Page 4 - LIONS EYE - March 4, 1998 Iraqi Solutions: Take Out Saddam ... By Rob Coyle Saddam Hussien is at it again. The United States’ public enemy #1 has once again ruffled the feathers of the USA to the brink of war. He does this because he can. In 1992 the USA, fully backed by the United Nations, led a strike against Iraq with a clear mission: to force Saddam's troops to pull out of Kuwait. The campaign was successful in that it accomplished the objective at hand, no more, no less. Former President Bush was criticized for not “finishing the job,” or in other words, not taking Saddam out. But that was not what the United States was there for, and the risk at that time was too great. The only feasible way to take Saddam out of power would be a full scale ground assault on Baghdad. The losses would have been enormous. Now here we are, six years later, and Saddam has the United States preparing for war once again. By barring the UN weapons inspectors from investigating all of his eighty presidential palaces, the US has responded by first threatening, and now preparing for another air assault on Iraq. But the question I keep asking is: Why? This coming air strike, what will it accomplish? Courtesy of CNN online. In 1992 the USA had a clear objective: remove Iraqi soldiers from Kuwait. Today, President Clinton hopes that the strikes will force Saddam to open his palaces to the inspectors. We can bomb Baghdad and its surrounding cities “until the Serbs come home”, while Saddam sits back in one of his hidden bunkers, buried hundreds of feet in the earth, and laughs. Then he’ll emerge, dust himself off, and throw the USA a bone. The inspectors will be allowed to investigate all of his palaces, all eighty of them. Of course, by that time any chemical or biological weaponry that might have been present are now everywhere but there, probably sitting in the kitchen cabinets of the Iraqi citizens that willingly chain themselves to potential bombing targets. In another decade we will be back again. The pattern is there. There is only one way for this all to end. Saddam must be taken care of. Bombings will not do it, short of a nuclear attack, which is simply unthinkable. Inside attempts of coups have all failed. (Why do you think he suddenly killed off his sons-in-laws?) And an all out invasion will be too costly. That leaves one option - the special forces a.k.a. the covert forces. Everybody has seen the movies: American soldiers dressed in black storm a palace by force, silently disposing of unwanted bad guys, and fly away into the night in silent helicopters. I believe a combined attack between the bombing raids on Saddam's palaces and covert invasions would be able to take the man out. Yes, Saddam is evasive, but he is not invincible. There are only so many places he can hide. The United States has always boasted about having the smartest, most technologically advanced, and most powerful military in the world. It is time for them to prove it. : If the United States does not finish this once and for all, who knows what Saddam will attempt next, knowing we won’t stop him. He has no feelings about the loss of his own people. But you threaten him, and maybe his stance will change. Opinion & Review Traffic Troubles Triumph ... Installation of the new campus power switch caused traffic woes for students. THE LION’S EYE Vol. XXIX, No. 7 The Pennsylvania State University = March 4, 1998 Delaware County CO-EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Paul Basilio Christina Papa pnb101@psu.edu cmpl59@psu.edu Edward J. Blackburn Len Damico Lea Anne McGoldrick Ryan Boldosser Tracey Dinh Aaron Mixson | Paul Borish Christine M. Heffernan Cynthia Moore James Conroy Kelly Holmes Bill Raymond Rob Coyle JoAnne Johnson Aimeé Stone Erin Lulevitch ADVISORS Barbara Daniel John Terrell The LION’s EYE is published monthly during the academic year by the students of the Delaware County Campus. Submissions are welcome from all students, faculty and staff. Material must be typed, double spaced, and submitted in the LION'S EYE mailbox located in the Lion’s Den. Letters, articles and cartoons represent only the views of their authors. Advertisements do not necessarily reflect editorial opinion. THE LION’S EYE regrets it cannot guarantee the return of any material submitted. All submissions are subject to editing. ... But Then What? Better to Spank Him By Ed Blackburn Once again, Saddam Hussein has made a fool of America. And he will keep doing it until he is sufficiently deterred. This time around, the Clinton Administration has made Saddam into a bigger-than-life global threat, and he isn’t. He may seem a nutcase, but he’s merely a regional threat, and quite a mastermind at defying America, getting away with it, and (correctly) making the Americans look like the wrongdoers. He's obviously getting good at it. The big talkers on CNN, as well as the naive create all this hype about how we must destroy Iraq now, without due foresight. Some argue that we must send in a ground force or a covert operation to rid the world of this demon, Mr. Hussein. Little do they realize, or care to, that taking that option would be terribly messy. You see, our President hasn’t fared well with the diplomatic aspects of this crisis. Three out of five UN council members are against any use of military force, our greatest Arab allies are against it, and the American people (as always) are generally against it. Say we send in a ground or covert force of Americans, and possibly some Brits. Assume we defeat Iraq as we did in 1991, and this time we set our sights on Baghdad. As we approach the capital, it will be another Stalingrad. We'll lose thousands of Americans storming the city, even if we reduce it to rubble (and destroy the population, civilian and military). Fighting will be intense: house to house, block by block, hand to hand, bayonet to bayonet. The fighting no longer is high-tech; it’s second-wave, man-to-man warfare, where you see the whites of the eyes which shoot to kill you. Who's going to explain to all of those American mothers who've lost their sons, that they died for Clinton’s stupidity? What if we do this and even capture the capital, and even Saddam? Then what? Saddam will be made a martyr of, and we'll be stuck occupying ‘the city, surrounded by fanatic hostiles who will forever fight guerrilla and terrorist warfare. He who controls the city does not always control the surrounding countryside. How reminiscent of the Revolutionary War, when the Brits occupied the cities but not the forests, and of Afghanistan in 1979, when Russia had a vastly superior military force but was unable to decisively defeat the guerrillas. Sure, they took out the Afghan government, but did they really control the nation? No. Such will be the case with Iraq if we do the same. Truth is, Saddam is no bother to us. Clinton is just wrongly portraying Saddam as a nine-foot tall threat, when he’s a mere three. Diplomacy is vital to force (the end must be justified by the excuse), and Clinton handled this wrongly. We have no allies. If Clinton wants to have allies, he should get up onto the bully-pulpit like a Roosevelt or a Kennedy and make things gravely clear: that the US won't tolerate any disobedience by Iraq, that the US must be the means by which the UN achieves its ends. But that is not likely. Clinton would rather quietly make excuses for using force. In effect, he isn’t capable of persuading the American public or his potential allies that force is necessary. They know better. What Clinton needs to do is leave Iraq alone. So what if they possess biological or chemical weapons? As long as they don’t use them outside of their borders, America doesn’t care. But if Iraq uses them on neighboring countries, like Israel (as he has the capability to), it could ignite the Third World War. The only viable solution is to let Iraq alone, and if Saddam steps out of line, to punish him. If he steps out of the box, knock him back in. Smack him around, but there's no need (or practicable ability) to destroy him. Air strikes will do the trick. A smashed airfield or communications system here and there will be effective in reducing even his will to pose a staunch resistance. Eventually, even his beloved Republican Guard will become disillusioned and falter, as will the Iraqi people. They will get tired of being punished and hopefully will develop a resentment for the defiance of their leader. i It cannot be otherwise.
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