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Jewish World Review Sept. 14 , 1998 / 23 Elul, 5758
Douglas M. Bloomfield
The Clinton Administration, preoccupied with lesser affairs at home
and increasingly timid abroad, is hobbled by growing avarice and weakening
resolve among its partners on the Security Council and in the Arab world.
Unlike other times when Saddam banned inspectors, this challenge
may go unanswered. That is bad news in Israel, which cannot be happy with
the American decision to drop threats of force to pry open the doors to
Saddam's secret arsenals. Many Israeli defense planners feel diplomacy
not backed with force is bound to fail.
It is no secret that the moment international sanctions are lifted,
Saddam will resume building his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and
the missiles to deliver them -- if he hasn't already -- and Israel,
Saddam';s longtime favorite target, will again be in his cross hairs, as it
was during the 1991 Gulf War.
But Saddam has also has done much to help Israel, making it
stronger militarily, politically, economically and diplomatically. All
unintentionally.
His invasion of Iran nearly two decades ago tied down both nations,
strained their treasuries, and killed or wounded over a million men on both
sides, soldiers that the leaders of both countries would rather have sent
to kill Israelis.
Saddam's initial attempt to go nuclear led to the dramatic Israeli
raid on the Osiraq reactor in 1981 that won public condemnation and private
gratitude throughout the Arab world.
It told potential adversaries that Israel has a long, lethal and
accurate reach.
Most of all it was Saddam's invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990,
that led to the Gulf War, which altered the course of history.
"It was one of the best wars from the Israeli point of view," said
Gen. Ze'ev Livneh, Israel's military attache in Washington. "The price we
paid of being hit by long-range missiles, compared to what happened to the
Iraqi forces, was completely worthwhile."
The Gulf War also affirmed the end of the Cold War and the demise
of the Soviet Union as a superpower.
Russia could do little to protect its lucrative Iraqi client, and
in the end it had no choice but to endorse the U.S.-led war that not only
devastated the Iraqi army but humiliated Soviet military equipment and
doctrine.
It was no coincidence that Syria, another similarly outfitted
Soviet client, was invited to join the coalition. That gave Assad and his
generals one more chance to see a head-to-head between Soviet and American
weapons and training. They'd already seen it up close in prior wars with
Israel, particularly the 1982 Lebanon conflict which devastated the Syrian
air defense system.
Israel was a big winner because of its courageous restraint in the
face of a barrage of Iraqi Scud missiles intended to provoke it into
retaliating and breaking the American-led coalition.
That discipline, admired by the Arabs, opened the door to the peace
process. Ironically, the man responsible for that policy was Prime Minister
Yitzhak Shamir, who did not welcome the peace opening, although a majority
of Israelis did, a preference that was evident when they replaced him with
Yitzhak Rabin.
Saddam begat the Gulf War and that conflict begat the Arab-Israeli
peace process.The Bush Administration parlayed the victory and Israel's
admirable conduct into an international peace conference attended by nearly
every Arab state, including Syria.
It's a memorable day when Israel looks better in Arab eyes than PLO
Chairman Yasser Arafat and Jordanian King Hussein, but that is what
happened when that odd couple opted to side with Saddam. Joining a peace
process as a combined delegation became the key to their international
rehabilitation.
Since the war, Saddam's frequently fomented crises have only
strengthened U.S.-Israeli military cooperation, and they have improved
public understanding of the threats Israel faces in that nasty neighborhood
where it lives.
Conversely, the recent Arab rush to re-embrace Saddam and lift the
international sanctions only damages their standing in American eyes.
Saddam has been spending billions to build palaces and make sure he and his
favored continue to live the good life while many ordinary Iraqis suffer
because Saddam is using them to generate pressure to lift all sanctions. He
wants the restrictions removed not to feed his people -- he could easily do
that today -- but to resume building forbidden weapons.
Saddam's latest decision to freeze cooperation with UN arms
inspectors keeps in the American consciousness the potential threats facing
Israel. It generates sympathy for Israel and intensifies defense and
intelligence cooperation between the two countries.
Since the Gulf War, the Untied States has begun providing Israel
real-time intelligence, instead of filtered and delayed information; the
two allies are working much more closely on the development of anti-missile
systems and other advanced weapons.
"Cooperation is very close, deep and consistent; we are very
happy," Gen. Livneh said.
The longer Saddam refuses to meet the terms for ending the
inspections and lifting sanctions, the better, and safer, it is for Israel
(as well as the Arabs).
Gen. Livneh credits the war and subsequent inspections with
blocking Iraqi development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). "We know
for sure that Iraq was very close to nuclear capability during the Gulf
War; it already had acquired chemical and biological and long range missile
capability."
Saddam showed the Israelis, Saudis and everyone else that missiles
are a real threat, not an abstract matter of superpower ICBM's with
multiple nuclear warheads, and that even small countries can acquire and
deliver WMD.
Saddam Hussein is a despicable human being, a mass murderer, a
brutal dictator and every other nasty appellation you can think of. But as
long as he lives and stays in power, Iraq will be under the microscope. He
would never willingly do anything good for Israel, but unintentionally
he's already done a great
Saddam: Israel's unintentional benefactor
SADDAM HUSSEIN'S LATEST OUTRAGES -- his decision to bar
international weapons inspectors who were zeroing in on his illicit
arsenal, and his ongoing attempt to undercut U.N. economic sanctions --
exposed the confusion that dominates American policy towards Iraq.
Douglas M. Bloomfield is JWR's Washington correspondent
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