Is Saddam winning political war?

[Gość: Yes]

THOMAS WALKOM

Saddam Hussein is almost certain to lose the military war in Iraq.
Politically, however, he is winning.

This is not trivial. A political win may not stop the Iraqi leader from being
deposed. But it can deny America real victory.

For months, analysts have puzzled over how Saddam would defend himself
against the most powerful nation in the world.

Some said he would use chemical and biological weapons against invading U.S.
and British forces.

Others predicted he would repeat his actions in the first Gulf War and target
Israel, in order to draw the Jewish state (and thus other Arab countries)
into the conflict.

These scenarios could still come to pass. But up to now, Saddam has focused
on the political elements of the struggle with the United States. And in
this, he has proved himself far more adept than U.S. President George W. Bush.

This is not to suggest that Bush is politically maladroit. He has a keen
understanding of his own country, and has deftly used the fear generated by
the Sept. 11 terror attacks to bolster support for a radically aggressive
foreign policy that, in normal times, Americans might well reject.

But when it comes to larger political issues, Bush and those around him have
shown that they either do not understand or do not care to understand.

First, the U.S. miscalculated the response of Iraqis to any invasion. It
forgot that people don't take kindly to foreigners telling them what to do,
no matter how noble the intentions.

Relying on the fact that Saddam is a cruel dictator, U.S. war planners
assumed that most ordinary Iraqis would welcome anyone who entered their
country to depose him.

But as reports from journalists entering southern Iraq demonstrate, this is
far from true. The BBC describes Iraqis in the so-called liberated towns as
sullen and bitter. Others write of lawlessness and of Iraqi civilians
berating the American-led coalition for shelling their towns.

Throughout the south, the U.S. and British have run into far fiercer
resistance than they anticipated. Yet the south was supposed to be the easy
part, the section of Iraq populated by Shiite Muslims opposed to Saddam.

By contrast, Saddam has described U.S. intentions in language that his
countrymen can comprehend. He says Bush wants Iraq's oil.

Iraqis, many of whom can remember a time when another imperial power
controlled their oil fields, understand this. The fact that the U.S. says it
plans to use Iraqi oil revenues to pay U.S. firms to rebuild Iraqi
infrastructure that the U.S. is now destroying, also lends credence to
Saddam's storyline.

Indeed, although many in the West might not like to admit this, Saddam's
explanation for the war makes much more sense than Bush's.

Which leads to Washington's second great political failure. It has not been
able to supply a plausible reason for this war.

Many Americans (and some Canadians) have accepted — in the face of all
evidence — the U.S. rationale that Iraq is somehow connected to the Sept. 11
attacks. But as Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a former aide to John F. Kennedy,
wrote recently in the Los Angeles Times, almost no one else in the world buys
this.

"Today, it is we Americans who live in infamy," he wrote.

Weapons of mass destruction? To U.S. embarrassment, Saddam has not used the
chemical and biological weapons it claims he has stockpiled. Even the few
missiles he fired (incorrectly labelled in the media as Scuds) were, the
Pentagon acknowledges, legal under United Nations Security Council
resolutions.

The public relations nightmare faced by Bush is that this war might prove
that Saddam was not lying when he said he no longer possessed such weapons.

Indeed, so low is U.S. credibility on this front that even if coalition
troops produce evidence of chemical and biological weaponry, much of the
world will assume it has been fabricated by the CIA.

Already, Saddam has won political victories. He stymied Britain and the U.S.
at the United Nations through the simple strategy of (eventually) agreeing to
successive Security Council demands.

Similarly, Iraqi compliance, and Bush's inability to come up with a plausible
rationale for his war, has won sympathy among the peoples of neighbouring
states.

Turkish public opinion prevented the U.S. from opening a second front in
Iraq's north. Jordan's government is coming under increasing public criticism
for its under-the-table co-operation with Bush.

Saddam's hope, presumably, is that the longer the war drags on, the more
nervous Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia will become about supporting the
U.S., and that this, in turn, could derail the invasion.

The laws of probability suggest such hopes are misplaced. However, the longer
it takes for America to achieve military victory, the more hollow that
victory threatens to become.

Anti-Americanism is at a level not seen for 30 years. While, Bush and those
around him may not care about this, they should. Armed conquest is the simple
part.