REVIEW & OUTLOOK
The Iraq Tipping Point
What it will take to topple Saddam and his sons.
The most important lesson we've learned in the first week of the Iraq war is that it's harder to kill a regime than it is to defeat an army. The U.S. did the latter in the Gulf War, but we'll achieve the former only when enough Iraqis are convinced that Saddam Hussein's reign of terror truly is finished.
Compared with any conflict except the Gulf or Afghanistan wars, the achievements of allied forces in the past nine days would be thought remarkable. They have charged to within 50 miles of Baghdad, poised to engage elite Iraqi units. They dominate the air, to the point that our planes can kill anything that moves. And despite resistance that includes fake surrenders, civilian disguise and the execution of POWs, American and British deaths are so far fewer than half the 128 killed in the Gulf War. There has not been anything close to a single allied defeat.
The main disappointment is that Saddam's regime has not quickly fallen. His Baath tentacles have a tighter hold on more Iraqis than many hoped, and the party's henchmen (notably his son Qusay's Fedayeen) are proving to be ruthless and opportunistic. So it will take more time, more troops and more force to free that country from those clutches.
This last point is crucial, because it relates to both our military means and political goals. The allied war effort has so far been defined by restraint. This has made sense given the U.S. political intention to rebuild the country once Saddam is history. Forcing civilians to suffer by destroying, say, the Baghdad electrical grid does not help the war effort.
But these allied scruples have had some important military costs. The decision not to bomb Iraqi TV avoided civilian deaths but also gave Saddam an opening to show he was still in control. The sprint to Baghdad to end the war quickly opened allied supply lines to Fedayeen raids. And the original decision to bypass Basra denied to Iraq's oppressed Shiite majority any immediate motivation to revolt.
Saddam and his sons know they can't win a direct conflict. The last week has revealed their strategy of disguise, ambush and delay. They are gambling that allied delicacy about civilian casualties will prevent us from taking on their troops hiding among mosques, hospitals and schools. And for any Iraqis reluctant to fight, they have the Fedayeen willing to shoot them in the back of the head (as graphically reported in yesterday's New York Times). They are also reported to be seizing children and threatening Iraqi men with execution if they refuse to fight for Saddam.
These grotesque tactics reveal the nature of our opposition. And they suggest that Iraqi resistance will continue as long as most non-Baathist Iraqis fear the Fedayeen more than they trust the allies. They also mean that the best way--the only way--to liberate these civilians is to prosecute the war with even greater power. Only when Iraqis are sure we have the will and muscle to redeem our premature end to the Gulf War will enough Iraqis turn against Saddam.
Our point here is that the first and largest American political goal is victory. Before the U.S. can worry about rebuilding Iraq, it has to win militarily, and decisively so. As Bernard Lewis and other scholars have long noted, Arab cultures despise weakness in an adversary above all. They attacked us on September 11 not because we were strong but precisely because we had failed to strike back at earlier terror attacks.
Iraqis, and the entire Middle East, will be impressed now only if they see that the U.S. will wage this war with everything that is needed to prevail. If civilians die because they were placed in front of military targets, the moral responsibility for their harm will rest with those who put them there. While in the near term we are likely to endure some nasty TV images, in the long run this U.S. determination will save both Iraqi and American lives.
This looks to be exactly the direction the allies are now moving. The message out of yesterday's U.S.-British summit was, in Tony Blair's words, "our complete and total resolve: Saddam Hussein and his hateful regime will be removed from power." Asked about the war's "timetable," President Bush replied three separate times: "However long it takes."
The allies are also moving to reinforce those words on the ground. With the sandstorms lifted, allied bombings are resuming against more Baghdad targets and the Republican Guard. The allies are adding forces for a second front in the north and calling in armored reinforcements from the U.S. Ground troops are being given new, and looser, rules of engagement after the Iraqi treachery of the past week.
Unlike the roller-coaster analysts elsewhere in the media, we aren't about to declare failure nine days into a war. We recall a similar media consensus shortly before Mazar-i-Sharif and then Kabul fell in Afghanistan. The pace and the length of this or any war is less important than is the will of leaders to win it. Saddam's tipping point may take longer to come. But when it does, don't be surprised if his fall happens in a rush.
