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> Deadlier Than War By Walter Russell Mead
> Wednesday, March 12, 2003; Page A21
> Those who still oppose war in Iraq think containment is an
> alternative -- a middle way between all-out war and letting Saddam Hussein
> out of his box. They are wrong.
> Sanctions are inevitably the cornerstone of containment, and in Iraq,
> sanctions kill.
> In this case, containment is not an alternative to war. Containment is
> war: a slow, grinding war in which the only certainty is that hundreds of
> thousands of civilians will die. The Gulf War killed somewhere between
> 21,000 and 35,000 Iraqis, of whom between 1,000 and 5,000 were civilians.
> Based on Iraqi government figures, UNICEF estimates that containment
> kills roughly 5,000 Iraqi babies (children under 5 years of age) every
> month, or 60,000 per year. Other estimates are lower, but by any
reasonable
> estimate containment kills about as many people every year as the Gulf
> War -- and almost all the victims of containment are civilian, and
> two-thirds are children under 5.
> Each year of containment is a new Gulf War.
> Saddam Hussein is 65; containing him for another 10 years condemns at
> least another 360,000 Iraqis to death. Of these, 240,000 will be children
> under 5. Those are the low-end estimates. Believe UNICEF and 10 more years
> kills 600,000 Iraqi babies and altogether almost 1 million Iraqis. Ever
> since U.N.-mandated sanctions took effect, Iraqi propaganda has blamed the
> United States for deliberately murdering Iraqi babies to further U.S.
> foreign policy goals.
> Wrong.
> The sanctions exist only because Saddam Hussein has refused for 12
years
> to honor the terms of a cease-fire he himself signed. In any case, the
> United Nations and the United States allow Iraq to sell enough oil each
> month to meet the basic needs of Iraqi civilians. Hussein diverts these
> resources. Hussein murders the babies.
> But containment enables the slaughter. Containment kills.
> The slaughter of innocents is the worst cost of containment, but it is
> not the only cost of containment. Containment allows Saddam Hussein to
> control the political climate of the Middle East. If it serves his
interest
> to provoke a crisis, he can shoot at U.S. planes. He can mobilize his
troops
> near Kuwait. He can support terrorists and destabilize his neighbors. The
> United States must respond to these provocations.
> Worse, containment forces the United States to keep large conventional
> forces in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the region. That costs much more
than
> money.
> The existence of al Qaeda, and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are part
> of the price the United States has paid to contain Saddam Hussein. The
link
> is clear and direct. Since 1991 the United States has had forces in Saudi
> Arabia. Those forces are there for one purpose only: to defend the kingdom
> (and its neighbors) from Iraqi attack. If Saddam Hussein had either fallen
> from power in 1991 or fulfilled the terms of his cease-fire agreement and
> disarmed, U.S. forces would have left Saudi Arabia.
> But Iraqi defiance forced the United States to stay, and one
consequence
> was dire and direct. Osama bin Laden founded al Qaeda because U.S. forces
> stayed in Saudi Arabia. This is the link between Saddam Hussein's defiance
> of international law and the events of Sept. 11; it is clear and
compelling.
> No Iraqi violations, no Sept. 11.
> So that is our cost. And what have we bought?
> We've bought the right of a dictator to suppress his own people,
disturb
> the peace of the region and make the world darker and more dangerous for
the
> American people. We've bought the continuing presence of U.S. forces in
> Saudi Arabia, causing a profound religious offense to a billion Muslims
> around the world, and accelerating the alarming drift of Saudi religious
and
> political leaders toward ever more extreme forms of anti-Americanism.
> What we can't buy is protection from Hussein's development of weapons
of
> mass destruction. Too many companies and too many states will sell him
> anything he wants, and Russia and France will continue to sabotage any
> inspections and sanctions regime. Morally, politically, financially,
> containing Iraq is one of the costliest failures in the history of
American
> foreign policy. Containment can be tweaked -- made a little less
murderous,
> a little less dangerous, a little less futile -- but the basic equations
> don't change. Containing Hussein delivers civilians into the hands of a
> murderous psychopath, destabilizes the whole Middle East and foments
> anti-American terror -- with no end in sight.
> This is disaster, not policy. It is time for a change.
> Walter Russell Mead is senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the
Council
> on Foreign Relations and author most recently of "Special Providence:
> American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World."
> © 2003 The Washington Post Company

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