FREE BAGHDAD
Finish the War. Liberate Iraq.
We've already invaded. Now Saddam must go.
Once again Americans are debating whether we should go to war. Once again we are confused and ambivalent as we consider the necessity of using violent, deadly means to accomplish a peaceful objective. And once again the object of our concern is Iraq. Not since 1991, when the United States led an international coalition that included over 500,000 of our armed forces to drive Iraq out of Kuwait, has Iraq commanded so much of the world's attention and concern.
Some of the confusion is due to forgetfulness. Here are a few facts and dates:
• On Aug. 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. The U.S. led and participated in a United Nations and congressionally sanctioned military intervention to reverse Iraq's invasion. The war ended on Feb. 28, 1991, with the withdrawal of all Iraqi forces.
• On April 3, 1991, U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 was passed requiring Iraq, among other things, to disclose fully and permit the dismantlement of its weapons of mass destruction programs and submit to long-term monitoring and verification of such dismantlement. The U.S. has participated in this effort, which includes a multilateral diplomatic, economic and military intervention to contain Iraq's threat to her neighbors.
• On April 7, 1991, and Aug. 27, 1992, the U.S., Britain and for a time France began enforcing a no-fly zone in northern and southern Iraq. This multilateral military intervention in Iraq has by all accounts kept thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Shiites from being killed by their own military.
• From 1991 to 1998, Iraq denied U.N weapons inspectors open access to suspected sites, continued to build its capability of using weapons of mass destruction, engaged in ethnic cleansing of its Kurdish minority, attempted the assassination of former President George H.W. Bush, and finally, in 1998, denied the U.N. further access to do its work.
• On Oct. 31, 1998, President Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act into law, which changed the policy objective of the U.S. in Iraq from containment to regime change.
• On Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. was attacked by criminals who murdered 3,000 innocent people at the World Trade Center and Pentagon. There is credible evidence that Iraqi intelligence personnel met with one of the leaders of this attack. This attack has changed forever the political and military calculations of national security. The U.S. now has an independent interest in reducing the threat of terrorism.
From just this information we should take care not to forget that in a very real way the war against Iraq did not end in 1991. Following the Gulf War the U.N. authorized the use of a multilateral military intervention to enforce an embargo on Iraq. It has also allowed the U.S and Britain to intervene in Iraqi airspace in order to enforce a no-fly zone to protect Iraqi Kurds in the north and Iraqi Shiites in the south. Furthermore, Arab nations in the region--most notably Saudi Arabia and Kuwait--have permitted the forward deployment of U.S. military personnel as a deterrent against Iraq's army.
As a consequence, the U.S. has spent more than $1 billion a year on a very real and very risky military intervention against Iraq for the past 11 years. That intervention cost us 19 airmen at Khobar towers in 1996. Although it is now believed that Iran was the culprit in that murderous assault, our troops' presence so close to Mecca and Medina has inflamed anti-American sentiment among radical Islamists including Osama bin Laden.
These two military deployments--to enforce the no-fly zones and the embargo--have put the U.S. in a dilemma that is faced by no other country except Britain. The dilemma is that we must continue these military efforts at considerable risk to us until Saddam Hussein is no longer a military risk to his own people and his neighbors. To be precise: He has stationed seven divisions of soldiers in northern Iraq and five in the south. He would kill a lot of Iraqi Kurds and Shiites if we were to stop our military intervention.
To listen to some, you would think we weren't already militarily engaged in the task of making Iraq less dangerous. Following a telephone call from President Bush, a spokesman for Russia's President Vladimir Putin expressed "serious doubts that there are grounds for the use of force in connection with Iraq from the standpoint of international law or from a political standpoint." On the same day it was reported that France's president, Jacques Chirac, insisted anew that any military action had to come with the approval of the U.N. And U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself said "it would be unwise to attack Iraq now."
All three of these statements encourage a false-choice debate about Iraq. We presume incorrectly that the choice is between an invasion or nothing when the truth is that our current multilateral military effort already qualifies as an invasion of Iraq. The real choice is between sustaining a military effort designed to contain Saddam Hussein and a military effort designed to replace him.
In my mind the case for the second choice is overwhelming. At the very least the U.S. should increase its military support to Iraqi opposition groups so that they have a fighting chance on the ground to succeed in regime change. At most the U.S. should be trying to convince our allies that we cannot afford the current military effort to contain Iraq. Regime change is the only way we can safely reduce our military commitment to the region. But regime change will unquestionably require a different--and probably larger--military effort than the one we are currently using.
Finally, it is very important that we American civilians instruct our military to tell us what they believe will be needed to accomplish this mission. We should not attach political requirements that make military success less likely. By this I mean that we civilians must be prepared for our military leaders to say to us: This is what we need for success. Given all the other assignments--particularly the war in Afghanistan which is by no means over, and the risk of conflict between Pakistan and India, which has by no means passed--we are not ready to conduct a successful war to liberate the people of Iraq.
We civilians cannot expect to liberate 25 million Iraqis on the cheap. Just as it has been a terrible and tragic mistake for the U.S. to be in favor of freedom every place on earth except in Arab nations, it would also be a tragic mistake if we do not give our military the resources necessary to succeed. As one of the authors of the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, and as one who pushed President Clinton to change our policy towards Iraq, I strongly favor regime change. I also strongly favor asking Americans to participate in some real and meaningful way such as putting in place a more aggressive energy conservation policy that would reduce our dependency on oil, both foreign and domestic.
At the end of all of the academic arguments is whether we are willing to pay the price to bring freedom to the people of Iraq. If we are, we will not regret it. If we aren't, we should tell the truth and go no further. As we are fond of saying: Freedom is not free.
Mr. Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska, is president of New School University in New York.
