Clinton A Foreign-Policy Laughingstock
President Clinton’s undeclared war on Iraq has made him look less like George Patton than Maxwell Smart. After three weeks of intermittent hostilities and a billion dollars down the drain, he has tried four times to justify sending troops to the Middle East - and still hasn’t come up with an explanation that sells.
The drama illustrates the difference between domestic and global politics. Three days after Dick Morris fell from grace, Saddam Hussein invaded the Iraqi town of Irbil. The president responded as if it were a campaign skirmish: He dispatched a rapid-response team. In this case, the attackers wore military uniforms and they tried to throw Saddam off-balance not with fax messages, but 44 highly sophisticated vote-seeking missiles.
The president said he acted to save Kurds, but our forces bombed sites hundreds of miles south of Kurdistan. Truth be told, the administration already had washed its hands of the Kurdish problem.
It had slashed humanitarian aid to Kurdistan. It also had kissed off a band of Kurds whom it paid $100 million to topple Saddam - a project rather like asking gangsta rappers to overthrow the federal government. Saddam got wind of the scheme last spring and murdered the U.S.-backed coup plotters. By the time his troops encircled Irbil, most of our clients were moldering in shallow graves.
After Explanation No. 1 collapsed, the administration proposed another. We bombed Iraq, the president said, to send a message to Saddam.
Administration spokesmen implied we had inflicted heavy damage on radar batteries south of Baghdad. Curiously, they offered no proof. During Desert Storm, the Bush administration couldn’t wait to publish pictures of crumpled buildings and burning targets. This time, our fliers came back photo-free. It soon became obvious why: Our sorties inflicted more damage on the surrounding sand than on Saddam’s defense network.
So on to Explanation No. 3: We bombed southern Iraq to protect pilots who patrol the no-fly zone in northern Iraq. The White House uncorked this one after Iraqi fired off two S-6 missiles in the very general direction of some U.S. jets.
The Iraqis didn’t even turn on radar during the attack because they didn’t want American fighters to wipe out their missile batteries. The rockets flew harmlessly through the sky - the moral equivalent of fireworks. Soon after, Saddam promised not to try any more such stunts.
This left the president in a quandary: His Western allies were hammering him over the military action because he didn’t consult a single coalition partner before bombing the dunes. That’s a diplomatic no-no of the highest order, worse even than asking for ketchup at a state dinner.
Members of Congress were getting testy, too. Sen. Sam Nunn, one of Clinton’s fellow Democrats, said Saddam was stronger after the U.S. incursions than before, and the United States was weaker. Arab leaders chuckled into their cuffs at our folly. European allies rolled their eyes in astonishment. And the Iraqi dictator laughed. Nunn and other defense mavens rubbed salt in the wounds by blasting the president’s failure to talk with key members of Congress before unleashing the popgun war.
The White House knew it had to produce some kind of blockbuster rationale for its invasion. It said the idea behind the bombing was to defend Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
That seemed reasonable. Saddam was playing some war games in southern Iraq, not far from Kuwait. But no sooner had Defense Secretary William Perry announced plans to send 5,000 troops to Kuwait than that nation’s ruling family said: Not yet.
How embarrassing is that? The leader of the free world had to beg for permission to deploy soldiers to a pip-squeak sheikdom that would be Iraq’s 19th Province if not for us. It’s one thing to get dissed by Saddam Hussein. But the al-Sabah family?
Donald Rumsfeld, a former defense secretary and now national chair of the Dole for President Campaign, complains Clinton runs an “in-box” presidency - reacting to crises rather than preventing them. Michael Mandelbaum of the Council on Foreign Relations noted in a devastating essay earlier this year that the administration looks at foreign policy as a form of social work.
Both criticisms hit the mark. Yet Bill Clinton, unlike many politicians, learns from his mistakes. He has backed off his bellicose threats against Iraq, while making it clear he still wants to contain Saddam. Smart move: Saddam made the president look silly. But in crafting a response, Clinton should remember the importance of careful, patient planning. In global politics, as in life, revenge is a dish best served cold.
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