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CounterPunch
March 21,
2003
Peres:
"Iraq Is Just the Beginning"
Could the US
be at War for Years?
By BRADLEY BURSTON
A Pentagon-dubbed 'decapitation' mission, a pre-dawn
air assault with Saddam Hussein as its reputed target, may have
been President George Bush's best chance to stave off a protracted
war, which could spell ultimate defeat even if American troops
score strings of tactical victories.
But even if the Iraqi president is killed
or captured, could the American people still be facing years
of war, in Iraq or elsewhere?
The issue was raised in Israel well before
the assault began, prompted by remarks earlier this week by former
prime minister Shimon Peres.
"The war in Iraq is just the beginning,"
Peres told Israel Channel One Television. "Problems of the
first magnitude can be expected therafter, as well: Iran, North
Korea, and Libya.
"The problem is, can you simply
abandon the world to dictators, to weapons of mass destruction?"
Asked if that meant America might then
be facing as many as five or six years of war at this point,
Peres replied, "That is very possible. I don't know how
long it will take, but the problem is a global one, and it will
not end in Iraq, even if a new regime is instituted - say a regime
like Jordan's, not a democracy, but orderly and responsible rule."
Taking a narrower view, former army chief,
cabinet minister and peace negotiator Amnon Lipkin-Shahak said
the American campaign in Iraq could be relatively brief.
"There is a good chance that there
will be a collapse of the Iraqi will to fight. Part of this will
depend on how the Iraqis perceive the American offensive,"
Lipkin-Shahak said hours before the attack began.
"The Iraqis already understand American
determination, American psychological warfare will add to that
perception of determination, and the moment that the Iraqis understand
that the Americans mean to go all the way this time - and not
to stop somewhere in the middle as they did the last time [in
the 1991 Gulf war], the collapse will be that much faster."
Other Israeli officials have speculated that even if the United
States can achieve a relatively swift military triumph in Iraq,
the subsequent occupation of a nation the size of California
could prove a tar baby of major proportions, and an uncomfortable,
perhaps dangerous echo of the Israel's military experience in
Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza. The killing or capture of the
Iraqi leader might help shorten the war's timespan, but it is
overly simplistic to believe that the removal of Saddam Hussein
or his sons would spell a swift conclusion, said Haaretz intelligence
analyst Yossi Melman. "One must give Iraq's generals, its
leadership, and the [ruling] Ba'ath Party due credit," Melman
observes. "It is not just a regime ruled through tyranny
and terror. There is that, to a great degree, but these people
are also guided by ideology, that of the Ba'ath, the common cause,
the notion of the Iraqi nation.
"Some of them are certainly Iraqi
patriots. It's not that they blindly obey Saddam Hussein just
because they fear him. True, he has sewn the seeds of fear and
terror in the 30 years he's ruled there, but there is more than
that, and that's why it will not be so easy." One particular
problem for the campaign against Saddam Hussein is his intensely
loyal inner circle, including a core of some 10 top generals,
key players in his rule, many of them members of Saddam's family
clan.
Now that the apparent 'liquidation' bid
has apparently failed, the Americans can be expected "to
concentrate on breaking lines of communication, targeting the
regime's command and control centers, in a 'divide and rule'
strategy, to isolate Saddam Hussein and his central command from
the other, more peripheral areas of Iraq - in sum, to push him
into losing control of the situation."
The question of whether the Bush administration
will follow an Iraqi campaign with threats of military force
against other nations on the White House blacklist may in the
end be decided by domestic considerations, rather than the desire
to bring about changes in regimes that, in terms of nuclear potential
alone, are potentially far more dangerous than that of Saddam.
"If he is still at war when he runs
again, even if he is winning that war, I don't believe he will
be re-elected, if only because of the economy," says Melman.
Perhaps the greatest single failure of the American military
and intelligence effort occured long before the overnight Tomahawk
Cruise missile attack was launched, Melman concludes. "Had
U.S. intelligence services succeeded previously in an operation
against Saddam Hussein, the war might well have been prevented
entirely."
Bradley Burston
writes for Ha'aretz.
Yesterday's
Features
Ben Tripp
Blood
for Oil: the Exchange Rate
Cathy Breens
Report from Baghdad: Mothers, Kids and Crash Kits
Scott Handleman
Fourth
Generation Protesting: Shutting Down San Francisco
Vanessa Jones
Paint
Them Red
Brian J. Foley
Patriotic
Protest for Professors
Zoltan Grossman
After Saddam, a War on Iraqi Rebels?
Philip S. Golub
Inventing Demons
Richard Lichtman
On the Current Experience of Terror
Milan Rai
Blitz-Coup
Pepe Escobar
A Cheap Family Farce
Floyd Rudmin
The Nightmare at the Back Door: Nuclear Plant's as Terror Targets
Chris Floyd
See Rome (poem)
Website of the War
Iraq
Body Count
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