December 25-31, 2003

pretzel logic

Dean, Warts and All

by Howard Altman

Long before 9/11, Democrats were mocking George W. Bush as a man who could not pronounce half the countries in the world, let alone pick them out on a map.

Bush was a pampered buffoon, a well-educated ignoramus of the highest order.

In 2000, Joe Lieberman ran as a vice presidential candidate, railing against Bush and his lack of worldly wisdom. John Kerry, a Democratic U.S. senator, railed as well.

But now that Saddam is caught, Lieberman and Kerry, this coalition of the middling, wail that the Democrats will be surely defeated next November if they oppose the president’s foreign policy.

Talk about hedging your bets.

Well, at least Lieberman is nothing if not consistent when it comes to intent. He’s always wanted to bomb the hell out of Iraq.

But Kerry, that war hero, has twisted himself up like the rubbery guy from the Fantastic 4 trying to spin his spinelessness on the matter.

In a few weeks, the Democrats begin to choose the man with the near-Sisyphusian burden of opposing Bush.

The party must decide whether to take on the president and his war or run a pale imitation against him.

I have plenty of problems with the hair-trigger mouth of the good doctor from Vermont, who, when he talks about Latin America as a hemisphere or refers to Russia as the Soviet Union, makes me wonder about Yale.

But I have to give him this much.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves with orthodontal photographs of Saddam I Am.

"The capture of Saddam is a good thing, which I hope will keep our soldiers safer," says Dean, as quoted by Newsweek. "But the capture of Saddam has not made America safer."

Despite the clucking from Democratic presidential primary rivals on their last gasps of hope, Dean has a point.

In the days since Saddam was pulled out of his hidey-hole, nine U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq and an oil pipeline was blown up.

Here at home, in case you have missed it, we are living in the orange zone. Intel chatter points to something bigger than Bloody Tuesday.

Saddam captured is a wonderful thing for the world. Two generations removed from the ovens of Auschwitz, I have nothing but good things to say about justice for a murdering tyrant. And blessed be the Iraqis who will try him. Way to go, Mr. President. I mean that.

But are we any safer?

Certainly not in the short run.

But worse, not in the long run, either.

Tactically, capturing Saddam is a huge bonus if for no other reason than he, and the briefcase he was carrying, give the U.S. a true ace in the hole it can use to bluff and bully its way to finding insurgents.

And there may be millions of Iraqis who are grateful that the source of their misery will soon be dispatched. And make no mistake about it, Saddam’s head will roll.

But there are millions not so happy to see Saddam gone. And maybe more who are glad, but who would just as soon kill invaders even if they did get rid of Hussein.

The only certainty is that there will be many more body bags coming home.

Six months before the war, in September 2002, I wrote a column asking "After Saddam, what?"

Now that he is gone, it is only fair to revisit my question.

Saddam is gone, probably dead, his reign ending in violence like that of nearly everyone who has deigned to run Iraq -- where, until Saddam, the average Iraqi leader had the life span of a housefly.

But is the country stable? Can we win a war without devastating the nation’s infrastructure? Are the weapons of mass destruction we are so worried about in safe hands?

History, both ancient and recent, does not offer much hope. In 1994, long-simmering rivalries between the two main Kurdish camps erupted into a civil war claiming hundreds of lives.

Arab journalist Said Aburish, author of the book Saddam Hussein: Politics of Revenge, wrote last year that the Kurdish disputes are only one of many problems.

"Iraq’s Shi’as, 60 percent of the population, are equally split," Aburish wrote in a November 2001 issue of New Statesman. "Some want an Iraq with close ties to Shi’a Iran; others insist they are Arabs and that, to succeed, they should depend on fellow Arabs, namely Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. A third group believes in cooperating with the U.S., and accordingly gets paid for it. The U.S. and U.K. are reluctant to help the two Shi’a groups that command real followings inside Iraq."

None of the other scores of so-called Iraqi opposition groups are much good either, writes Aburish. "Recently, I examined my notes of the lengthy interviews I conducted with 82 Iraqi opposition leaders. I began identifying those on my list whose thinking resembles Saddam’s. To my horror, I decided that 75 of the people I interviewed were men who would kill to achieve their goal."

The war in Iraq, Howard Dean says, "was launched in the wrong way, at the wrong time, with inadequate planning, insufficient help and at an unbearable cost."

Getting Saddam, he says, doesn’t change that.

I, for one, agree.

And when it comes time to pick someone to run against Bush, I hope the Democrats don’t settle for Dubya Light.