Selling The War Badly

By Bruce W. Nelan

Halfway through the rumpus in Columbus, shell-shocked officials from the White House, State Department and Pentagon formed a worried huddle on a side aisle of Ohio State University's basketball arena. The place was so rowdy and raucous, they thought, it was threatening to dissolve into chaos. What should they do? Should they pull the plug on this so-called town meeting and hustle their bosses off the center-court stage? Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was scowling, calling for quiet. Defense Secretary William Cohen looked stunned, disbelieving, his toe tapping nervously under his seat. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger hunkered down in his chair, his face stony. But they stuck it out for the full 90 minutes, raising their voices over heckling, shouts and chanted slogans like "We don't want your racist war." When campus police hauled out some of the loudest, other students joined in the protest. Voices from the balcony of the 13,897-seat arena screamed, "The whole world's watching!" It was a bit of a time warp; Berkeley and the '60s fast-forwarded to 1998.

An estimated 200 million people in countries and territories around the world were tuned to CNN as what was supposed to be the Administration's Donahue-style talk show suddenly lurched into an updated version of a Vietnam-era teach-in. The selling of Operation Desert Thunder had become a public relations debacle. But it wasn't just the noisy minority doing what comes naturally to university students, or the obvious discomfort among the TV people on the floor. What really damaged the sales pitch of Washington's three amigos was the questions from scholars, veterans and other upstanding citizens in the audience of 6,000.

Some questioned America's moral right to bomb Iraq, while others demanded that this time the U.S. do the job properly and get rid of Saddam Hussein. The prospect of war managed to anger the political left and right simultaneously. And the replies they got from the nation's top foreign-policy officials were limp, cant-filled and suspiciously incomplete. Columbus mirrored the very same problem President Bill Clinton faces in trying to persuade most of America's allies, the Arab world and marginally friendly countries like Russia and China. He hasn't done any better with them than his advisers did in the heartland.

Albright, Cohen and Berger should have known they were handling a booby-trapped assignment that could explode in their faces. Americans are always reluctant to get into foreign wars, preferring neutrality and shrinking from the shedding of blood, even the enemy's. They wanted to stay out of World War II until Pearl Harbor made the choices crystal clear. Even in 1991, with 500,000 troops poised in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Senate voted only 52 to 47 in favor of attacking Saddam to drive him out of Kuwait. Americans don't like the mission to Bosnia, and they hated the intervention in Haiti.

Last week, as usual, the U.S. public was being brought into the picture very late, only a couple of weeks before a complicated and dangerous foreign adventure was likely to begin. Clinton does it this way all the time, partly because he flutters and floats about his own course of action. He and his advisers assume the country has a short attention span and they can explain a clear choice and a timetable only when their own resolve becomes clear.

Time is growing short. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan arrived in Baghdad last week on what he admitted was one last diplomatic effort to solve the impasse over inspections. As Annan headed off, he got Washington's "terms of reference" in a personal phone call from Clinton. The President spelled out "red lines" on what the U.S. will not accept, mainly anything that dilutes the authority or responsibility of the U.N. Special Commission's weapons inspectors. The U.S. is willing to go along with the suggestion of soothing Saddam's offended sense of sovereignty by sending Security Council diplomats along with the inspectors, but not if the diplomats get in the way or try to limit inspections anywhere and everywhere. "If a few diplomats were to accompany UNSCOM under certain conditions," says State Department spokesman James Rubin, "we don't have a problem with that." But the commission must have "operational control and access to sites it does not now have access to."

Direct phone lines were set up from the U.N. and the State Department to Annan's delegation in Baghdad. Albright and U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson stood by to take reports from Annan and provide a U.S. response to any offers from Saddam. Annan was expected to return to New York City on Tuesday and report to the Security Council formally on Wednesday.

The White House is broadcasting at full volume and plans a Clinton address to the nation if any military action is to be undertaken. But the Administration is advertising a complicated and unsatisfying product. Clinton's policy on Iraq, as he admits, is not one that will either get rid of Saddam or wipe out his capacity to build and stockpile weapons of mass destruction--chemical and biological--and the missiles to carry them. The plan to bomb anyway, if Saddam does not allow U.N. inspectors free entry everywhere, and then maybe bomb again later, sounds like a series of half measures. It doesn't sit well with Americans.

Ohio's displeasure was so plain that some officials holding a postmortem in Washington fretted aloud about "whether the town hall sent a bad message to Saddam." (Answer: Yes. Iraqi state television played portions of the basketball-court fiasco over and over.) That worry probably accounts for the White House's revived interest in getting a vote of support from the Senate if Annan returns from his mission to Baghdad without unconditional agreement from Saddam to open his palace doors to inspectors.

What Clinton is proposing is a cold war-style containment of Iraq, a long-range and unpalatable option. In a televised speech at the Pentagon last Tuesday, the President wore a properly dark suit and a somber, clench-jawed expression. He seemed uncomfortable and spoke in a monotone that some of the senior officers listening found "flat" and "uninspiring." Force, Clinton said, was sometimes the only answer.

A CIA paper made public the same day the President spoke reported that the U.N.'s inspectors "believe Iraq maintains a small force of Scud-type missiles, a small stockpile of chemical and biological munitions" and the ability to produce more of them quickly. A U.S. and British bombing strike, Clinton told his Pentagon audience, "can and will leave him significantly worse off than he is now" and reduce Saddam's ability to attack his neighbors. "If he seeks to rebuild his weapons of mass destruction, we will be prepared to strike him again." Clinton even trotted out some cold war rhetoric, warning that coping with Saddam "requires constant vigilance."

It is what Clinton's advisers have been saying for months: continued economic sanctions, constant threats of military action and occasional punitive bombing make up the only realistic policy for keeping Saddam from becoming a threat to the Middle East. It might take a long time, because Saddam does not seem ready to leave the scene and the U.S. is unwilling to go in and get him. No wonder this is a hard sell.

The Clinton team likes to say that most of the world supports the U.S. stand. That's half right. Most of the world does agree that Saddam should live up to the Security Council resolutions he has accepted and should allow inspectors to check any building they think necessary, including the so-called presidential sites. But having said that, most countries balk at enforcing the rules with air strikes. Some honestly believe more diplomacy will do the trick, and some, like China, oppose any sanctions that might someday be turned on themselves.

Perhaps the most carefully nuanced view is France's, though many of America's allies think along the same lines. France wants to do business in Iraq's oil fields, but French officials insist they are not pro-Saddam. They'd like to see the last of him too. But they have no faith in the methods Washington is proposing. Air strikes of the size now gathering steam in the gulf, the French say, are a no-win policy that can only benefit Saddam. The bombs will miss his weapons, kill Iraqi civilians and rally support for Saddam at home and in the Arab world. The French government assumes that after an air strike, Saddam will throw out the U.N. inspectors altogether, and that will be the end of the outside world's ability to monitor his biological-, chemical- and nuclear-weapons programs.

After Albright toured the region three weeks ago, peddling the bomb-and-then-bomb-again policy, she returned saying she had broad support and intimated that Arab leaders were more accommodating in private than in public. As soon as she landed in Washington, the support began slipping away. Egypt pronounced against military action. Turkey and Saudi Arabia told the U.S. it could not use air bases on their soil to attack Iraq. Then Bahrain's Information Minister announced that no strikes could be mounted from his country, a key land base for U.S. fighters and warships.

As one of the questioners at Ohio State asked, What is Clinton up to if Saddam's neighbors don't want the U.S. to bomb? Aren't they afraid? Israel certainly is, but the others are of two minds. They see Saddam as brutal and menacing, but they don't think he's about to do anything terrible to them right now. They assume that if he gets nasty and tries to attack again, the U.S. will slap him down. But they are skittish about provoking a sleeping beast and fear he might retaliate. They don't trust Saddam's judgment under bombardment, assuming that he could use his terror weapons as a last resort. A Jordanian official says, "You don't poke a lion."

Some of Iraq's next-door neighbors are afraid the country will fall apart if the U.S. hits it too hard. With Iraq pulverized, Iran becomes the biggest military power in the area. If the Shi'ite southern area of Iraq breaks away, Shi'ite Iran might gobble it up and move on to Saudi Arabia's eastern province, also Shi'ite and home to the kingdom's most important oil fields. At the same time, Iran would be deeply worried if the northern segment of Iraq were to break away and create an independent Kurdistan. Turkey and Syria share that worry. So while the surrounding states would like to see Saddam disarmed, they are less than certain they want his regime to collapse.

Arab states, like many others, think the U.N.'s economic sanctions have gone too far and are hurting Iraqi civilians who have no say in who leads their country. Arab governments also worry about their own biggest internal threat: religious fundamentalists who despise the U.S. and the regimes, like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, that have military links with the Great Satan. The states of the gulf are not strong and brave nations with firm bases; they are traditional monarchies struggling to survive in changing, threatening times.

While the Arabs think the U.S. is scheming and manipulating events, Saddam is calling the shots in the current crisis. He created it and will decide its outcome. His strategy is visible. Saddam is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, using them to boost his prestige and as a threat and deterrent against all the neighbors who do not love him, starting with Iran. He wants to fend off the U.N. inspectors and get out from under the sanctions grinding down his economy.

How does he do it? He begins by refusing to allow the inspectors into his far-flung compounds and intelligence-service headquarters. Saddam is trying to persuade the Security Council that the inspections as well as the embargo must come to an end. Failing that, he can endure and survive an American bombardment, emerging to greet a world newly sympathetic to Iraqi suffering and outraged by American bullying. His defiance brings him admiration; his resistance rallies his people to his side. The U.N. inspectors will be gone, and the embargo will be shakier than ever. He probably figures that even if he cannot get a vote in the Security Council to lift the economic sanctions, many countries will simply ignore them.

Saddam has a great advantage as he plays his deadly game. He has shown over and over that he does not care what happens to his people so long as he survives in power. He is cynical and an accomplished risk taker. He may have given up hope that wily diplomacy could break the U.N.'s grip on his weapons and economy and may be willing to take the gamble with American and British air power. If not--if he has hopes of playing yet another diplomatic round--he will pass the word to Kofi Annan. It's his last chance.

--Reported by Bruce Crumley/Paris, William Dowell/U.N., Johanna McGeary/Baghdad and Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington

With reporting by Bruce Crumley/Paris, William Dowell/U.N., Johanna McGeary/Baghdad and Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington