At War: Moving Targets.(Brief Article)

The immediate task before the United States is to topple the Ba'athist regime in Iraq. What are the objections?

Not surprisingly, they shift over time. During the summer, one heard that the Bush administration had not made its case. In fact, the president began making his case at least as long ago as his "Axis of Evil" speech, when he singled out Iraq, along with Iran and North Korea, as a state with the means to make weapons of mass destruction, and the will to use them. In his West Point speech, he argued that preemptive strikes against such regimes were legitimate.

As administration figures iterated these points, the complaint became that the issue had to be debated in Congress. Accordingly, after Labor Day, President Bush urged Congress "to have an open dialogue," a "debate the American people must hear." Many a congressman will be shown up in embarrassing postures. Sen. Chuck Hagel has been saying that only vets can have opinions about foreign policy; what then are his opinions? Sen. Bob Graham said we should be targeting Iran and Syria. Thanks for the tip, Bob, but if we were targeting them, isn't it possible you would be saying that we should target Iraq? Majority Leader Tom Daschle will move heaven and earth to delay any vote until the first Wednesday after the first Monday of November.

Conceding that Saddam is dangerous and that we must do something about him, other critics, notably former president Carter, urge us to demand a new round of inspections. They were crushingly answered by former secretary of state George Shultz in a Washington Post op-ed. Security Council resolutions have demanded inspections in Iraq since the end of the Gulf War. In February 1998, President Clinton and Secretary General Kofi Annan demanded unfettered and unrestricted access for U.N. inspectors. They didn't get it, and a new Security Council resolution in November 1998 condemned Iraq's stonewalling as a "flagrant violation." Inspectors cannot do their work because Saddam Hussein will not let them; he will not let them because he is hellbent on developing his weapons. "Nothing has worked," Shultz concluded. "Any further steps will only provide him with more time and heighten the danger."

This disposes of a related complaint: that we must work through the U.N. We have, and the normal channels of U.N. diplomacy have failed. Would we then be going it alone? We already have allies giving us important logistical and military assistance: in the region, Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman; in Europe, Britain (Tony Blair declared that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was "a threat to the whole of ...