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The Full Text of This Book Is Available In Tyranny’s Ally Tyranny’s Ally America’s Failure to Defeat Saddam Hussein David Wurmser The AEI Press Publisher for the American Enterprise Institute WASHINGTON, D.C. 1999 Available in the United States from the AEI Press, c/o Publisher Re- sources Inc., 1224 Heil Quaker Blvd., P.O. Box 7001, La Vergne, TN 37086-7001. To order, call 1-800-269-6267. Distributed outside the United States by arrangement with Eurospan, 3 Henrietta Street, Lon- don WC2E 8LU, England. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wurmser, David. Tyranny’s ally : America’s failure to defeat Saddam Hussein / David Wurmser. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8447-4073-X (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-8447-4074-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. United States—Foreign relations—Iraq. 2. Iraq—Foreign relations— United States. 3. United States—Foreign relations—1989–1993. 4. United States—Foreign relations—1993. 5. Arab countries—Foreign relations. 6. Hussein, Saddam, 1937– . I. Title. E183.8.I57W87 1999 327.730567—dc21 98-31896 CIP 13579108642 © 1999 by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Wash- ington, D.C. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or repro- duced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from the Ameri- can Enterprise Institute except in cases of brief quotations embodied in news articles, critical articles, or reviews. The views expressed in the publications of the American Enterprise Institute are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, advisory panels, officers, or trustees of AEI. The AEI Press Publisher for the American Enterprise Institute 1150 17th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 Printed in the United States of America To my wife Meyrav—a source of inspiration, intellectual challenge, encouragement, humor, and happiness— without whom I would have neither the energy nor the patience to write ContentsD FOREWORD Richard Perle xi PREFACE xvii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xxi 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Strategic Retreat and Failure 2 A Symbol of the Region’s Political Malaise 6 From Desert Storm to Retreat 7 2 THE SPENT STORM—ILLUSIONS AND BETRAYAL SINCE THE GULF WAR 9 The Revolt of 1991 10 Building, Then Betraying the INC 14 Saddam’s Long and Precarious Summer of 1995 17 The Embrace of the Wifaq 20 vii viii Contents The Balkanization of Northern Iraq 25 Saddam’s Reentry into Northern Iraq 27 Challenging UNSCOM and Sanctions 29 Tailspin: The Summer of 1998 30 Another Wifaq-Led Coup Attempt? 37 Regional Implications 38 The Current Policy of Silver-Bullet Coups 39 3 NATIONS AT WAR WITH THEMSELVES AND THEIR NEIGHBORS 42 Is Tyranny a Path to Stability or to Anarchy? 43 Pan-Arabic Nationalism 46 The Revolutionary Spirit in Europe 50 European Influence on Arab Revolutionaries 51 The Failure of Pan-Arabic Nationalism and Ba’thism 55 Tyranny and Internal Instability 57 Tyranny and External Aggression 59 Tyranny and Anti-Americanism 61 Cutting a Hard Line on Ba’thism 62 4 IRAN, SHI’ISM, AND THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION 66 Iran and Fundamentalism 67 Secular versus Religious Totalitarians 70 Effecting a Dual Rollback of Iran and Iraq 72 The Rule of the Jurisprudent 74 Shi’ism’s Western Affinity 76 5 PAST AS PROLOGUE—IRAQ AND THE HASHEMITES 80 Jordan’s Hashemite Initiative in Iraq 80 Political Decentralization 85 Jordan and the INC 88 Attacking Saddam’s Core 91 Jordan against the Vanguard of Revolution 92 6 COMMON CAUSE—JORDAN AND THE IRAQI NATIONAL CONGRESS 94 Jordan and the PLO 95 Contents ix Syria 99 Lebanon’s Regional Rollback of Shi’ite Fundamentalism 107 Egypt 110 The Syrian Rapprochement with Iraq 114 7 THE STRATEGIC CENTRALITY OF IRAQ 116 Geographically Propitious 117 The Significance of Northern Iraq 119 Picking Up the Pieces in Turkey, Jordan, and Iraq 123 Toward Defeat 125 8 DEFEATING DESPOTISM 127 Watershed Summer of 1995 129 Reversing U.S. Policy 130 The Middle East Foreign Policy Community 131 To Decentralize Power 135 Perspectives 136 The Age of Modernity 137 NOTES 141 INDEX 157 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 167 MAP OF IRAQ, SHOWING THE NORTHERN SAFE HAVEN 12 ForewordD On November 12, 1997, David Wurmser published an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Iraq Needs a Revolution,” wherein he emphasized that no strategy existed behind the U.S. policy on Iraq and that this failing would lead to a U.S. defeat. It was an understanding many others at the time had reached as well. Concerned by the dan- gerous deterioration of America’s position on Iraq and in the region, the American Enterprise Institute convened a study group that re- solved in its first meeting to urge the Clinton administration to pursue an overt strategy of insurgency. The Iraqi National Congress could lead such an insurgency. The study group accordingly drafted a letter to President Clinton calling for a policy shift and outlining the princi- ples, tactics, and objectives of a plan to remove Saddam Hussein. With dozens of prominent and bipartisan signatories, the letter was privately delivered by Stephen Solarz and myself to National Security Council Adviser Sandy Berger in late January 1998. It was our hope that the Clinton administration would view the receipt of this letter as an opportunity to extricate itself from the predicament into which it had wandered—a predicament that re- sulted, in large part, from the stubborn embrace of an oft-failed, mori- bund effort to oust Saddam Hussein covertly, through coup plots. That failed effort left the administration with only two options for reacting to Saddam’s obstruction of UNSCOM inspections: to retreat, or to bomb Iraq. Of course, the United States had neither domestic nor in- xi xii Foreword ternational support for bombing Iraq, nor a clear plan as to how the action would contribute to Saddam’s eventual defeat. After the administration failed to embrace the suggestions out- lined in the letter and began instead its process of retreat, the study group publicly released the letter, on February 20, 1998. This public release launched a (primarily) congressional effort to persuade the ad- ministration that current policy was leading to defeat and that an al- ternate strategy should be considered. Throughout 1998 Congress passed numerous bills demanding that the administration disburse funds to the democratic Iraqi opposition for an insurgency. But the Clinton administration repeatedly rejected, even ignored, congres- sional legislative efforts. The United States faced yet another acute crisis in the autumn of 1998. With the administration still having taken no steps to craft a co- herent strategy on Iraq and with the policy of retreat having resulted in a series of embarrassing events and high-level resignations, Sad- dam Hussein obstructed UNSCOM inspections once again. American policies lay tattered. Facing intense congressional pressure, the ad- ministration began to accept rhetorically, albeit grudgingly and eva- sively, elements of the insurgency strategy. The president signed the Iraq Liberation Act in September 1998 and reaffirmed his support for it in his speech to the nation in November, as he announced the can- cellation of a series of airstrikes on Iraq. Still, the administration refused to commit itself unequivocally to a new strategy, raising ques- tions as to whether any meaningful shift had occurred in U.S. policy. This book provides a full explanation and detailed analysis of the assumptions and reasoning underlying the effort to change the ad- ministration’s policy toward Iraq. It depicts the evolution of U.S. pol- icy toward Iraq since the end of the Persian Gulf War and critically examines, sometimes without mercy, the basic elements and objec- tives of our current policy, persuasively arguing that it rests on defec- tive foundations. The book explains in particular the danger, as well as the misplaced persistence, behind the administration’s efforts to seek a coup at the unfortunate expense of a democratic insurgency. But this book is about more than Iraq. It is an investigation that utilizes the Iraq issue as a magnifying glass to examine the thinking that has led to the persistent failure in the U.S. approach toward the Middle East. This failure stems from both the curious ideas about American leadership and the abysmal state of expertise that are held by many regional specialists, particularly in our intelligence commu- Foreword xiii nity. It is unfortunately a failure to which many policy makers who are often not regional specialists are exposed. The dire implications of this lack of expertise may be illustrated by my personal experience while working for Senator Henry Jackson in 1979. At that time the shah of Iran was teetering on his throne. En- camped with his spokesman in a Paris suburb was a shadowy figure known as the Ayatollah Khomeini. These men would appear routinely in front of their house and make statements widely carried by the news media about events in Iran. After some weeks, a distinguished scholar—I believe the preeminent scholar—of the region, Professor Bernard Lewis, telephoned me and said that if he heard another ref- erence to “this mysterious figure Khomeini” he would scream. There was nothing mysterious about the Ayatollah Khomeini; he had written several books, and his activities were well known. Bernard could not fathom why everyone found it so difficult to understand the ayatollah. I asked him to tell me more, and he read me some passages from Khomeini’s writings. As a young Senate staffer, I knew I was hearing sensational ma- terial that had to get publicized in the United States. I suggested that Professor Lewis send me an Op-Ed piece that I could forward to a friend at the New York Times.
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