When The War Balloon Goes Up Jude Wanniski February 5, 2003

Memo: To Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief political advisor
From: Jude Wanniski
Re: Unilateral War

Sorry to bother you again, Karl, but I think you are the only guy I know who is in a position to make a difference with the President, given the current state of play on the chessboard. What I am passing on is a column written in Monday’s Washington Times by Arnaud de Borchgrave, for many years the managing editor of the Times and now a peerless roving editor on the most important issues of American foreign policy and national security. When I tell my clients that unilateral military action against Baghdad, i.e., without support of the Security Council, will shut down the world economy, it is this kind of political analysis that underpins my economic analysis. I do disagree with Arnaud’s conclusion that our President has already crossed the Rubicon and that there is no turning back. The President can always decide to make peace, not war, without any complaints from the American people and the family of man.

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Across the Rubicon

By Arnaud de Borchgrave
The Washington Times
Published February 3, 2003

The most experienced counterterrorist investigator in the Western world is France's Jean-Louis Bruguiere. He is not campaigning against a U.S. regime change invasion of Iraq. But he is saying Islamic militants are recruiting hundreds of jihadi-prone co-religionists to carry out terrorist attacks as soon as the war balloon goes up. He also sees the bulk of these threats emanating from groups in Chechnya. Many of these terrorists were trained in how to make chemical weapons in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and/or in the Red Army during the Cold War.

Mr. Bruguiere has searched high and low and found no evidence of the Iraqi-al Qaeda link that recently moved from conventional wisdom in the White House to fact certain in president Bush's State of the Union address. War on Iraq without approval from the U.N. Security Council, Mr. Bruguiere says, will exacerbate anti-American sentiments throughout the world and act as a force-multiplier for transnational terrorists.

"Something very big is brewing," Mr. Bruguiere said after Mr. Bush's speech. Trans-Atlantic intelligence coordination led to the recent arrests of terrorist suspects in Spain, Italy and Britain. "We have evidence of a great deal of recruitment by Islamist radicals whose plans appear to be linked to the expectation of war in Iraq," said Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisano. The Czech Republic's intelligence chief has been informed that some of the suspects arrested in Germany and Britain had transited through Bratislava and Prague, but had originated from somewhere in Central Asia.

Mr. Bruguiere described transnational terrorism in a recent French magazine article as "the Hundred Years War of modern times." A globalized nihilistic force, he wrote, "is everywhere and nowhere" and totally dedicated to the destruction of Western societies. All Western European intelligence services, including Britain's MI6, now agree that an invasion of Iraq would be (1) a distraction from the war on terror and (2) a catalytic agent for would-be jihadi terrorists from all over the Muslim world and Muslim communities in Western democracies.

The European perception is almost the exact opposite of the Bush administration's view of world events. "We are in danger of being overtaken by events because history is moving too fast," said France's — and Europe's — leading counterterrorist expert. Hard-liners in the Bush administration — and their Likud allies in Israel — are convinced Saddam Hussein's downfall will be a major setback for global terrorism. To which Europe's counterterrorist community responds by saying that Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan was tantamount to kicking a hornet's nest instead of capturing it and neutralizing it. The botched Tora Bora operation 13 months ago scattered the hornets throughout Pakistan, a U.S. ally, and beyond to Kashmir, Chechnya, Malaysia, Indonesia, Yemen, East Africa, even Latin America.

Mr. Bruguiere also believes that the Caucasus — not only Chechnya — is becoming a "neo-Afghanistan" that is more threatening for Europe than for America. Muslim extremists who sympathize with al Qaeda but are not terrorists tell European journalists they are hoping the U.S. invades Iraq. "This will demonstrate once again that Muslims are being targeted and thus will allow them to rally Muslims to their point of view and recruit new militants," said leftist author Mohamed Sifaoui.

So what does the European counterterrorist community propose to do about Saddam and his concealed weapons of mass destruction? He's back in his box, they argue, and subjected to the daily humiliation of U.N. inspectors officially authorized to run roughshod over Iraq's sovereignty. A few more months and the inspectors may get lucky with U.S. intelligence to guide them. Alternatively, Iraqi generals may screw up their courage and gang up on Saddam Soprano. But all such talk is dismissed by the war hawks as the prattle of appeasers.

In recent months, prominent U.S. generals with extensive Middle Eastern experience, who can hardly be taxed with appeasement, have warned about the pitfalls of a U.S. invasion of Iraq. The latest recruit to their ranks is the retiring NATO supreme commander, Air Force Gen. Joe Ralston, a former deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gen. Ralston, like Gens. "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf, supreme commander of the first Gulf war against Iraq in 1991, and Anthony Zinni, former commander in chief of the Central Command (which encompasses the entire Mideast), says a solution to the bloody Israeli-Palestinian deadlock is a much higher priority than regime change in Iraq. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has decided otherwise.

In any event, as Julius Caesar said on crossing the river Rubicon in 49 B.C., "jacta alea est" — the die is cast. He preferred the dignity of war over the humiliation of a process. In doing so, he invaded Italy and provoked the Second Civil War from which sprang the genesis of modern European culture. Mr. Bush has no intention of succumbing to the U.N. process. Psychologically at least, he has crossed his Rubicon. He has no intention of upending the biggest deployment of U.S. military power since the Gulf war short of Saddam's annihilation.

The emergence of a postwar democratic Iraq is a Walter Mitty fantasy. But one can at least hope that Iraq, an artificial multi-ethnic state created after the First World War, does not meet the fate of Yugoslavia, another artificial multi-ethnic state launched after the Second World War.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
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