant to.

Mr. Blix sees his mission as one of inspection, not detection. He inspects what is shown to him, then writes a report. Even if he had 10,000 men under him he would still not find what the Iraqis might wish to hide from him. And each time he is about to appear at the Security Council, Saddam will give them a new "concession." Last time it was the presidential sites; then U2 flights; and, most recently, Saddam's edict to ban weapons of mass destruction. The edict is meaningless, a propaganda declaration. And yet a ban was supposed to have come into effect in April 1991!

If necessary, Saddam will offer to polish Mr. Blix's clogs. But he'll never tell him where Iraq is hiding weapons that it admits it once had. Nor will Saddam let anyone know what his weapons-makers are doing. His cheat-and-retreat strategy has worked for 12 years. Unless something hard hits him, there's no reason why he should stop. In another 12 years he'll be 77, younger than some Arab rulers. After that, he could place a son in command to continue the game.

During the '90s, we were told that war was an excuse for the establishment of an American "empire" in the Balkans. But just ask the Serbs, the Albanians, the Kosovars, the Croats, the Slovenes, the Macedonians and other peoples of the peninsula what they think of that claim. In 1993, Alija Izetbegovich, then the beleaguered president of Bosnia-Herzegovina, explained his feelings to me in the starkest possible manner: "Only the Americans could save us from annihilation. If they do not come, there will soon be no Muslims left in the former Yugoslavia. The Europeans will debate until we are all dead."

American equivocation was as tragic then as it is now in the case of Iraq. France and Germany continued to oppose military intervention in the Balkans until they became convinced that the Americans would intervene. Then they rushed to join the bandwagon. A similar situation exists today. France and Germany will continue to play "peace-lovers" for as long as they know the U.S. has not decided to go to war.

These days the U.S. media are full of attacks on France and Germany. But the truth is that the Bush administration has not confronted them with a clear choice between their alliance with the U.S. and their support for Saddam. Faced with that choice they will choose the U.S., albeit with protesting noises. France will seek a share in the war while Germany will offer troops and materiel to relieve U.S. manpower and weapons in Afghanistan for use in Iraq.

President Bush has kept saying that "you are either with us or against us," but has behaved as if a third position remains possible. He says that Saddam will be disarmed "one way or another," providing France and Germany with a pretext to push for the illusory "other way" short of war. Mr. Bush keeps saying that "this game cannot go on," but continues to play it as if it can go on. The reason may be that U.S. and allied forces aren't yet prepared for war. The media talk about up to a quarter of a million troops ready for action in the Gulf. My own sources, however, indicate that the U.S. and its allies do not have more than 30,000 combat troops there right now.

The current French and German gesticulating is caused by the fact that it costs them nothing and could give them bargaining chips in an eventual turnabout. Unless forced to publicly and unequivocally take sides, neither Monsieur Chirac nor Herr Schroeder will have an incentive to abandon what the French call "le beau role" while urging the U.N. to play the role of cuckold.

Mr. Taheri is the author of "The Cauldron: Middle East Behind the Headlines" (Hutchinson, 1988)