Lifeboat drill and compass

• Article
• Comments ()
• Click-2-Listen

By

Before the second Gulf war, the Bush administration said Iraqi nuclear scientists were far too fear-struck to tell the truth to U.N. inspectors. Saddam Hussein's secret police thugs always hovered nearby. Only if they were allowed to leave Iraq with their families could their statements have any credibility. Predictably then, they said there were no hidden nukes and that a nuclear weapons program had been scrapped in the early 1990s.

But now they're free to talk, the scientists have not changed their story, according to the Financial Times: No nukes and no program to develop them. It was intemperate rhetoric about Saddam's impending ability to threaten nuclear blackmail that silenced many of the administration's critics.

The "neo-cons," or neo-conservatives, agitated the scarecrow of nuclear annihilation, along with biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction, which are yet to be found, as the why-for-what-for-wherefore the invasion of Iraq.

The strategic objectives of the neo-cons were breathtaking in concept and would have been meritorious if achieved. An exemplary Iraqi democracy would prove contagious in Syria, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf States. All these new Arab democracies would then sign final peace treaties with Israel, and the Jewish state could look forward to a generation of peace and prosperity, fueled by Israel's technological ability to make their neighbors' deserts bloom, too.

Unfortunately, the armchair strategists, whose knowledge of the Arab world didn't match their Israeli expertise, had not thought through the Iraqi war scenario beyond the victory march through Baghdad. They had dismissed the possibility of an Iraqi resistance movement and terror attacks against U.S. soldiers as defeatist prattle by naysayers.

Now at least 14 different resistance groups have been identified -- from Jihad Brigades to the Black Banner Organization, including anti-Saddam outfits that are also anti-American, non-Iraqi Sunni groups, and, of course, al Qaeda and its volunteers from all over the Arab world.

The neo-cons could not imagine Osama Bin Laden and his followers were not only willing to die, but seeking to die, and would maximize opportunities against the U.S. occupation, the way piranhas maximize protein ingestion, as one wit put it.

Now that the grand design has eluded the amateur strategists who crafted it, they are looking for a quick exit from what could become an Iraqi quagmire. Exit strategy quickly displaced long-term commitment.

The much-pilloried U.N. has suddenly resurfaced in the form of a lifeboat. In a Paris interview, Richard Perle, the standard-bearer of the neo-cons, spoke about getting out of Iraq as quickly as possible. The French plan for a rapid handover to a provisional Iraqi government, followed by rapid-fire drafting of a new constitution, and elections next spring, was at first denounced as an absurd Gallic gallopade. Which it was.