Military Options

By Lisa Beyer

As the battle grinds on in the gulf, thoughts of a quick solution irresistibly spring to mind. Why not assassinate Saddam? Or threaten to nuke Baghdad? Or carpet bomb the Iraqis to kingdom come? The U.S., in fact, does have potent weapons that have not yet been unsheathed. "We have a toolbox that's full of lots of tools, and I brought them all to the party," General Colin Powell said last week. Field commander H. Norman Schwarzkopf bragged, "We could end the war in two days, but we don't want to destroy Iraq."

The U.S. and its coalition partners are also worried that a lethal knockout punch to Saddam would turn him into an even greater hero on the Arab street than he already is. And though the allies view their campaign in the gulf as just, there are moral limits to the conduct of war, even when confronting an opponent who behaves as despicably as Saddam. "Military professionals have a very strong sense of what distinguishes the work they do from butchering," says Michael Walzer, a professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. "It is a moral sense, even though it's entangled with professional pride and a sense of what works and what doesn't." Still, if the allied strategy of waging a fair fight should fail, the war's prosecutors may come under pressure to resort to more drastic means.

With reporting by Michael Duffy and Dan Goodgame/Washington and Gavin Scott/Chicago