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September
30, 2002, 9:00 a.m. By Alan W. Dowd |
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ur message
to Saddam is blunt and simple," the speaker intoned. "Destroy
your weapons or we will do it for you." Given Saddam Hussein's capabilities
and designs, the words could not be more appropriate. But who fired this
laser-guided rhetorical salvo? If you guessed George W. Bush, you would
be wrong. It was Iain Duncan-Smith, the leader of Britain's opposition
party. And he spoke those words as his chief political rival, Tony Blair,
made the politically risky case for military action in Iraq.
Al Gore would do
well to embrace Duncan-Smith's style, if not his rhetoric.
Duncan-Smith truly personifies the loyal opposition. For example, like
most Tories he is opposed to Britain's conversion to the euro and wary
of British peacekeeping deployments. But he at least expresses those differences
politely. "My party is going to campaign against scrapping the pound,"
he jabbed last June, "and I will lead that vigorously." When
Duncan-Smith voiced concerns over a muddled mission in Macedonia, he didn't
question the deployment itself, but rather called on Blair to clarify
the mission. Although he applauded Blair for standing with the United
States in Afghanistan, he urged Blair not to use British troops as a "static…peacekeeping"
force.
When Duncan-Smith agrees with Blair's foreign policy, as on Afghanistan
and Iraq, he is unapologetic and forthright. "We are united …
in our determination not only to extend our genuine and heartfelt sympathy
to the United States, but to defend civilized values against those who
seek to bring them down by violence," he declared after the terror
attacks. There were no "for nows" or "howevers" —
only solidarity.
Now, contrast that with Gore's not-so-friendly fire against the Bush administration's
war effort. "History," according to Duncan-Smith, "is littered
with the desire of decent people to give the likes of Saddam Hussein a
second chance." Al Gore seems determined to be one of those people.
During his now-infamous speech in San Francisco, he smeared the Pentagon's
conquest of what he called a "fifth-rate military power" in
Afghanistan. He even said that Bush has "abandoned almost all of
Afghanistan." Of course, the very opposite is true. In 2002 alone,
the United States will pour $300 million into Afghanistan. U.S. troops
are guarding Afghan leader Hamid Karzai. They literally saved his life
during an assassination attempt in early September. Hundreds of Americans
roam the Afghan countryside, training the future Afghan army, caring for
wounded civilians, and hunting al Qaeda. At America's direction, thousands
of allied troops have joined this effort. All of this has occurred in
less than a year's time. Postwar Afghanistan is not yet fully recovered,
but it is anything but abandoned.
Undeterred by the facts, Gore worries that Bush will repeat in Iraq what
he did in Afghanistan. The Iraqi people and their neighbors should be
so lucky.
According to Gore, "The vast majority of those who sponsored, planned
and implemented the cold-blooded murder of more than 3,000 Americans are
still at large." Hence, Gore argues, Bush should not take aim at
Iraq. By that military logic, FDR shouldn't have fought the Germans in
North Africa because he had not yet wiped out the Japanese in the Pacific.
Furthermore, Gore's battlefield assessment isn't exactly accurate. Although
al Qaeda is still a serious threat, it is a shell of its former self.
Fully half of al Qaeda's 30 most-wanted terrorists are known to have been
killed or captured. About 500 of al Qaeda's best are being held at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba. Pakistan alone has apprehended 378 al Qaeda fighters.
Unlike Gore, Bush has concluded that Saddam's Iraq and bin Laden's al
Qaeda are two pieces of a global terror puzzle that also includes Hezbollah,
Islamic Jihad, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and others. Bush has further
concluded, rightly, that the United States can and must fight on multiple
fronts.
That brings us back to Duncan-Smith's Iraq rhetoric. Citing a laundry
list of Saddam's crimes — a list which includes invasions of Iran
and Kuwait, missile attacks on Saudi Arabia and Israel, the use of chemical
weapons against Iranians and Kurds, and the defiant development of nuclear
and biological weapons — Duncan-Smith concludes, "Now surely
is the time to act." And he asks a hard question of "those who
refuse to contemplate military action at any price: How are we to force
Saddam to comply with U.N. resolutions that he has flouted for a decade?"
It is almost as if Duncan-Smith is shouting across the Atlantic to Al
Gore, and in a sense he is. Gore is one of those who dismiss the need
for military action against Iraq, yet he has no real answer to his British
counterpart's stubborn question. Gore concedes that "Iraq's search
for weapons of mass destruction…will continue for as long as Saddam
is in power." But rather than ending that search once and for all
by ending Saddam's reign, Gore believes we should continue treating the
symptoms.
Remarkably, Gore even goes so far as to imply that because Saddam already
has "secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout
his country," removing the Iraqi dictator may do more harm than good,
since those weapons could be stolen or transferred in the post-Saddam
chaos. One can hear the faint echo of the State Department Kremlinologists
who argued that keeping the Soviet Union together was preferable to freedom
and independence for Moscow's subjects.
Gore doesn't have to agree with Bush, Blair or Duncan-Smith, but he owes
it to his country and his cautious cause to make a better case than the
one he made last week.
— Alan W. Dowd is assistant vice president
of the Hudson Institute.